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November 2015 
In This Issue
Long Term Care
Long Term Care Awareness Month
November is Long Term Care Awareness month and is a great time to shed some light on the topic. As you have probably come to notice the SCDA brings up the subject of Long Term Care insurance and its importance quite often, but we sometimes focus more on the solutions than the actual issue. Long term care refers to the assistance or supervision that you may need if are unable to perform some of the basic activities of daily living (ADLs). These ADLs are bathing, eating, dressing, continence, toileting, and moving in and out of bed. Commonly, people will need assistance with these at their homes before moving into an assistant living or nursing home. Therefore, most Long Term Care insurance plans are set up to help with both care in your home and for facility care. Currently over 8,000,000 people a year receive support from some sort of long term care service, and over half of those are in a nursing home. This can become a serious financial issue for most families because the state median for South Carolina is over $75,000 a year to stay in a nursing home, and these numbers continue to rise every year.  While people are living longer, it is a serious issue for the elderly because there is a 68% chance that you will need assistance over the age of 65. Statistics also tell us that 37% of the people currently in a long term care situation are under the age of 64.

Now that we have discussed the seriousness of the issue, let us look at the solutions. There are two main routes to preparing yourself for a long term care situation. First, if you start early enough it is possible to set aside enough money. If you invest it properly you "could" have enough to self-insure. The most difficult part to this solution is you must start at a very young age because the older you get the less risk you will want to take on with the money. Starting when you are over the age of 40 makes this almost impossible.

The second solution is an insurance plan. The downside to insurance is that most people wait until they are older and already have health conditions that prevent them from purchasing a policy. Once you have purchased a policy the insurance company normally has the option to raise your rates in the future, and having an uncertain cost in your retirement can be stressful. This can be resolved by purchasing a policy when you are between the ages of 45-55 that is paid up either in a onetime payment or over the next 10 years, completely alleviating the stress of an additional bill in your retirement.
 
Now I know I mentioned there are two main routes to preparing for a long term care solution, but in reality the best solution is to do a combination of the two. The hardest part of preparing yourself is the uncertainty of how long you could be in a long term care situation. Purchasing a plan that will cover you for 3-5 years, with the assumption that you will self-insure if your long term care situation outlasts your policy, tends to make sense for most people's situations. If you are interest in learning more on long term care or how to prepare for your own risk, please contact our endorsed insurance specialist at Withers Crest by clicking here. You can also call them at 843-732-3304 or email them at jwwithers@witherscrest.com

As always, contact me at 803-750-2277 with any questions or visit us at www.scda.org 


Sincerely,

  

mark's sig

Mark K. Brown
Director of Operations 

 

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