What If You Can’t Get Long-Term Care Insurance?

Everyone has heard laconic pieces of estate planning advice, but which estate planning aphorisms you have heard depends on your income level. If you are so filthy rich that you euphemistically refer to yourself as “affluent,” then you have probably heard that you should only spend three percent of your savings per year, because rich people like you tend to retire early and live to an advanced age, so you will be retired a long time. If you are middle class, the proverbial estate planning advice centers on passing your modest assets to the next generation while you are still alive; if you can’t build generational wealth, you can at least spend your chump change in pursuit of family togetherness. If you have never owned a home or had a savings account balance of more than four digits, then you will likely retire when and because you are no longer healthy enough to work and enter a nursing home as a Medicaid beneficiary, in which case the best advice is, “Get on Nurse Bronwyn’s good side. Her sister works at Publix, and she might bring you some surplus leaf cookies if you’re lucky.” No matter your income level, everyone must consider the costs of long-term care. For help strategizing about the most affordable ways to pay for long-term care, contact an Orlando estate planning lawyer.

What’s So Great About Long-Term Care Insurance?

If you want to live in an assisted living facility in the future, your choices are to sell your house and pay for assisted living with the proceeds of the sale, or else buy long-term care insurance. Long-term care insurance is the more financially advantageous option, because if you own a house, you can keep it even after you move to assisted living, and if you don’t, you may still be able to afford long-term care insurance.

The trouble is that long-term care insurance is only affordable, and in some cases is only available at all, if you buy it long before you need it. If you buy a long-term care insurance policy when you are 50 and enter an assisted living facility when you are 75, the policy will still pay for itself quickly. The amount you spend on premiums in a year is less than a month’s rent in an assisted living facility.

Affordable Alternatives to Long-Term Care Insurance

If you missed the boat on buying a long-term care insurance policy, you can still buy insurance policies that will offset the costs of long-term care. Whole life insurance and hybrid life insurance both include long-term care benefits. Besides insurance policies, you can buy an annuity and use the payout to pay for long-term care.

Contact Gierach and Gierach About Estate Planning for the 99 Percent

An estate planning lawyer can help you pay for long-term care if you own no valuable assets except your house, or even if you do not own that.  Contact Gierach and Gierach, P.A. in Orlando, Florida to discuss your case.

Source:

cnbc.com/2025/05/17/why-long-term-care-costs-can-be-a-huge-problem.html