End of life care can cannibalize all the good investment and saving work that you have done over your lifetime.
One reason is that most people don’t plan for it: they just hope they won’t need care in a facility. Or they think family members will help them. Or they just say, if it comes to that, shoot me.
Long-term care facilities can cost from $7,500 to $15,000 a month, depending on where you live and the quality of the facility. That can eat up most any nest egg quickly.
Long-term care insurance can cost $723 to $1,590 a year for a healthy 55-year-old, according to an article on dailyfinance.com.
If you don’t have that, you may need to do some creative estate planning, according to the story.
It usually means getting rid of assets and that is controversial because it essentially cheats the government.
If you have to resort to it, it means you are going to leave nothing to your family, unless you bought a good life insurance policy many years earlier.
One strategy, the story says, is to obtain what is termed “asset based long term care” — an annuity that pays on a 3 to 1 ratio, for example.
If you have questions about estate planning, feel free to call us at (626) 696-3145 for a consultation.
