Long-term care planning is about choices and protecting your family and finances. Deanne Rosso and Gary Stoller explain what long-term care planning covers, why waiting can limit options, and the first conversation families should have to prepare for future care needs.Want to build this into your retirement plan? Visit elevate-wealth.com and click Let’s Talk. 🔗 Website: https://elevate-wealth.com 🔗 Facebook: / elevatewealthadvisory 🔗 Instagram: / elevatewealthadvisory Long-term care planning can feel uncomfortable, but it matters. Let's talk about it today on Elevate Wealth. Hey, everyone, I'm Deanne Rosso with Elevate Wealth Advisory, and I'm joined here today by our director of wealth advice, Gary Stoller. Hey there, Gary. Hello. Gary, when it comes to long-term care planning, I hear people say, "I'm just going to think about that or deal with it later." Do you find that's the case? Yes, all the time. You know, it's one of those topics that you may not need it. The the numbers actually are not in our favor, though. The majority of American seniors, about 70% actually do need some type of care before they pass away. Yeah. At some point, honestly, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, they're full of people who said that they would never go there. So, it's a need. And so, it is easy to kind of kick it down the road, but really it's about having choices and options if you get to that point. And, for most families, they really don't want to burden their children or burden any other family members at that point in life. Yeah. So, in simple terms, what is long-term care planning? Well, it's really thinking through and planning for the possibility I might need help at some point later if my health declines. Maybe activities, just normal activities of daily living, they're called. And that's not just a nursing home. Everyone kind of just they naturally think of a nursing home when they think long-term care. It could be care in your own home. It could be an assisted living facility. There's a lot of memory care now, but there are costs with all of these, and there can be some sticker shock. Sure. They can be kind of significant. So, it's kind of about figuring out how are we going to cover these costs, and like I said, you know, maintain my dignity and have a good experience if I need help rather than being caught off guard and having the whole family caught off guard. Sure. So, what's a good first step for someone who's never talked about long-term care planning before? Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I would say, just have the conversation. Just start the conversation with family, if you're married with your spouse with your partner, children and talk about, you know what? If I do need help at some point in my life, what do I want that to look like? How should we think about handling that? Let's evaluate some realistic costs that are going to be added to our cost of living, if you will, and then you want to build your financial plan to be able to accommodate basically paying those bills. So, now, that could be with assets you have. You could self-insure. There may be other assets or maybe equity, things like that, that could be used to fund that need, or there could be even long-term care insurance, different kinds of insurance. Maybe even a combination, a little bit of both. Absolutely. So start the conversation, right? And sometimes we find we're the ones that help start that conversation with our clients, right? As advisers, you know, really important to talk with your adviser, talk with your family about what you want. Start with the end in mind, right? What is it that you want to happen and then let's make that plan for it, right? Yes. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Gary, for those insights and for joining me today. And if you have questions about long-term care planning and what that looks like for you, we're here to help. Visit us at elevate-wealth.com and click "let's talk." We'll see you next time.
