Long Term Care
Planning for residents

Serving all of GA, FL, and VA
 

Many people think the phrase “long-term care” refers to an insurance policy. While insurance may be part of your strategy, long-term care encompasses everything from long-term services, support and finances, to where you will live and have control over the inevitable health circumstances that will occur as you age. Some of the most important priorities to consider when planning for the latter stages of your physical life are:

• Whether or not you would like to have some control over how health services are provided to you
• Whether or not you would like to have control over where health services will be provided to you
• Whether or not you are relying on your children to care for you and are they financially able to handle the financial stress
• Is your spouse physically capable of caring for you should you become incapable of taking care of yourself
• What is your plan when you are incapable of performing two or more of the activities is daily living, ADLs, (i.e,  eating, bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring (walking) and continence).

What is also important is the emotional impact that long-term care situations have on spousal relationships. When a couple in there late-60’s come into a financial advisor’s office seeking long-term care coverage, he realizes it is too late for the spouse who needs it the most, the husband who is in a wheelchair. After a disappointing conversation about not being able to cover the husband, the wife leaves the room momentarily. While gone, the husband expresses his desire to simply want to have his wife back. For the past year, she has been nothing but his caregiver to him due to his inability to perform several activities of daily living on his own. In individual discussions with the wife, she expressed the stress of the daily commitment to providing ADL services to her husband. Although both spouses love each other dearly, this has effected the perception of their relationship significantly with very few option to change their circumstances.

We, at ARTAAD Financial, advocate the planning for long-term care scenarios early. It is critical to know and understand the many variables that are connected to make an informed decision like:

• Is long-term care and same as assisted living
• What resource do I have that will provide long-term care support
• How much are long-term care services and how much do you anticipate they will be when I need them
• How many years will long-term care coverage last
• Can the coverage provide in-home care
• What does it cost to stay at a long-term care facility
• If I get hurt or sick at certain points in my life but recover, can I use the service then turn it off when I do not need it
• If I never use long-term care services, what happens to my premiums that I paid in

There are a host of other variables that need to be considered when determining which solution is best for you. When planning for retirement, most individuals focus on market volatility, inflation, or interest rate as variables that have the potential to deplete their wealth. However, the cost of long-term care has the potential to deplete wealth rapidly if the appropriate plans are not in place.

Our purpose is to find you appropriate solutions and implement them so that the latter stages of your physical health can be handled with the utmost dignity and comfort.