November is Long-Term Care Awareness Month. If you’re going to educate your clients on LTC insurance and highlight this service, you too should know the basics (or at least brush up on your knowledge) and learn of its importance.
Retirement funds pay for your client's daily living expenses and extras during their non-working years. Life insurance covers their beneficiaries in case your client dies. But what about the less talked about, less thought about stage when your client is alive, but needs help caring for themselves? They surely don’t want to spend their retirement on costly assisted care, do they?
Long-term care is separate from retirement in that it specifically addresses the expenses brought on by in-home care, assisted living, or skilled nursing, leaving retirement funds for things like paying bills, spoiling grandchildren, or splurging on ourselves while we can.
Look, none of us know how long we’re going to live. Likewise, it’s difficult to predict if we’ll need assistance during the latter years of our lives.
Hence, long-term care insurance is so important.
Regular health coverage helps pay for doctor visits, medication, preventative treatment, or care for when accidents occur. Long-term care is for the client who wishes to maintain their way of life, but can’t quite do it on their own anymore for one health reason or another. Think retirement will be enough? It's rare to save enough to be able to afford daily living and long-term care. But they have multiple incomes! A family can save and plan all they want, but when a spouse unexpectedly passes away, the plans can change. That second income that was supposed to pay for one of the couple's need for long-term care might have to go to bills or the kids.
Another major benefit of long-term care insurance is in its assurance that one will receive professional care. No one wants to be a burden on their friends and family. Besides, the care from skilled professionals will be much more advanced. Unfortunately, it’ll be much more expensive without LTC insurance.
LTC insurance provides assistance with activities of daily living such as bathing, getting dressed, eating. It also covers instrumental activities of daily living such as cleaning the house, managing bank accounts, taking medication, shopping, caring for pets, and more.
It is important to discuss long-term care with your clients simply as a preventative measure.
Again, there’s no telling who will need assistance and who will live a long, independent life. We can use predictive tools all we want, but they will never be 100 percent accurate. Your clients may be forced to need care due to rehabilitation from an injury or illness, a terminal or chronic medical condition, disability, or dementia. In fact, it is estimated that somewhere between 60-70 percentof individuals will need long-term care in their lifetime.
Call us today at (800) 823-4852 to learn more about LTC insurance.
