When you find yourself beginning to research whether you should buy long term care insurance, keep in mind that prices will vary significantly from company to company based on differing actuarial tables that each company has from one another.  For example, there are several companies that place a much higher premium on the popular “unlimited or lifetime benefit period“, or one company may consider you a non-smoker after 12 months whereas some might need five years.  The various underwriting rules that each company has can potentially hurt your chance of getting the best deal if you just look at 1 or two long term care insurance providers.  If you know this bit of info and compare prices with 5 or so carriers, it can save you thousands of dollars over the life of your policy simply by doing a bit of digging.

Long term care insurance is not a cheap insurance and there is that chance you might never even use the policy, but at the same time there is that huge looming LTC risk that could wipe out your life’s savings in just a few years.  One cost savings strategy is to buy a smaller policy maybe for 3 years as opposed to the unlimited and that way you can find the balance between insurance and investing.  As one of the two founders of LTCtree I have personally trained our team to really dig in with our clients by discussing things like when their mortgage will be paid off, how much debt the client has, how much pension and social security income they might be able to chip is to pay for care.  Basic financial planning tips such as those if explained to the client can help keep from buying too much long term care insurance coverage and save you money.

One last thing to keep in mind is after seeing huge financial companies utterly collapse during this past economic tsunami the quality of the company you choose is becoming more and more important to the people we speak to.  When buying long term care insurance be sure to ask for the current financial ratings for the long term care insurance companies you are considering.  We provide the most current long term care insurance ratings, reviews and costs between the different companies so if you would like to learn more about if long term care insurance is a good fit than simply fill in this form and we will mail you your quotes today.  Thanks for reading today’s blog….we really appreciate it.