Three thousand a month is about right for private nursing home care--or was. Some of the upscale places can cost even more. If you can afford the insurance--it makes good sense--if not you may want to consider other alternatives. A family member, in Louisiana, now deceased, gave away his property--everything--to the kids and retained usufruct until his death. That solved part of the problem of worrying about nursing home expense to the extent of his possibly losing the results of a lifetime of work--if leaving it to your heirs is what you want to do. I believe at the time that the exclusion period was six months, i.o.w. the property had to have been out of his ownership for at least six months or they could go back and reclaim it. That period of time may have changed. Only a good lawyer is going to know for certain. Cash is a different ballgame altogether. Single premium life insurance policies can sometimes provide a means of transferring any cash that isn't deemed necessary to maintain a lifestyle--if leaving it to your heirs is what you want to do. If there's a sizeable amount of cash involved then you can use this as leverage to insure that those gaining the real property "behave" since the beneficiary can be changed up until practically the moment of death. Talk to a financial planner (a CPA with experience in the field) and a lawyer.

Yes, but his information is accurate, so at least it lets Mary know a little bit more as she continues her research. I agree Mark has breached the terms of posting here, but sooner or later Mary's got to talk to an agent or broker to get some idea of whether she even qualifies for an LTC policy, aside from type and price. One can only go so far in continuing to post discussion threads. The trouble with LTC is that people talk about it and talk about it, but very few people actually do it. When people talk about financial planning, this is why I keep insisting that it has very little to do with ROI. True financial planning is mitigating your personal risks against not achieving the retirement lifestyle you want to have. If your LTC risk is high, as ours was, and you don't take steps to mitigate it, your financial planning was and is, inadequate. If you have a high risk of needing help with LTC and haven't budgeted properly for it - whether self-insuring or buying some type of LTC insurance - you are playing dice with your money and possibly involving some risk to those who would need to help take care of you. Mary's got the right idea - you want to deal with a company that is solid and reliable - but she's participated in many LTC discussions over the past four years, and still has yet to 'pull the trigger.' LTC insurance just keeps getting more expensive, and if one waits too long, sometimes the decision gets taken away, by a health issue that precludes getting any affordable LTC policy of any type. I have a sense of urgency about it, because I personally have friends/family who were offered LTC insurance in the last ten years and turned it down, and now that they're closer to retirement, honestly admit they regret not buying it. Now they're terrified, and rightly so...but it's too late for them. They're medically rateable, and can no longer afford it.

I bought my life policy eon ago at a very young ago. Dunno what you guys are paying, but I'm borderline 3K yearly on a var life policy. As I ponder and look back, I'm think *term* may be more suited for my lifestyle. Just curious as everyone has a opinion or another re: life insurance.

Hi Moni, Whole life covers one for the rest of one's life ... and, as they say, builds cash value. But the cash value relates to the lower price of insuring one while young, with the actual annual costs rising as one ages, resulting in the cash value decreasing as one gets old. One can borrow against the cash value, resulting in a cost for interest. It is my understanding that the cash value disappears when one dies: one then gets only the death benefit that was guaranteed. You can have the cash value, or the death benefit ... but not both. Term insurance covers the life insured for a specified number of years, e.g. 10 years, 20 years, etc., usually for the full face value, but I think that, though seldom used, decreasing term is available, where the payout rate diminishes as the years in that contract period go by. As one ages, the possibility of one's dying during the period of the next term increases, so the price quoted rises, very substantially as one ages. It becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to initiate any policy for a person over age 80. As Iva Mae says, in Canada "Term to 100" is available, to cover one until age 100. It may cover one beyond that, but I suspect that the coverage dies on one's 100th birthday: if it's claimed that such isn't so, I'd want it in writing. Ordinarily, over one's lifetime, a fanily's need for insurance decreases, being for a large amount when young, if there's a family, to pay off mortgage (and I don't like insurance just to cover mortgage), and provide the surviving spouse and small children with their needs until they become independent, probably including at least part of the cost of advanced education. As one ages, the need reduces, so, while the premiums for a specified amount of term insurance increases, the amount that the family needs to carry reduces, thus they can continue to pay less for term than for whole life with the difference available for investment. The idea then is that the amount of one's invested asset increases over the years, thus reducing the amount needed to support the family's needs. The goal is to have enough assets built up over the years to be able to self-finance, thus being able to do without term insurance late in life, when it becomes very expensive. Thus, we often hear the saying, "Buy term (when young) and invest the difference (between the cost of whole life that stays constant through the years and term, which increases as each term expires). ole joyful