Key Point – Tax avoidance does not equate to a reduced need for legacy planning to transfer wealth for non-taxable reasons.

You still need to be educated on issues that could distress the financial security provided by the proceeds of your life insurance policy. Beyond estate taxes, there is the potential for probate, gift taxes, financial mismanagement, and misuse.  Proper legacy planning is necessary to help avoid these threats.

Why and How much life insurance should you own?

If you have any concern that your entire estate will eventually exceed the current exemption limits, either single or married, than you should speak with a Tax Free Retirement Specialist to help with legacy planning to determine how much life insurance you should have.  Your beneficiaries can then pay the federal estate tax from the life insurance benefits without having to sell any of the estate assets.  Without the life insurance proceeds, they might have to sell estate assets most likely triggering capital gains tax on top of the estate tax.  You see, when you pass away, the Federal government is going to try and get as much money as they can.  It’s your responsibility with legacy planning to use the appropriate tax advantaged tools to protect as much of your wealth and pass it along to the next generation or a charity of your choice.

What type of life insurance?

Indexed universal life insurance will appeal to most people because of the ability to provide higher interest crediting strategies in the current low interest rate environment.  The internal rate of return of life insurance at life expectancy is now superior to returns offered by alternative fixed income vehicles – a result of life insurance’s tax advantaged status.  Because of low interest rates and the almost guaranteed fact that taxes will eventually rise, insurance products that offer tax-deferral are more beneficial to consumers today.

Who should own the life insurance policy?

If you don’t own it yourself, there are three practical options for the ownership of your life insurance.  We discuss the owner as being the beneficiary to prevent a taxable event.  Because if the owner, the beneficiary, and insured are all different people it becomes taxable.

• Your spouse as owner and beneficiary:

The concern here is not that they receives the life insurance proceeds, but what happens when they eventually passes away.  The original proceeds of your life insurance policy may be subject to estate taxes and perhaps probate administration when they eventually die. In addition they will be responsible for investing the proceeds of your policy. This can be quite an emotional burden on a spouse not prepared or equipped to handle financial decisions making.

• Your child as owner and beneficiary:

If the child is the owner, then the child is responsible for paying the premiums (unless the policy is a single premium policy).  Make sure they are capable of this responsibility because you do not want the policy to lapse because of an error. Your child also will be the legal owner of the policy proceeds.  Make sure the life insurance policy has enough proceeds to allow them to pay the estate to settle taxes, fees, and other expenses.

• An irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT):

This may be the better choice for ownership as long as the Trust is not the beneficiary of the life insurance policy.   If the ILIT is the beneficiary of your life insurance, the proceeds may be included in your estate and become taxable.  The ILIT should only be the owner with the beneficiary usually being your children, grandchildren, or a charity.  This way the proceeds of your life insurance pass outside of your estate and are not taxable in most cases.  An ILIT can help avoid threats to your policy’s proceeds.  Because the designated trustee must manage the ILIT for your benefit, it helps ensure the availability of liquid funds when they are most needed.  The use of an irrevocable life insurance Trust can provide an opportunity for families to utilize the benefits of their life insurance to pay estate and other expenses as needed.

A few other points about an ILIT

Once created properly by an attorney, the trust is irrevocable and cannot be changed.  The insured person may not retain the right to revoke, alter, amend, transfer, or terminate the Trust, meaning they can’t even change beneficiaries.  The insured must be totally and completely economically disassociated from the ILIT. 

The best time to create an ILIT is before the life insurance policy is bought, and then when the life insurance application is taken, the owner of the policy is designated as the irrevocable life insurance Trust. Also, make sure you are insurable so you don’t waste the cost of creating an ILIT. 

To find a local Tax Free Retirement Specialist in your click here.

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

Most people are often unclear about this complicated, yet simple question. A Will is a legal document that sets forth your wishes regarding the distribution of your property and the care of your minor children.  Life insurance is a legal contract between you and the life insurance company who issued the policy.  The simple answer to this question is that your beneficiary designation on your life insurance policy is where the life insurance benefit proceeds will be distributed.  It doesn’t matter if you have made different arrangements in your will to split it differently, the will will not be followed for that.  Your life insurance contract is a stronger legal document and under normal circumstances supersedes your Will every time.

Even the beneficiary designation on your 401k, IRA, and annuity contracts you own are not subject to your WILL.  When you die, these policies are going to transfer to whomever you have listed as the legal beneficiary. 

