Everybody has different priorities -- my sister and her husband went for years without insurance, they thought they were healthy, didn't need it,it was too expensive for them as small business owners, yet they owned their own home. They ended up needing it as most of us do (hysterectomy, knee surgery, pneumonia) and had to take out second mortgage and loans etc to pay off the medical bills. A lot of people are in denial and think that nothing bad healthwise will ever happen to them and they're willing to take that risk.

First of all, my mortgage is cheaper than the rent of the surrounding apartment complexes and it's 3 or 4 times the size of an apartment. At least the decent ones, even for a one bedroom. Renting is a waste of money so you do it for as long as you have to to save up for your d/p and then get the heck out of there. Second of all, it boils down to living within one's means. One should live in a house that's in the appropriate price range to cover their expenses including health insurance. If one lives in an overpriced market like Florida and cannot cover their expenses on their salary then they should move someplace else where they can and have a better quality of life.

It's a different paradigm now than it was for our parents. The promise of a monthly company pension and retirement medical benefits is now available only to a few (my DH is fortunately one of them). Some Boomers have saved a good sum of money, but fully 25% of Boomers have NO savings worth reporting; e.g., less than $5,000.

What is going to trip up a lot of people is the cost of long term care. In the 1950's people lived an average of only 7 years past the mandatory age 65 retirement/Medicare.

Now? If a couple retires in good health at age 65, the age for the SECOND spouse to die is currently age 92, and becoming longer every year. This means your retirement money must last much, much longer than our parents, and we, ever thought necessary.

So this rapid increase in improved mortality, along with the decline in pension benefits, means that few of us have planned properly for the cost of senior care for our parents and ourselves.

Medicare is in worse financial shape than Social Security (SS really isn't in that bad shape, it would take a few relatively simple changes to fix it). This means a future of increasing costs (to the users) and restricted benefits. Medicare does not pay for long term care or at-home services at all, except in very limited instances and only for restricted time periods.

The conventional "wisdom" of waiting to purchase LTC insurance at retirement age doesn't work for many people. They are too sick or too poor to qualify for affordable LTC policies at that point. Most people prefer to stay in their own homes as long as possible, but find they are not able to without some sort of in-home care. But you need the liquidity (savings) to afford that cost.

My DH and I are fortunate to have full retirement medical benefits at a reasonable cost, as well as LTC policies we obtained when we were younger and healthier; e.g., before the age of 50. Our cost for our two LTC policies is less than $2K per year. Neither one of us would qualify for such preferred rates any longer -- if we applied now we would be lucky to find a joint policy costing less than $6K/yr.

Since we live in a very expensive labor area, we consider the cost of the LTC insurance minimal, even added up over time. Our policy currently pays $4500/mo (each person) towards nursing/convalescent facilities and $2250/mo for in home care. It has inflation protection so will continue to rise in benefit amount by 5% each year. This has given us the peace of mind about protecting each other from financial stress.

We must remember that many of our financial values come from our parents and grandparents. But the world has changed dramatically. Yet many of us have failed to come to grips with the fact that living longer means a greater total financial outlay on our part. When a basic Blue Cross health policy, nowhere near as comprehensive as what my DH & I currently enjoy, costs $600/mo for a 44 yr old, it is not hard to understand how daunting such extra costs are. People talk about the freedom of entrepeneurship but forget that comes at a high benefits cost.

I've known many a corporate executive, accustomed to excellent large-company benefits, be staggered at the cost of private insurance for health, dental and life insurance when they terminate and go out on their own. A good health policy for a family with children is going to cost you well over $1K a month, so with co-pays and other non-included items, that's a lot of money no matter how much salary you are accustomed to making. One senior executive told me he was going to end up paying $5K/month to replace all the company benefits he was losing by resigning.

It's disgraceful that in a country the size of ours with the educational structure we have in place, that we don't even teach our children how to balance a checkbook, let alone manage their financial, legal and health affairs.

Here in Portland, it makes sense to rent. You can rent a nice house for $1500/mo where it will be over $2k for a mortgage. If you can use your money wisely elsewhere it doesn't "always" make senses to buy. That said, I am a nester and want my own house so am planning to buy something asap anyway! :) And I have health insurance, I would rent and buy health insurance if I had to pick I suppose. But I agree, I rarely have needed my insurance so it would be easy to convince myself to do otherwise.

jkom51, I've seen really mixed reviews on the value of purchasing LTC insurance. Most people only need nursing care (as opposed to something like assisted living, which is much less expensive) for less than 2 years. That is, when they have health problems serious enough to require nursing care, they usually don't live longer than that (unless they have a long-term disease like Alzheimer's). Paying hefty premiums for 20 or 30 years just to pay for a couple of years of nursing care might not make sense for some people, especially those with a good-sized net worth.

