BRADENTON HERALD

by Tom Roberts

Paying for long term-care can decimate your finances. Typically, the options for planning to cover these expenses consist of purchasing a long-term care insurance policy or setting aside a large chunk of financial assets.

Recently, some new choices to help reduce the risk of not having enough to cover long-term care expenses have become available. These include hybrid long-term care and life insurance, long-term care and annuity, and pooled benefits policies. A fairly new solution is converting an existing life insurance policy into a stream of funds to pay care expenses.

What caught my attention was the possibility to use an existing asset to address an immediate need, while also avoiding the need for continuing premium payments.

Many people already own a life insurance policy. Over time, this policy has provided security to loved ones in the event of death. A conversion is a potential way to use this asset to cover another urgent life need.