When was the last time you updated your life insurance beneficiaries?  Are they all still alive?  Have you remarried and forgotten to change the beneficiary to your new spouse?  Did you have children from both marriages, if so how are you going to deal with that?  What about the grandchildren. 

By now you can see that it is vital to give adequate thought into who the primary, contingent and even tertiary beneficiaries should be.  By assigning the proper beneficiary designations you will spare your family many complications and frustrations at your death, and also save lots of time and potential taxes and administrative costs if probate is needed.

When deciding about life insurance beneficiaries, it is important to have contingent and tertiary beneficiaries in case your primary beneficiary predeceases you. If you want your life insurance benefits to go directly to children (especially children from a prior marriage) upon death, then you must name them as a primary beneficiary or a Trust for them. 

Speak with a qualified lawyer before naming minor children, without a Trust, as primary beneficiaries.  If not done correctly the court might assume guardianship causing undue costs until your children reach the age of majority in your state.  You may also be able to determine when the life insurance benefits are to be paid out.  They can be paid as one lump sum if you think your children are successfully able to emotionally handle the financial benefit.  Or you can have it spread out over several years on specific birthdays if you believe that will be more beneficial.

Finally, review your beneficiary designations at least annually to make sure your intent is still the same as it was when you created the designations.  Marriages, divorces, births, deaths, and financial situations of your beneficiaries may have changed your considerations.

So you see that selecting your primary, secondary and tertiary beneficiary is critical in the complex area of estate planning.  speaking with a Tax Free Retirement Specialist who can  help you update your beneficiary list and also coordinate the conversations with your tax advisor and estate lawyer is critical to a ensuring that your final expression of love is carried out the way you intended.  Click here to find Tax Free Retirement Specialist in your area.

There are some common ways you can designate all three beneficiaries depending on the specific situation you have.  There are also numerous other ways you can do your beneficiary designations.  You can move anyone from secondary to primary if so desired.  If you have no family you can even make the charity(s) your primary beneficiary.  We’ve included a Table with the specific language critical to beneficiary designation. Most of the secondary beneficiary designation examples on this table use specific secondary beneficiary language allowing the benefits of a predeceased child to be passed to their children so that the insured’s grandchildren are not disinherited.  If you don’t want the grandchildren to inherit your children’s share you would delete the phrase “if living, otherwise, his lineal descendants per stirpes.”   This allows the deceased child’s share to be redistributed to the remaining living children.

Click here for the Beneficiary Table

What is Life Insurance?

Cost of Life Insurance?

1. Did you know that an estimated 75% of all life insurance policies no longer meet their owner’s original needs.
2. As many as 50% of policy holders are “orphans”, which means there is no agent taking care of their policy.
3. Approximately 25% of life insurance policies will potentially lapse earlier than the insured’s life expectancy because many people are now living longer.

Your life insurance Tax-Free Retirement Specialist has no idea what has happened in your life over the last 12 months.  They don’t know if you’ve changed jobs, got remarried, divorced, had another child, had a child begin college, considered a different investment strategy, inherited money or assets or many other things that might impact your life insurance. These and many others are life-altering events that require a life insurance policy review.

 Your Tax-Free Retirement Specialist may want to review with you the simple things like:

• Can they offer you a different policy with the same coverage at a lower price?
• Are you in need of a death benefit rider?
• Do you need to convert a term policy to a universal policy?
• Have you purchased a new home?
• What changes need to be made in your beneficiary listing?
• How is your health?
• Review Long-term care coverage.

 It is always in your best interest to meet with your Tax-Free Retirement Specialist at least once a year, even if there are no changes to be made.  Having a one-on-one relationship with them is vital for both of you.  They will get to know you as a person rather than the guy who sold you an insurance policy and you never heard from again.  You will benefit from the wisdom that they will bring to the table on new products available for your specific situation… that you will never know about until you speak with them.  This is their expertise and they are here to help guide you along your road to protecting your wealth and health for the rest of your life.

If you haven’t heard from the person who sold you your life insurance policy or annuities in several years, then maybe it’s time to find someone else who will focus and care about your goals for the rest of your life.  Life Insurance Think Tank can help you find a local Tax-Free Retirement Specialist by clicking HERE.

