"Kinless" seniors

06 December 2022, 05:07 PM

Nina

One option I haven't seen here (or have missed) is the option of purchasing long-term health care insurance. You have to be generally healthy in the first place, and the younger the better. You also need a significant nest egg of retirement that you don't anticipate needing to tap into.

But for those of you where that might apply, the general idea in many of them is that if you are approved, you give the insurance company a large chunk of money (like $100K or so). If you need long-term care for any reason, the insurance company pays out. If you don't need it, the $100K is returned to your estate (undoubtedly less some fees). It's not ideal as it is really for a niche market, but if it fits you it might be a great option.

06 December 2022, 09:34 PM

piqué

long term care insurance doesn't make sense for most people. you have to buy it in your 50s, and you have to be certain you will be able to keep paying the premiums until you need long-term care, and the premiums do go up a lot as you age.

i looked into it pretty thoroughly when i turned 50 and it just didn't pencil out.

06 December 2022, 10:45 PM

Amanda

quote:
Originally posted by piqué:
long term care insurance doesn't make sense for most people. you have to buy it in your 50s, and you have to be certain you will be able to keep paying the premiums until you need long-term care, and the premiums do go up a lot as you age.

i looked into it pretty thoroughly when i turned 50 and it just didn't pencil out.

I looked into it too, and when you figure the cost outlay against the amount of time the average person uses it (i.e., life expectancy) it REALLY doesn't pay the (average) consumer.

In fact, some policies (quite a few, I think) only pay for a set number of years anyhow and then even the centenarians lose out.

The insurers sure don't have a problem making a profit! I think they're relying on the panic factor among the aging population, much promoted by them.

If one has the money to pay the premiums for the expectable period, you're way ahead self-insuring. And if you can't afford that (including how long you live) well, it's no worse than it would have been with paid insurance.

07 December 2022, 11:50 PM

jon-nyc

In fairness, any insurance product has to "not pencil out" for the *average* consumer else the company goes bust and screws all the people still depending on it. That doesn't *per se* mean it's a bad deal for any particular customer.

My maternal grandfather was in an assisted living home for almost exactly 5 years - and his long term care insurance covered 5 years. He died a week before it ran out.

I've thought about the original topic a great deal. Not as regards myself (my girlfriend is a decade younger than me and I have a son and poor life expectancy and financial security etc etc). But it's a big problem for society. My oldest sister is childless, though she has a niece and a nephew (boy-nyc).

08 December 2022, 09:31 AM

wtg

My mom had a LTC policy for a couple of years and then dropped it. Good decision on her part. She did better banking the premium and investing it herself.

So many companies have gone out of the LTC insurance biz.

quote:
For years, long-term care insurance entailed paying an annual premium in return for financial assistance if you ever needed help with day-to-day activities such as bathing, dressing and eating meals. Typical terms today include a daily benefit of $160 for nursing home coverage, a waiting period of about three months before insurance kicks in and a maximum of three years’ worth of coverage.

But these stand-alone LTC policies have had a troubled history of premium spikes and insurer losses, thanks in part to faulty forecasts by insurers of the amount of care they’d be on the hook for. Sales have fallen sharply. While more than 100 insurers sold policies in the 1990s, now fewer than 15 do. “This is a classic story of market failure,” says Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, and the author of Caring for Our Parents. “No one wants to buy insurance, and no one wants to sell it.”

I think this is the model that NIna's talking about.

quote:
As traditional LTC insurance sputters, another policy is taking off: whole life insurance that you can draw from for long-term care. Unlike the older variety of LTC insurance, these “hybrid” policies will return money to your heirs even if you don’t end up needing long-term care. You don’t run traditional policies’ risk of a rate hike, because you lock in your premium upfront. If you’re older or have health problems, you may be more likely to qualify, says Stephen Forman, senior vice president of Long Term Care Associates, an insurance agency in Bellevue, Wash.

https://www.aarp.org/caregivin...re-insurance-fd.html

08 December 2022, 09:34 AM

wtg

There are good places for seniors to live, but there are also a significant problems facing the industry.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-de...-reforms/8318780001/

As good as the place where my Mom lived was, I saw them fighting rising costs and difficulty in finding qualified staff. Staff were assigned more residents to care for; the quality of care was slowly chipped away. That was four or five years ago; I can only imagine the challenges they face.

08 December 2022, 09:39 AM

Doug

I’m not a kin-less senior. I’m more of a “far-kin” senior? My closest offspring is more than 500 miles away, and my oldest is in Europe. The issue I think of is that I don’t know anybody in the state of Nevada that I’m close enough to to give a house key to. I think of needing to transition to a more communal living environment one of these days, but also want to put it off as long as possible.

08 December 2022, 03:57 PM

piqué

quote:
Originally posted by Doug:
I’m not a kin-less senior. I’m more of a “far-kin” senior? My closest offspring is more than 500 miles away, and my oldest is in Europe. The issue I think of is that I don’t know anybody in the state of Nevada that I’m close enough to to give a house key to. I think of needing to transition to a more communal living environment one of these days, but also want to put it off as long as possible.

don't you have neighbors? why not host a potluck for the neighbors and get to know some of them. We could not manage without ours.

08 December 2022, 08:49 PM

Nina

quote:
Originally posted by piqué:
long term care insurance doesn't make sense for most people. you have to buy it in your 50s, and you have to be certain you will be able to keep paying the premiums until you need long-term care, and the premiums do go up a lot as you age.

We're talking about different plans. Mr. Nina enrolled in his mid 60s. It's a flat rate (that's why you need the chunk of money up front). There are no premiums. You just pay up, with the benefit that if you don't use the benefit, the money returns to your estate.

Edit: I see wtg added some info up above.