Long-term care insurance may be an important (even necessary) part of your financial plan. But you may be reluctant to buy a policy whose premiums can rise. Plus, if you never require long-term care, the money that you had spent on premiums simply vanishes. Still, you may want the financial security that long-term care insurance provides. There is another way [...]
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Long-term health care costs remain high and are growing. Because of this, retirees with significant assets should plan for their eventual need for long-term care. Some who desire to protect their assets, seek to get government assistance and organize their financial affairs for Medicaid eligibility. One potential way to do this is to shelter assets in categories that Medicaid considers [...]
Categories: senior heath care Tags:
Would you fudge a fact or mis-state it just a little to get an important application approved? It's common for people to omit or forget facts on a life insurance application. But don't let it happen to you or your policy could be worthless. Potentially, that could be hundreds of thousands or millions depending on the size of your policy. [...]
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Most retirees have two main senior health care options - Medicare and managed care. A third option, Medicaid, is a program that pays for medical assistance only for those with low incomes or disabilities and will not be discussed in this post. As long as you've contributed enough through FICA taxes, you'll be eligible - retired or not - for [...]
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Survivorship Life Insurance insures two lives in a single contract. Also called ?second-to-die? insurance, it pays the death benefit only after the second person dies. Because of this, its cost is typically lower than two separate policies with the same combined benefit. So who should use a survivorship life insurance ? and why? Traditionally the husband and wife of a [...]
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When you invest in various instruments, each has their own type of risk. Some investments are considered less risky than others, but no investment is without risk. Some of the main types of risk you should understand are: systematic risk--risk inherent in the stock market, no matter what stock you buy specific risk-risk of a specific stock or bond (of [...]
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Estate planning concerns include transferring wealth to your spouse, children and grandchildren minimizing estate taxes making provision for a helpless child making provisions for your own incapacity maintaining privacy protecting assets giving to charity To address these concerns effectively, you often need an entity other than you or your spouse to hold assets, distribute money correctly, and carry out your [...]
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Paying for long-term care (LTC) is costly. Many retirees divest themselves of their assets to let Medicaid pay for it for them. But this is overtaxing Medicaid and the states are changing their rules to prevent this. To lessen the burden on Medicaid, states can team up with private insurers to offer partnership LTC policies. These policies encourage more people [...]
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Looking to see how much retirement income you may need? Make sure and see the related posts at the bottom of this post. As noted in our post on average retirement savings, it is not exact to define a "retiree" in determining average retirement income. About 15% of the people who classify themselves as retirees are working some hours per [...]
This post explains two tax breaks on stock and mutual fund "qualifying dividends" (explained below) scheduled to end December 31, 2012 Income from savings and investments help retirees meet their retirement income needs. Traditionally, the well-to-do have chosen municipal bonds for their tax-free income. But due to their tax-free status, municipal bonds typically pay a considerably reduced rate of interest [...]
Categories: tax breaks Tags: 2012 tax breaks, capital gains, income tax rates, qualifying dividends