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

“Fortunately, the life insurance industry has almost none of the problems of Wall Street… Until recently, permanent life insurance was arguably the financial industry’s most complex instrument. Fortunately, due to its complexity, life insurance is highly regulated to assure there are always sufficient, safe assets to honor its guarantees. This is referred to as statutory accounting. For more than 100 years, every life insurance death benefit has been paid.

All life insurance companies use statutory accounting. In addition, publicly traded insurance companies use GAAP accounting. It allows them to report the expected profitability of products that require reserves to back their contractual liabilities.”

Mr. Jones doesn’t take the point of view that life insurance companies can fail, several have indeed failed.  But for the other 99% of them, they have a proven track record of stability.  In fact, of those few life insurance companies that have failed, the other insurance companies bought up all of the failed companies policies.  Whole life and universal life insurance products are highly regulated for payment stability and have successfully been through good times and bad.

So let’s look at how about 99% of us struggle to make ends meet.  Many of us are in a position where we think that our lifestyle is consuming all of our earnings.  The belief is that every time we achieve a greater level of affluence, we increase the level of spending to account for that new found level of income.  There is an entire school of research called “behavioral economics” that says a human will consume what it earns or all that comes into his or her personal economy.  This is why it makes it difficult to save.  We’ve got to become better savers for our future retirement.

At www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com we educate people how to accomplish retirement savings and at the same time protect their loved ones with a life insurance product.  This can be an entirely new concept for many people who are accustomed to investing their savings in the highly volatile marketplace and losing lots of sleep watching it go up and down.

We hear that people think that insurance costs too much.  In a much published study, people know they need insurance but think they can’t afford it. However once educated on the true cost of insurance, they realize it is significantly less than they thought it was and they really can afford to protect their loved ones.  There are numerous choices of life insurance to choose from to protect and create a retirement plan; such as term life, universal, and indexed universal life insurance.

A universal life insurance policy is a perfect choice to begin a retirement plan.  Besides the obvious life insurance benefit, it force starts a savings plan that is guaranteed safe.  While term life insurance is obviously less expensive, the universal life policy is earning a higher rate of interest than any other safe investment product on the market today.  This savings element is compounded annually and if held for 10, 20, 30 or more years, it can yield a significant sum of money to supplement other retirement income sources.  Additionally, this money is tax deferred, safe from creditors in many states, has cash value you can borrow tax-free, and most likely has a living long-term care benefit.

At this point, would you say this is an expense or a savings? Is it a smart place to put your money? Any place you can save money is a smart place.  So the real question is, “is this a smarter place to put your money?”  Life Insurance Think Tank would suggest to you that buying a permanent life insurance policy that protects your family for the rest of your life is an excellent choice because it provides:

• Living benefits of long-term care should you require it while you are alive
• A death benefits when you pass away
• Tax-free payment of proceeds to your beneficiaries
•  guaranteed safe place to save money
• An excellent place to earn compounded tax-deferred interest
• The option of taking your cash out tax-free to for any purchase
• The option to take your cash tax-free to supplement your income when you retire
• Does not require you to pay it back into the insurance policy!

Permanent life insurance has stood the test of time and proven useful for a very long time.  Life insurance has been a common place for Americans to save money for decades.  But then the financial markets became all the rage to save money.  We’ve been through some difficult times with the markets and no one knows what’s going to happen in the future.  However, even during the previous rough market times, not one person who had their savings in a life insurance policy ever lost money.  Can you say that for anyone you know who was invested in the stock market?  Learn more about life insurance at www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com.  Find a Tax-Free Retirement Specialist here who can help answer your questions about creating a tax advantaged strategy for protecting your family and a retirement plan.

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

How to Use Life Insurance for Estate Planning

As Ben franklin said, “…in this world there is nothing certain but death and taxes.”  Life insurance can help you when both of those situations occur.  Obviously not the aspect of death, but it can definitely manage the tax aspect of his comment.

As humans, one of our primary failings is that we can’t see into the future and we limit ourselves to only thinking in the near term.  Today your family estate, farm, business or net assets may be well under the current threshold of having to pay estate taxes.  But what happens when (not if) the estate tax limits are changed in the future?  What happens 10-20 years or more from now when your net worth has grown so significantly that your heirs will need to pay estate taxes on their inheritance?  Will your current life insurance policy help them pay the federal tax due?

