Page 37 - Growing Old Without a Plan for Long Term Care is not for Sissies_Neat

Can I “Do it Myself”? 19 Chapter 3 Can I “Do it Myself”? n Chapter 1 we talked about the three options for paying for Iextended care; pay for it yourself, rely on the government to pay for it or purchase Long Term Care Insurance. In Chapter 2 we skipped ahead to option 2, Medicaid. Now let’s go back to option 1, paying for your care yourself. Is this a viable option? For many people it is possible to plan ahead to pay for their care without relying on Medicaid or pur- chasing a Long Term Care Insurance policy. For obvious reasons this is primarily for people who have signifcant assets that can be easily liquidated or have suffcient income that will be continued into retirement. Many people call this self-insuring but since insurance by def- nition is a sharing of risk with others, planning to pay for your care yourself is defnitely not insurance since you are taking all the risk yourself. So for our discussion, we’ll call it self-fund. So, what do I mean by signifcant assets or suffcient income? Well, if you are thinking about self-funding your long term care needs, you must frst decide what amount of assets or income is necessary. Here are some questions to ask yourself. When will you frst need care? Sixty fve? Seventy fve? Eighty fve? Do you want to assume a need for limited home health care