SENIOR LIVING: PREPARING FOR THE LONG TERM

November 2016

Writer / Janelle Morrison

The biggest concerns for people as they age tend to be related to remaining independent in one’s own home without intervention from others, maintaining good health and receiving adequate health care, and having adequate finances to pay for long term care needs, if necessary, without outliving personal assets and income.

Despite these concerns, preparing for long-term care is not high on most people’s to do list until it occurs at the most inopportune time and usually beyond anyone’s control. Preparedness is the key to be able to sufficiently plan for long-term care provisions without depleting one’s retirement savings.
Keely Butrum, a financial planner with Raymond James, emphasized the importance of planning early.

“The earlier you start planning, the better,” Butrum said. “More than 2/3 of people, who live to be age 65, need some kind of long-term care at some point in their adult life. A statistic showed that the average stay is three years. Depending on what level of care you are receiving, that could be $40,000 to
$100,000 a year for that kind of care and could easily eat up an entire retirement savings. Afterwards, you have two people trying to live out their lives on their remaining savings.”

She continued, “Traditional long-term care insurance was historically sold like car insurance where you would pay your bill every month from now until the end

of time and hopefully you would never need it. If you do, it is there. If not, there is no return of premium, no money to be returned just because you did not utilize it. More people are investing in asset based products where you can invest a lump sum of money or buy-in over a number of years and you can put it into a vehicle that you can take your money back out if you need it, without a specific reason. This also allows you to leave a death benefit to your heirs, tax-free, like life insurance if you don’t use it. That same vehicle will also provide you a LTC benefit that is 2 to 10 times the money that you put into in the front end. This is what more people are doing now and the earlier in life that you do that, the more coverage that you get for the same number of dollars.”

Assisted care facilities that offer long-term care services such as Zionsville Meadows, located in Zionsville, Indiana, can aid in providing their clients’ access to financial and legal professionals to help them understand and discover their benefits while admitted in its LTC facility.
Jeff Gronemeyer, Regional Director of Sales and Marketing, spoke about what makes their facilities unique amongst other assisted living communities.
Zionsville Meadows provides long term care information to prospects who come to investigate assisted living and skilled care (long-term care),” he explained. “We sit down with families look at what income situation they have and if they have any property assets. Depending on the amount of money that they

have available, we can make several recommendations to a variety of elder care attorneys, as well as, other services that can support seniors looking to live in assisted living communities. This includes the VA Aid and Attendance Benefit program which is available to any veteran who served one day during war time and were on active duty during a declared period of war. Those initially are the things that most of our families will investigate. We also help our families to investigate any LTC health policy benefits that they may have. We can also assist with them transferring their whole life policies into convertible policies that they can use for assisted living.”

The leadership and staff at Zionsville Meadows are experts at senior healthcare and skilled nursing who are not just doing a job, but following a calling. They pride themselves on helping individuals and families with finding answers and providing solutions and peace of mind. In fact, they become an extension of your family. Zionsville Meadows offers a full continuum of senior housing and healthcare solutions, including assisted living and independent living apartments, designed to accommodate a diversity of lifestyle choices and healthcare needs.

Zionsville Meadows 675 South Ford Rd., Zionsville, IN 46077
Phone: 317-942-0738
www.ascseniorcare.com/location/zionsville-meadows

Keely Butrum 317-885-0114
[email protected]
www.Indianawealthadvisor.com