There is significant life insurance advanced planning strategies that a Retirement Life Solutions Specialist can create to protect your hard earned assets from significant taxation loss.  Universal life insurance policies are usually less expensive than whole life policies and can be created to provide enough life insurance benefit to cover any taxes that might be assessed.  But remember our human nature to be short-sighted?  Make sure you buy enough insurance to insure the growth of your estate into the future. 

The life insurance you buy today will be significantly less expensive than what you will pay for the same amount anytime in the future.  You aren’t getting any younger and you might develop health conditions that may increase the cost or prevent you from being insurable.  Seek out your Tax Free Retirement Planner for advanced strategies. They can create the tax-free life insurance plan and coordinate conversations between your legal representative and your tax planner to ensure your estate plan is maximized for your beneficiaries.  Click here to find an expert planner in your area.

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

When you’re considering term life insurance, you need to understand the different types of term life available today.  Term life is the least expensive insurance available today and if used correctly could be the best insurance for you.  In fact many people supplement permanent life insurance (universal, indexed universal or whole life) with term life insurance.

Term life insurance provides coverage for a defined term, i.e. a period of time. It does not accrue cash value like a permanent life insurance policy does. The basic premise is you have a financial risk you want to insure for a period of time in case you die prematurely.  The risk might be your mortgage, a vacation home mortgage, your children until they have moved out, kid’s college education, etc.  Once you determine what the length of time you need to cover the risk, you purchase a term life insurance policy for that period of time.  If your untimely death occurs, the insurance policy will pay your beneficiaries the tax-free insurance benefit.

There are several different types of term life insurance to consider when educating yourself on what is necessary for your specific situation.  Different insurance companies will have one or all of the following available:  Guaranteed Convertible, Annual Renewable, and Level are the common types of term life insurance.

Level Term Insurance

Level Term Insurance requires payment for a fixed period for the duration of the term.  Common terms are usually in 10-year increments because 5-year increments are more expensive than.  Premiums are level during the term of insurance and do not increase.  If you decide to cancel the policy, you just let the insurance company know, any time during the term of the policy, and stop paying the premiums and the will policy lapse. 

Convertible Term Insurance

Most companies offer convertible term insurance.  Here the insured is eligible to convert all or some of the amount of coverage to a permanent universal or indexed universal life insurance policy during the term of the insurance policy.  Most insurance companies allow this during the first 10 years of the term or possibly the first half of the term policy.  If it is converted, the premium will be higher because it is permanent insurance for the rest of your life. 

Annual Renewable Term

Annual Renewable Term is a one-year life insurance policy where the insurance company guarantees to insure the covered person for one year and will issue the same or higher policy at the end of the term without regard to health of the insured.  This is similar to a guaranteed renewable term life policy.  However, the premium will increase because the age of the insured has increased and if the amount of insurance is increased.

Return of Premium Term Life Insurance

This is the newest term life product on the market today and can be quite useful for certain situations.  First thing you need to know is that it will cost more than a standard term life policy for the same amount of insurance benefit.  The unique feature of this policy is that if you pay the premiums through the end of the policy and you are still alive the insurance company will return to you 100% of every single dollar you paid into the policy… TAX-FREE.  There are some very specific advantages for using this type of policy.  Talk with your Retirement Life Solutions Specialist before you decide to buy this type of policy.  If you cancel the policy during the term, the insurance company will not return any of the premiums to you.

Our final Thoughts

Unlike universal life insurance, term life does not provide the tax benefits or cash value buildup of permanent life insurance.  Term life insurance is useful for people who need life insurance at the least expensive price for a specified time frame.  It can also be useful to supplement a universal policy for a defined period of time. 

Besides speaking with a Retirement Solutions Life Specialist, you’ll also want to consider the following factors as a starting point:

• Are you still young and in good health?
• Are you looking for simple, inexpensive insurance to protect your family?
• Is permanent universal life too expensive for you today?

Finally, don’t be misled by a common misconception you may have heard, “buy term, and invest the rest.”  Sometimes this may not be the best choice for you with the uncertain economic times present today.  Who can afford to put their retirement money at the risk of market volatility?  If you can afford a universal or indexed universal life insurance policy, there are some excellent tax-deferred benefits you can maximize no matter what age you are.  If you are able to purchase a universal life policy at a young age, you have the flexibility to increases the cash you add to it (max fund it) and significantly increase your cash value in a safe and guaranteed method to create an additional stream of tax-free income ready for your retirement.

