Having a nearby family member to supplement any long term care you'll need in your old age is a great way to reduce insurance premiums. As long as you and your family member are on the same page, you can pick and choose the coverage you buy so that you're only paying for specialized medical care. But while you're figuring out how to responsibly reduce long term care insurance costs to free up your budget for other things like retirement investments, it's important to ask your family member these two questions.
Are you open to moving away for a job any time soon?
The closer your family member lives to you, the easier it will be to frequently visit. If a family member is available to drive you to a doctor's appointment or to some kind of medical treatment like dialysis, you won't need a home care assistant just to do the same work.
While it's still prudent to include coverage for a small amount of home care assistant hours for when your family member isn't available, you won't need to focus on coverage for full-time work. This will reduce your long term care insurance premium dramatically.
But even if your family member is planning to stay nearby your home indefinitely, a lucrative job offer in a faraway place could still be very tempting. Therefore, it's important to specifically ask your family member about their willingness to move away for a job.
Consider both how your family member responds and how long the family member has lived in the same place. If most of your family lives in and has a lot of ties to a single community, your family member will be less tempted to move away just for a little extra money.
How much care assistance are you willing or able to fit into your schedule?
If you and your family member are planning on living together when you become very old, you may be able to cut nursing home coverage out of your insurance plan. This is because the family member will be able to help you with lots of ordinary and routine things like grocery shopping and getting the mail.
Without a family member, even if you're not so sick that you need constant specialized medical attention, an expensive nursing home could end up being your only option. Unfortunately, the only way to pay for a nursing home without completely eating up all the assets you want to leave to your children is through insurance.
Even if your family member will be living in the same home as you, some people have more busy lives than others. Before you completely cut out nursing home, hospice care, and adult daycare coverage from your plan, ask your family member about possible career, family, and social commitments in the future. Ideally, you should get your family member to mention a specific amount of hours that can be contributed to your care in the event of a health problem. The more commitments your family member will have, the less leeway you'll have in cutting out health services that involve routine care.
Considering the answers to these questions, you may have a few decisions to make when deciding what coverage you need. Contacting a financial planning consultant, like those at Peterkin Financial, can help to accurately decide what specialized medical care to include in your insurance while also saving enough money for investment and to leave your family members.