Do you have a plan for your long-term care when you become a senior? When the time comes and it finally becomes harder for you to perform daily activities on your own, it is important to know what you want to do. Will you move in with children or other relatives? Hire a caregiver to come to your home? Move to an assisted living facility? Go it alone for as long as possible? Whatever your decision it is important to understand the full physical, financial, and emotional impact on yourself and your loved ones.
Baygroup was helpful in our decision making for long term care insurance because Melissa Barnickel was open-minded and comfortable working with a gay couple. She was a good communicator - always responding to questions on email. She kept after us while this process stalled for a while over the summer. She offered us alternatives for levels of pay from $2,000 to $7,000 monthly benefits and offered more than one insurance company.
I’m delighted to recommend the great services of Melissa Barnickel and Baygroup Insurance. Melissa is proactive, practical, and wonderfully responsive. She held my hand during a complicated situation, graciously and promptly returning numerous phone calls and emails, and drawing on her contacts to get crucial information. Best experience I’ve ever had with an insurance broker!
I’m delighted to recommend the great services of Melissa Barnickel and Baygroup Insurance. Melissa is proactive, practical, and wonderfully responsive. She held my hand during a complicated situation, graciously and promptly returning numerous phone calls and emails, and drawing on her contacts to get crucial information. Best experience I’ve ever had with an insurance broker!
As you spend time with family members during this holiday season, you may want to consider: might they be easy prey to scammers and swindlers? If the answer is “yes” or even “maybe” or “I’m not sure,” please take a moment to consider these important points:
When someone needs long term care, a change in their abilities can happen quickly. Someone who for years has always written their own checks may, overnight, be unable to pay their own bills or coordinate the preparation of taxes. Anticipate this likely scenario.
For seniors who have been especially private about finances, this can be a difficult and delicate topic to bring up, but one way to approach it is to encourage them to introduce you to their attorney, their bank manager, their tax preparer. Realize that changes in mobility or cognition may make this difficult or impossible in the future.
We sing this – about “the olden days” – on New Years’ Eve.
However, in the world of long term care planning, honestly, there’s not too much to reminisce about. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Here’s the way I see it.
Old people need care. Sometimes extensive care (not to mention expensive care).
Unfortunately, either through denial or ignorance, few want to admit to this fact. They also don’t want to pay for the care…especially not in advance.
So, as the saying goes, Houston, we have a problem!
The prevailing wisdom is that long term care insurance claims don’t happen until well after traditional retirement age. Say, age 80+, or even 90+ if you’re lucky. And that’s true— usually. But let’s consider the exceptions. Imagine you’re 45, 55, or 65, and you just bought a long term care insurance policy.
I find that the greater a person’s understanding is about exactly what long term care insurance can and cannot do, the more likely they are to clearly see its benefits.
Long term care (LTC) insurance pays a monetary amount for covered care when the insured either needs assistance with defined activities of daily living and/or has met the policy’s definition of cognitive impairment.
I would not have expected what a huge help Melissa's work proved to be. How difficult could it be to enroll in Medicare?
But I was wrong. She became indispensable in navigating the myriad of unfamiliar details we faced.
The prevailing wisdom is that long term care insurance claims don’t happen until well after traditional retirement age. Say, age 80+, or even 90+ if you’re lucky. And that’s true— usually. But let’s consider the exceptions. Imagine you’re 45, 55, or 65, and you just bought a long term care insurance policy.