Make sure you speak with a Retirement Life Solutions Specialist to determine what life insurance is best for your specific situation.  Click here to find one in your area.

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

Because of the alignment of these and other factors, this could be the best time for many years to buy life insurance.  Take advantage and protect your family at the lowest costs.  Now is the time to talk to your Retirement Life Solutions Specialist.  If you don’t have one, fill in the information on the front page of www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com and an expert specialist will answer all of your questions for you. 

Check out current rates using the best insurance rate calculator.

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

Furthermore, many statistics indicate that 54% of Americans have less than $25,000 in savings and investments.¹   As you can imagine, even with Social Security income, these people will soon outlive their savings and become impoverished. Some advisors recommend that someone who is working to begin saving at least 8-12 times current salary for retirement.  Then make sure they’ve saved at least eight times their final salary in order to retire at 67 years old.²

So how can a permanent life insurance policy help in advanced planning?

The cash value in your life insurance policy is your money.  You can take it out as a TAX-FREE loan. There are some concerns by doing this, but if created correctly in the first place, this can become an additional source of income during your retirement years.

So who do you talk to for more information about setting this up correctly? Retirement Life Solutions Specialists are advisors who can help you plan to use life insurance for other things than just the beneficiary’s life insurance payment.  They can show you how to fund a life insurance policy to help pay for children’s college, large purchases without borrowing from your bank, starting a business, and retiring on your own terms.

How can I help pay for my kids college education?

Most parents would rather their children not have to work their way through college or have large loans to pay off when they graduate.  A permanent life insurance policy correctly set up to build cash value can be used for college expenses.  When the child enters college the policy owner can take a TAX-FREE loan from their insurance policy each year to pay for some or all of the annual expenses. 

During this time, they should continue to pay the monthly premiums as well as the loan back.  By paying the loan back they are paying the principal and interest into their own cash account not the bank or lender who they might have had to take a loan from.  This continues to rebuild and grow the cash value in the insurance policy for future use.

Other mid-life uses

The policy owner can also use their cash value for other large purchases rather than borrowing from a lender and paying interest. Buying a car, down payment on a home, or other large purchases is easily done by borrowing from the insurance policy.  How about starting a business?  The policy owner can borrow from the cash value of their life insurance policy and quickly access startup capital.  Did you know that a few famous entrepreneurs – Walt Disney and Ray Kroc – used this exact method to start up Disneyland and McDonald’s?

Using life insurance in retirement

The use of a permanent life insurance cash value accumulation to add to other retirement savings can make perfect sense.  If a policy owner has done a good job building up their nest egg of cash over many years they have more flexibility to use this as an extra source of funds.  These funds have grown tax-deferred and now can be borrowed as a TAX-FREE loan to supplement monthly income as needed.  More importantly, at this point there is no rule that you have to pay the money back into the insurance policy.  Finally when the policy owner dies, there still is a life insurance benefit paid to the family for protecting their family.

The best time to begin funding a permanent life insurance policy is as young as possible.  However, at just about any age there are numerous ways to buy a permanent life insurance policy and still take advantage of this benefit.  Talk with your Retirement Life Solutions Specialist about your family’s specific situation.  They can educate you on the best choices available today.

¹ Brandon, Emily “Planning to Retire” U.S. News & World Report | Money, 10 February 2011, Accessed February 7, 2013

² CNBC Online, “Think Magic Numbers (Plural!) for Retirement Savings” cnbc.com, 25 October 2012, Accessed February 7, 2013.

What is Life Insurance?

Cost of Life Insurance?

Because of the true cost of long-term care to someone that needs it; insurers have increased LTC polices substantially over the last few years.  Several companies have pulled back and just as many have left the market completely.

Even though fewer companies are selling LTC insurance, the need for long-term-care planning remains greater than ever.  Today, there is a great deal of attention that is being focused on the aging of the population. As the Baby Boomer generation begins to reach retirement age, people are starting to realize that there may come a time when they could need assistance due to declining health or ability.

Because of increased life expectancy, many people will live 20-30 or more years beyond their normal retirement age. Yet, while they may be living longer, this does not necessarily mean that they will be living healthier. Therefore, from a financial standpoint, it is imperative that people plan ahead not only for basic living expenses in retirement, but also for the high cost of long-term care. From a retirement standpoint, a long-term care event is one of the few things that can really put a dent in someone’s retirement plan.

