When people plan for their later years and retirement, Roy Y. Gagaza sees repeatedly that they typically think of cash savings, stock investments, retirement accounts, maybe gold, and real estate. However, if ten people were asked about whether they’ve considered the need for long-term care coverage, probably eight and maybe even nine would likely respond “no” to the question. Roy Y. Gagaza has found this incredibly valuable planning financial tool is often time ignored by most people because they don’t fully understand its benefit until it’s too late.
Per resources Roy Y. Gagaza regularly directs people to in financial planning, long-term care coverage works like a type of insurance that helps cover the cost of long-term health care when a person suffers from an extensive sickness, injury or health problem and needs extended care. It’s not designed for an immediate hospital visit. Instead, long-term care coverage focuses on providing a safety net to pay for nursing support, long-term rehabilitation, chronic sickness support and similar when someone is injured or sick for an extended period that can span weeks, months and even years. Many folks don’t typically think of their later years in these terms, but chronic health conditions are very commonplace and one of the number one reasons Roy Y. Gagaza sees people’s hard-earned savings for retirement erode prematurely.
Roy Y. Gagaza believes a big contributor to the health risk problem is the cost of medical treatment. It’s not becoming any cheaper over the years. In fact, the opposite is the case. And many folks who have debilitating issues in their later years oftentimes need medical assistance, typically in the form of in-home care or nursing support in an out-patient status. That and equipment as well as frequent medical support can cause medical bills for a patient to skyrocket, oftentimes not fully covered by their primary health insurance. The result is, as Roy Y. Gagaza sees regularly, that the cost ends up being paid out of pocket. And that in turns wipes out savings that have taken years to accumulate and can’t be replaced.
While Roy Y. Gagaza notes that long-term care coverage won’t solve every extended medical need financially, it goes a long ways towards solving big health risks to fragile savings. The difference can be tremendous. In some cases, it can help prevent folks from having to sell their home to come up with the funds for medical care. While that might seem extreme, Roy Y. Gagaza has seen that scenario play out more than once.
If nothing else, long-term care coverage protects all the hard work people have spent their early and mid years exerting to build up a nest egg for retirement. If anything one can do in that same time period to protect retirement, Roy Y. Gagaza will always recommend securing long-term care protection. The cost is minimal, especially if started early, and it can be a lifesaver financially if something goes wrong before reaching full retirement, a risk that repeatedly plagues single-income earners and their dependent families the most. Life is too short, in Roy Y. Gagaza‘s opinion to be spent worrying over bills in your later years.
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