The other thing I've read is that the longevity of the insurance companies offering this type of insurance could be a question mark. It's such a new type of insurance that whether it works as advertised has not been widely tested.

Also, I don't know where you live, but around here full nursing care costs around $6,000 per month at a minimum, not including medications. So a policy like yours would only cover about 75% of the cost at this time.

An insurance company came to the place I work and was offering LTC insurance, and it was pretty expensive; in addition, the salesperson was not very responsive to my questions but was quite pushy. I did a little research on it, and came to the conclusion that it was okay to take a pass on it for now. I guess time will tell if that was the right decision. DH and I are 47 and 49, respectively, and we don't have children.

But as for people who buy a house before they buy some type of health insurance: that is foolish in today's economy, IMO.

The trouble with LTC insurance is that it is like health or auto insurance - carriers enter the market, and some of them price poorly and end up leaving the market. A good carrier may close a book of business (e.g., stop selling a particular type of policy) and come out with a slightly different policy calculated to provide a better profit margin or improved mortality. This is the way insurance works, it's just good business to them.

LTC is not a new product at all. Met Life has been selling LTC insurance for 25 years. Lincoln Benefit (I think I accidentally listed it above as Lincoln National, which is a different company) has a huge block of LTC business and for many years was the low-cost carrier. They are owned by Allstate and are in no danger of going under. They closed their current book of business to bring out a completely new LTC product, one of the new hybrid LTC/annuity policies. None of their existing policyholders will see any raise in premiums or adjustment to the terms of their current policies; the "book" is merely closed for new business. That's how a GOOD carrier works, as opposed to a bad one. Where do you find a good carrier? That's the difficulty, you need to find a good agent, not just a "friend who works in the insurance business." Hard to find, just like trying to find a good car mechanic, LOL!

Nursing homes around here vary from $3500 to $6000 month. Even if our policy does not cover all the costs, a drain of $1000/mo is a lot better than $72,000 per year, I'm sure you'd agree.

The reason I don't rely on the statistic about nursing home care only being needed for an average of 2 years is that as the Boomer population ages, I believe that length of stay average will rise rapidly. And in fact, the largest growing age group in the US is the group over age 80.

Since our policy pays for at home care as well as convalescent or nursing care, we feel we have done what we can to MINIMIZE risk. You cannot eliminate all risk; it's impossible.

A recent article in the WSJournal calculated that someone with a net worth of at least $5M wouldn't need LTC insurance. Remember that these days, being worth $1M or $2M is so commonplace that the government statistics don't even track it any longer; the bar is now at $100M+. There is no way my DH and I could afford long-term care without insurance. Even though our net worth is well over $1M we simply don't have that kind of liquidity without having to sell the house. My DH had a minor stroke at 50 -- not only is he virtually uninsurable now, but his mortality got halved right there. His chances of being disabled as he ages are considerably higher. Had we waited to obtain LTC insurance for even a few years, we would never have been able to afford it even if we could have found a carrier willing to write a policy on him.

I agree that not having health insurance is foolish; on the other hand, if you can stagger along until age 65 (and assuming that somewhere along the line your employer or spouse's employer paid the Medicare A costs) a Medigap policy with zero-doughnut drug benefit is available at a relatively reasonable cost, certainly a lot less than the $900/mo cost (for an individual; $1200/mo for a couple) for my husband's current employer HMO plan.

But it is almost a certainty that somewhere down the line, if you and/or your spouse live long enough, one of you will need LTC. And right now, nobody will pay for that except you. With all the disadvantages of private insurance, the fact remains, waiting for the government to take care of your LTC needs is a very dicey proposition indeed.

What I point out to most younger people I know is that if they are going to buy a home and have children, they really need term life insurance. Nowadays with most couples dependent upon two incomes to make it, it is disastrous to consider burdening your lives with debt and obligations without buying life insurance. As mortality has improved, the premiums for term life have dropped substantially in the last couple of years. $40/mo will buy a $500K level premium term for 20 years on a 40-yr old in good health.

When I worked at a financial planner's office for a while, it was interesting to see that there were quite a few clients who were widows, from ages 50-75. Their major assets were the home and insurance proceeds. Without the latter, some of them would have been in serious financial difficulties.

My apologies for seeming to get OT here, but my point is that if you are going to own a home, there is not just health insurance but other insurance issues which are just as important for long term financial planning. To ignore them is being penny-wise and possibly pound-foolish. Thinking that "the odds are it won't happen to me" is taking a big risk. Nothing wrong with that, but I often wonder why people are willing to take such huge risks with their personal retirement finances when they are so often vociferous in proclaiming they want minimal risk when investing in the stock market.