For those people who are looking to buy some sort of long-term care coverage, there is now more choices available then traditional long term-care insurance.  There are hybrid products that combine life insurance and long-term care coverage.  Several of these hybrid policies have a complete Return of Premium to the owner should they decide to cancel the policy before they use the long-term care benefit or have died.  There are single premium life insurance products that allow the owner to tap the death benefit while alive, as a living benefit, to pay for long-term care.  With both of these policies, if the LTC benefit is not used, the death benefit is paid to the beneficiary.

Finally, with the cost of long-term care increasing it may not be affordable to buy a policy that covers 100% of the expected daily expense.  That is the beauty of a long-term care insurance policy; it can be created for just about any amount of daily benefit that is affordable.  This allows the owner to share in the cost of future long-term care events if they occur and at the same time pay a lower premium for the reduced benefit.  Remember, having some long-term care insurance is always better than having none.

Speak with a Retirement Solutions Specialist to learn more about what are the best options for you.

What is Life Insurance?

Cost of Life Insurance?

As a policy holder you have several choices. Currently, 70% of the people over 65 years of age here in the USA need some type of LTC care.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010, 66% of nursing home residents were women, and only 16% of all residents were under the age of 65. The median age of residents was 82.7 years.  You purchased this protection so that you didn’t place a financial and emotional burden on your family.  So you are left with several choices which you may not know you had. 

1. Accept the price increase and just pay the new premium.

A price increase means that the company has to keep up with the increasing cost of long-term care coverage.  While this may sound discouraging to you, it may help to look at it from another view point.  If you were to buy your current policy at your current age, it would cost you significantly more than the new premium with the current increase. 

Additionally, you may not be able to purchase the same features and benefits that are in your current policy.  So, while the new price is higher than it was last year, it is still is a significant savings over what you would have to pay if you were to buy it today.  If the coverage is still affordable to you and you still want these features, this may be your choice.

2. Keep the current premium and reduce the policy’s daily benefit amount to the extent necessary to bring benefits in line with cost (e.g., from $250/day down to $200/day)
3. Keep the current premium and reduce the policy’s benefit period to the extent necessary to bring benefits in line with cost (e.g., from a 5-year benefit period down to 4 years)
4. Keep the current premium and reduce the policy’s benefits inflation rate (if the policy included an inflation rider) to the extent necessary to bring benefits in line with cost (e.g., from a 5% inflation rider down to a 3.5% inflation rider)
5. Cancel the policy

If you decide that the premiums are not affordable, or you do not need the original level of coverage, then you could choose options 2-4 above. These options will maintain your long-term care and at the same time reduce your annual premium.

Most people choose to decrease their benefit period especially if it is longer than 5 years.  Many policies sold 10 or more years ago may have been sold with lifetime benefits.  According to the Genworth 2012 Cost of Care Survey, the average length of stay in a long-term care or assisted living facility was 2.8 years.  In fact, most claims are even shorter than this. So if you believe that you will not need coverage for more than 3- years you may choose to reduce your benefit length to 3- years and reduce your premium this way.

Your current policy may have an inflation rate rider on it.  If you have had the policy for 10 or more years, you may have already received the most leverage on the rider.  You also want to consider your age, the older you are it may be more appropriate to reduce the inflation rider than if you were younger.  If you are younger than 50 years old, you would still want to gain the inflation protection from several more decades of inflation that your rider provides.

The final option would be to reduce the daily benefit amount.  Most clients initially purchase the amount of daily benefit that they can afford at that the time they buy. The daily benefit is typically barely enough to cover the actual amount that LTC will actually cost.  For these reasons, it should be the last area to attempt to reduce the cost of long-term care.

This really is the choice of last resort. As I mentioned earlier, if it is simply unaffordable and none of the above choices reduce the premiums to affordability, then the last resort is to cancel.  The only other reason to cancel the policy would be if your financial means had increased so substantially that you were able to pay all the costs of any long-term care form your own assets (self-insuring).

No one likes to get a notice of increased cost for something they own, especially a long-term care insurance policy. If you do receive an increase in your long-term care policy make sure you contact a Retirement Solutions Specialist to discuss your options.  Besides helping you with the decisions above, there are several newer products on the market today that they can educate you on.  Because of these newer products design, you may benefit from them in the long run.

What is Life Insurance?

Cost of Life Insurance?