My wife recently had her long term care insurance canceled due to a missed payment - thanks CNA! She is late 30s and in good health. She no longer works and can not piggy back off my companies LTC so I am wondering is it worth it to shop around individually for a plan or is it better to just save and invest the money? Thoughts? Ideas? Thanks all.

Disability insurance you mean?

No. Long term care. Basically a policy to cover nursing homes, in home health care and what not later in life.

Ok just clarifying. Seems a little early to buy at least based on norms.

I'll say that if I were looking to buy it today I'd not buy the traditional insurance. I'd look into hybrid policy like Lincoln Moneyguard.

Or really if you are on track to have a lot of money I'd just go ahead and buy a big second to die policy to leave money for the kids

Thanks for the quick advice. We are, I think, fairly well covered for life insurance. I'm only vaguely familiar with a 2nd to die policy so I'll look into that. No idea what a hybrid policy is but I'll research that as well.

My wife's concern is one or both of us end up in nursing homes or need long term in home health care and this policy would cover it. IMO we are looking at a comfy retirement and should be able to pay for any care we need out of pocket. Unfortunately, she had a close family member need long term care and it hurt the spouse financially and she is now concerned.

I won't say it's "too" early to buy LTC but it is early. I'd shore up her disability insurance for now and assuming she's still insurable in her early 50's consider purchasing it then.

She is a stay at home mom. Might return to the workforce in 5-8 year or maybe never. Is LTD even an option for her? Or needed? Sorry for my ignorance on these matters.

Even if you can self insure against it, it's still a solid buy. A healthy couple in their late 50's has a 65+% chance of needing the insurance for one of them. If they only needed it for a year they'd likely get their premiums back.

It becomes a miss small or miss big option for the wealthy. Buy the insurance and don't need it? They "only" paid 100k in premiums spread out over 25-30 years. Don't buy the insurance but end up in a long-ish claim situation? You're looking at 600k-1M of out of pocket care in future dollars. For those with plenty of retirement and the ability to self-insure, buying the insurance is the cheaper option (considering the odds and risk) by a mile.

There are some hybrid policies that can fill this gap as well...Im just talking about insuring against the possibility in general.

Guppy said:

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She is a stay at home mom. Might return to the workforce in 5-8 year or maybe never. Is LTD even an option for her? Or needed? Sorry for my ignorance on these matters.

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Yes stay at home moms can get disability insurance through several companies now. Not sure if it's needed for her...you'd need to look at your whole situation and consider the big picture. But yes it's available.

Don't apologize for the ignorance; we all have our areas of expertise. You came here asking questions, and nac and I are happy to help with answers if we can.

Insurance is certainly not my area of expertise so I'm grateful to you both. I'll start doing some research and talk it over with the wife. We are trying to get her policy reinstated but it seems like an impossible task. How stupid over a missed payment and what a waste of money!

Any companies or insurers you'd recommend?

Guppy said:

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Insurance is certainly not my area of expertise so I'm grateful to you both. I'll start doing some research and talk it over with the wife. We are trying to get her policy reinstated but it seems like an impossible task. How stupid over a missed payment and what a waste of money!

Any companies or insurers you'd recommend?

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For LTC or disability?

Both. Doesn't hurt to look into em. You mentioned you wouldn't do LTC until later in life. Would it make sense to purchase it now for better rates?

I did the math for several companies in my 30's and the premium didn't start going up on most policies until your early 40's...so little to no advantage to buying it before then other than to make sure you can get it before you have a health issue.

Mathematically the insurance company will collect roughly the same amount of money before you go on claim. They do this by getting some money from you early and investing it, or collecting the money later from you after you invested it. To pay the claim at age 80 they need the same amount of money whether you started paying them at age 40 or age 60.

In summary, it all works out about the same.

It was just insurance and they required a check every month. NO way to do online bill pay.

Stive - thanks. Might hold off then on LTC. She's is good health so no reason the.

Take a look at Standard and Principal. I don't think it's ever too early to buy once you have dependents.

I guess basically my thought is that by the time you are likely to go on claim for LTC (statistically) you will be able to self insure (assuming you will be a multimillionaire). I know I'm assuming that but since you are in your 30s and talking this way I will assume that.


So then you're just buying insurance to protect your children's inheritance I figure at that point. So why not just buy second to die and get a 2 million dollar death benefit for maybe 3-5 grand per year.

And you can have disability insurance in the mean time to protect against that to some degree today.

Just one mans .02 but I think the traditional LTC is a dying product. I haven't sold a policy in the 9 years I've been doing it for that very reason. And I think generally it's also suited for people with a net worth around 500k-1mm. The main benefit it offers is relatively low premiums (at least at the start) but you have risk of increasing premiums and risk that you get nothing if you don't go on claim.

I'd rather pay a higher premium (if leaving money for family or charity is important) and get a guaranteed death benefit for estate planning. And then focus my efforts on saving and investing to self insure against the LTC expenses.

From my experience with my mother, today's retirement/nursing homes run ~$4000/month. These rates continue to rise each year. Keep that in mind if you think you'll pay out of pocket. Her LTC policy was about $250/month when she cancelled it, about a year before she fell at her townhome and entered a retirement home. It would have paid about $2800/month of her cost which would be great to have now.