Preparing For Tomorrow podcast

Beth in Tampa, Florida asks another great two questions! She wants to know what are some critical or costly "items" that may not be covered by LTC insurance. Diane shares how LTC insurance works and what to pay attention to when planning and also when opening claims so you can be sure to get the most from your plan. Use the Genworth Cost Of Care site to find bot tody's costs and projected future c...

There are a lot of numbers in this eposide. I recommend you listen to it the first time all the way through and then listen again to grab the math. The younger we are when we plan, the less total premiums we'll pay over our lifetimes. And if we shorten the premium duration to 10 or 15 years, we can save significantly more while building a much stronger plan when we need it most. More importantly,...

This week, Diane shares how LTC insurance can help us to remain independent and maintain our freedoms. Eleanor Roosevelt said, "With freedom comes responsibility". When we have a plan for when life doesn't go as planned, we give ourselves permission to live out our retirement years the way we choose. We won't have to wonder if we have enough money set aside to pay for extended long term care needs...

Meet my client who was declined several years ago for LTC insurance. Learn what options she has today to protect herself, her family and her assets from the risk of needing long term care at home, in assisted living or wherever care is needed. Once a decline is in your history, it's important to know which companies are more likely to approve an application. Ask me, I can help you find answers. Th...

This episode was originally published on July 19, 2022, and we heard from the kids. What do they want to know about our LTC insurance plans? How will it help them if we have a plan to provide for our needs? It's important to include our family when planning for what could easily be the most fragile and most expensive part of our lives. Having a plan for when life doesn't go as planned shows our ki...

The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act was put into effect in 2020. It delays our RMDs on IRAs until age 72 (yay!), but it also requires most inherited IRAs to be fully liquidated within 10 years rather than allowing beneficiaries to stretch withdrawals over our own lifetimes. Listen and learn how LTC planning can leverage those distributions to create tax-free bene...

Kim in California wants to know how long premiums will need to be paid on a LTC policy. You decide that, based on what your income and asset levels are today and will be throughout retirement. Some plans use lifetime premiums, while others offer shortened pay and single deposit options (like getting a 15 year mortgage vs. a 30 year mortgage). Which is right for you? When designing a plan, it's imp...

This episode is from September, 2022, and shares some things to consider when kids aren't a part of our retirement equation. Topic to consider - Hope is not a plan. We hope we'll never need care. We hope that, if we do, that we have enough money to pay for it. What if we don't have a family to protect? Do we really need LTC insurance? Many people with no kids have had better opportunities to save...

This is a case study from 2022. My client Sandy doesn't know in which part of the country she plans to retire, so we designed a plan that will help her provide for herself in any of the regions she is considering. It's important to consider what life will be like in 20-30 years when we're planning for LTC needs. And it's important to research projected future costs of care to understand the real r...

This is one of my favorite past episodes. This is from January, 2022, and my friend that I share here is now paying $18,000/month for her mom to live in memory care. Mom is healthy, other than her mind being absent most of the time, so we have no idea how long she will live there. But, as of now, her kids are spending over $200,000 annually from her investments to pay for care. Losing their inheri...

This episode was originally published in June,2022, so some numbers are slightly outdated. With a long battle of dementia looming, Bonnie's family is pretty sure she doesn't have enough insurance to pay for as long as she needs. They know that she has at least 3 years of benefits, and that buys them the time they'll need to plan for a transition to Medicaid, if needed. They won't need to sell her...

This week, Diane shares three things we need to consider if we are designing a long term care plan with multiple policies purchased over multiple years. Age, health and insurance industry and company changes could cause us to pay a lot more for coverage later. Or we may end up not eligible to buy additional coverage when we want to. However, if we absolutely have to build our plan in pieces, and i...

Lately, we've been getting a lot of inquiries from adult children of parents who failed to plan for LTC needs. These people are disappointed that their parents either thought they wouldn't live this long, or if they did, they wouldn't need help living through each day. The kids are now considering that they may also live a long life and need help someday. Often, these kids want a quick quote for L...

