News Older porericans Four Ideas For Health Care Planning In Retirement (NAPSA)—The Employee Benefit Research Institute estimates that a typi- cal 65-year-old couple will spenda total of $265,000in health care costs over the remainderof their lives. This staggering amountof money hasthepotential to derail even the best-laid retirement plans. Vanguard and Mercerrecently developed a new framework, “Planning for You may be able to ensurebetter health for yourself and yourfamily yourhealth care expenses. Here are four byselling yourlife insurancepo! Health Care Costs in Retirement,’ that identifies practical tips for forecasting top ideas: 1. Personalize health care costs. Start by understanding howyourhealth history and current health status will influence expenses. Even your geo- graphic location, marital status and age atretirementwill impact your forecasts. For seniors whoare struggling to find cashin their retirement budgets to offset unexpected health care expenses, it may be good ideatotake stock right nowofall yourassets. Manyseniorsare surprised to learn that one potential asset for generating immediate cash is a 2. Plan for long-term care. This is a tough one to assess because half of life insurancepolicy. retirees won't even incur these costs, You should review your life insurbut on the other end of the spectrum, 15 percent ofretirees will spend more ancepolicy from timeto time and determine whetherornotit’s still needed. A term care options, such as unpaid care personalproperty, so you havetheright tosellit anytime youlike. When a con- than $250,000. Considerpotential long- from family and less-expensive available facilities. 3. Create a hedge in your budget for other expenses. Research showsthat retirement spending in virtually all categories other than health care tends to decline with age. By forecasting steady spending in other expense areas, you may create a buffer in your budget to dealwith rising health care expenses. 4.Forecast costs in annual spend- ing. There are so many variables involvedin estimating health care costs in retirementthat trying to plan around a total lifetime budget can be overwhelming. Experts recommend that you focus on annual spending plans instead, provided that you understand costs willrise as you age. life insurance policyis considered your sumersells a policy—somethingcalled “life settlement”transaction—thepolicy ownerreceives a cash payment and the purchaserof the policy assumes all future premium payments,thenreceives the death benefit upon the death of the insured. Candidatesforlife settlements aretypically aged 70yearsorolder, with life insurance policy that has a death benefitof at least $100,000. If you owna life insurance policy you nolonger need or can afford, you maybe able to generate immediate cash to pay your health care expensesbysellingthatpolicy for immediate cash. ‘To learn more aboutlife settlements, visit www.LISA.org or call the LISA office today at 888-921-3793.
