Many older Americans have been thinking about the concept of long-term care insurance recently and with good reason. Chances are good that you’ll become injured or sick at some point during your retirement and require extra support to pay for your medical bills. This is a service that can be especially valuable to long term care insurance policy holders. In the past, many of these policies were sold with one single premium, meaning a lump sum payment of up to $50,000 or $100,000 per individual. However, long term care insurance companies have evolved significantly to allow annual payments for this important protection. 

Since research shows that it’s approximately a 50% chance that a 65-year-old American will require some form of long-term care insurance in the future, you could be personally responsible for paying up to $140,000 if you don’t have this all-important long-term care insurance. However, the vast majority of US seniors have put off purchasing long term care insurance because they think they don’t need it or that it’s too expensive. Only 7.2 million people in the United States currently have long term care insurance.

Those who choose to skip it are taking a big risk in doing so. Do you have a plan for what will happen to your money if you were to suddenly need LTC? Would it harm the savings plan you have in place with your spouse? Then you need Medicaid planning.

It’s also important to remember that someone who faces challenges with long term care insurance might not only encounter these challenges in the concept of their retirement years. A person can sustain an injury that requires long term care rehabilitation at other ages in their life, such as a bicyclist who is struck in an accident and seriously hurt. Long term care insurance should form an important component of your personal estate planning responsibility.