Suze Orman talked about annuities on Sunday, and she brought so much valuable info to her listeners. You can listen and subscribe here - https://www.suzeorman.com/podcast In addition to fixed and indexed annuities to create a future stream of income, you may be able to use an annuity to leverage LTC costs. If you have that emergency fund that is turning into a long term care fund the older you get...

Jeremy in Minnesota asked Diane to explain the phrase "protect assets equal to benefits paid". This is referencing the federal LTC Partnership Protection Act, and Diane explains how this law works to protect the middle and upper middle class from financial destruction when an exhaustive extended care needs show up. Partnership protection is approved in 44 states. In this episode, Diane shares how...

This week is chock full of questions we need to be asking to make sure our LTC plan is really going to work. We say we want to stay home, but what are the deeper questions we need to address to be sure that will work? The 3 parts to a plan are 1) where do we want to live? 2) who do we want to have with us? and 3) how will we pay for this? We're digging deeper into what these questions and our answ...

Do you own a life insurance policy that has built cash value over the years, and now your need for that coverage has lessened as your net worth and liquid assets have grown? Listen and learn how you can 1035 exchange that plan for one that also includes LTC coverage. If you never need extended care, a death benefit goes back to your estate, and the premiums are guaranteed to never increase

This episod is from April 2022, and Aaron in Ohio was seeking tax deductions for his corporation. He brought me a quote to review, and we found that using the exact same premium amount, how three different tax deductions can be designed just by moving some variables. There are multiple ways to design a plan to create different results. When I work with my clients, I ask a lot of questions, and we...

As we are all working to file our business and personal income taxes by March or April, I thought I would bring this episode back as we are always seeking more tax deductions. LTC insurance may be tax deductible, depending on how you file your taxes - as an individual and as a business. This episode is from July, 2020, when our tax deadline was moved to July due to COVID. The numbers are from 2020...

BuddyIns is holding a webinar on March 23rd at 1 PM eastern to discuss this very topic with LTC guru Phyllis Shelton. Email me at diane@prepating4tomorrow.com, and I'll send you an invitation to register and attend. If you register and can't attend, a link will be sent to you to listen at your convenience. There are many ways to reply to this question, and I may end up replying again over the next...

This eposide from May, 2022 is chock full of statistics. When we're younger, it's more fun to use our money for travel, cars, and fun. We don't want to think about paying for care needs that could be decades away, but we need to plan early to get the best rates and to have a higher liklihood to be approved. The youngest person to ever file an LTC claim was 27. The longest claim to date has paid ov...

We are pausing the recordings for a little while to allow time to thoroughly review the content we've delivered over the last 3+ years (over 150 episodes). I'll be listening to all of our past recordings and organizing them to see more clearly what we may be missing and where we may be focusing too much. We'll continue to publish our favorite episodes weekly to continue to help you to learn, and I...

Over the last couple of months, I've been helping a women get her LTC claim approved so she won't have to face a rate increase that is scheduled in February 2023. She clearly needs help and can qualify for benefits, but she was using the wrong language. Listen to her story, and learn from her prior mistakes. What do you need to know? 1) Don't just accept what an agent tells you about the policy. I...

Too often, we go through the process to learn about LTC and LTC insurance, work though the costs and see how it can work to help us protect our family, savings and choices. Then we decide to wait to purchase a plan. Sometimes, the reason to wait is very valid - putting kids through school, just changed jobs, building a house, caring for a parent. Sometimes, when we wait, a health concern shows up...

We face natural consequences throughout our entire lives. From not getting up on time to go to school, all the way to not preparing for our last chapter of living here on earth, the consequences of poor decisions are always there. As adult children of parents who failed to plan, we need to decide if we're going to sacrifice our futures to pay for or provide care for our parents. When we are forced...