Retirement – Ohio Long Term Care

Planning for retirement means more than just scheduling your free time and figuring out whether you’ll spend your days at the beach or in the city. As nice as it sounds, there is much more to retirement than lounging around without a care in the world.

Financial Planning

Planning for retirement involves a wide variety of working parts that come together to finely tune your financial plan and ensure it is working properly throughout all of your golden years. Long Term Care Insurance is one of the moving parts that you should consider if you are looking to preserve your assets and pass a legacy onto your family. Fortunately for Ohioans, there is a statewide program that helps you specifically plan for those costs.

Ohio Partnership for Long Term Care Insurance

The Ohio Partnership for Long Term Care Insurance helps individuals in Ohio prepare for the
expenses that long term care so often brings. Long term care can be wildly expensive, especially if you need facility care rather than home care, and if you haven’t developed a specific strategy to pay for those costs, you may be stuck spending all of your assets on that care. Long-term care is for individuals who need assistance with basic daily tasks such as dressing, bathing, and eating. Whether it is from recent surgery, a bad fall, or a chronic disease, long-term care is not an uncommon occurrence.

It is estimated that 70% of all Americans over the age of 65 will need long term care at some point in their lives. That is an extraordinarily high risk when thinking about the need for insurance, especially when compared to the risk of an automobile accident or a house fire, both of which have a risk of less than 1%, but both of which we all plan for diligently.

Planning for long term care makes financial sense in the context of retirement planning. Because care is expensive, and unfortunately, so few people are planning for care, it’s not uncommon for someone who needs care to turn to their loved one for care or be forced to spend down their assets to qualify for Medicaid. The Ohio Partnership for Long Term Care Insurance can help you avoid doing either of those.

How Does It Work?

The partnership program works like this: you purchase a qualifying Long Term Care Insurance policy in the state of Ohio and by doing so, you not only create a separate pool of wealth to pay for that care later down the road, but you also create a second safeguard for your finances. Should you happen to need care for longer than your policy period specifies, you will not have to spend down your assets in order to enroll in Medicaid, which is the standard procedure. The program exists to encourage Ohio residents to plan for the cost of long term care in order to help reduce the crippling burden on the state government, who, along with the federal government, currently picks up most of the tab for long term care expenses.

In order to obtain a qualifying policy, it’s best that you work with an independent Long Term Care Insurance agent. In order to be eligible for the partnership program, your insurance policy must contain the rider of Inflation Protection, which helps grow the value of your benefits to keep pace with inflation. This helps ensure that your policy won’t be worthless 20 or 30 years down the road when you actually need care.

Long Term Care Insurance can provide an invaluable benefit during retirement and waiting, or failing, to plan for the cost of long term care can quickly devastate your finances and leave you wondering where you went wrong. To learn more about the Ohio Partnership for Long Term Care Insurance, visit the state’s website here. You can learn just how much long term care costs in Ohio here.

Aging can be a wonderful thing. As we age, we gain knowledge, experience, and memories that help us make decisions throughout our life. We learn new things every year at work and in life, we experience the beautiful feeling of interacting with our family and seeing our grandchildren, and we make memories with the people that we love doing things we are passionate about.

Aging also brings with it some changes, some of them good and some of them not so good. The cost of health care in retirement is one of those changes that is not so good and that few people are prepared for when the bill arrives. Planning for these changes can help people gain peace of mind and feel secure in their financial choices as they age.

Health Care Isn’t Cheap

Getting older usually means some of your costs go down; you’re no longer paying for your children’s expenses, to commute to work everyday, or the cost of college. It’s a comforting thing to watch your bills decrease over time, but there is one bill that might increase more than you think.

An annual Fidelity study estimates that the average 65-year-old couple retiring in 2013 will need $220,000 to cover health care costs throughout retirement. In 2012, the estimate was $240,000. Most people greatly underestimate how much money they will need for health care expenses in retirement, which can lead to serious financial problems down the road. Fidelity also found that 48% of Americans think they will need just $50,000 for health care in retirement.

Plan for Your Future Health

It makes sense that our health care costs would rise as we age. Generally, people become less healthy as they age and more susceptible to conditions that can disable them or seriously restrict their activities, like a stroke or Alzheimer’s. Still, though, we tend to not think about that kind of thing until it’s right in front of our faces, or in the form of a bill in the mail. It’s not something most people want to think about, but avoiding the subject usually does more harm than good.

Planning for your future health involves more than just thinking about it; it involves taking action. Without a plan in place to help you pay for your health expenses down the line, you may find yourself spending your hard earned assets on the cost of health care. Not exactly the ideal spending plan. Long term care is an especially pricey area of health care that can quickly take a huge toll on your nest egg.

Long Term Care

Long term care involves care that is required for an extended period of time and is received at home, an assisted living facility, or in a nursing home. Though long term care isn’t only for the elderly, the majority of long term care patients are older than 65, which is why long term care planning is often something that is decided upon during retirement planning.

The cost of long term care in Ohio is lower than the national average, but can still cause sticker shock if you aren’t prepared. A home health aide in Columbus, Ohio costs an average of $44,615 annually, while a year in an assisted living facility costs $48,600. A private room in a Columbus nursing home costs almost double that at an average of $87,053.

Without a plan in place to address these costs, they can quickly eat up your retirement savings if you or your partner need care for any reason. Even just a few months of care can use up thousands of dollars and once the care is completed, you are back at square one, as financially vunerable as ever. Long Term Care Insurance can shield your assets and help you avoid this kind of financial snafu should you ever find yourself in need of care.

Category: Retirement

How Long Term Care Insurance Can Help Ohioans in Retirement