Be Safe Insure .com » Retirement

Retirement Planning’s Big Gap: Have You Planned for Long Term Care?

Be Safe Insure — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:41:21 +0000

Have You Planned for Long Term Care?

You or your spouse are increasingly likely to have a Long Term Care event during your retirement years. But most people don’t realize how expensive Long Term Care can be. And contrary to what many people believe the majority of it is not covered by most private health insurance plans or by Medicare.

Average cost of a Nursing Home is over $70,000 a year*
Average cost of Home Care Aid is $32.50 per hour*

Perhaps the biggest missing component in most people’s retirement plan is preparation for the potentially devastating financial impact of an illness requiring Long Term Care.

If you are relying on your health insurance or Medicare you may be in for a surprise. Medicare doesn’t offer extended Long Term Care coverage. (Medicaid does, but only if you are legally destitute). The statistics can be shocking. Nearly two-thirds of people over age 65 will need Long Term Care at home or in a facility.*

However, Long Term Care insurance isn’t right for everyone. Work with a Long Term Care specialist to find the type of plan that fits your needs and budget.

>> Go Here to take the first step to make a plan for your Long Term Care needs»

ACSIA Long Term Care, Inc. is proud to represent the top carriers in the Long Term Care Insurance industry. We have carefully selected our carrier partners based on their experience, ratings and customer credibility. They have demonstrated to us that they are committed to their policyholders through policy benefits, premium pricing and claims-paying history. We are proud to be associated with them.

* U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Clearinghouse for Long Term Care Information, 10/22/08.

Checks and Balances for Your Financial Future

Webmaster — Sun, 15 May 2011 09:05:18 +0000

Checks and Balances for Your Financial Future

This video discusses the current state of social security, retirement plan and retirement savings planning, and the status of the economic recovery.

Here is the video on Youtube:

How to Calculate Retirement Income

Webmaster — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 08:20:14 +0000

How to Calculate Retirement Income

It can be difficult to calculate retirement income because it’s hard to estimate what things will be like in 20 to 30 years, which is the case for many people. Discover why a conservative strategy is useful when planning for retirement with help from a financial strategist and consultant in this free video on financial planning and retirement.

Here is the video on Youtube:

Retirement Myths

Webmaster — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 08:31:15 +0000

Retirement Myths

It’s tough enough to face retirement without having to worry about whether popular misconceptions are true. Retirement myths have continued to grow with the late 2000s recession and the coming retirement of the baby boomers.

No More Social Security
Social Security is in danger of failing, but reform can save the faltering system. According to Alicia Munnel, head of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, a small increase in payroll taxes can greatly alter the longevity of the program.

Market Crash
People fear the markets will crash when baby boomers sell stocks to fund retirement. However, most savvy investors will be in no hurry for extra funds, and George Walper, co author of “Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass It On,” foresees many boomers saving stocks to pass on as inheritance.

Retiring With Debt
Despite what many people believe, credit cards and personal loans are not always necessary. Cut out these little debts at least 10 years before your estimated retirement.

Big Nest Egg
Having a large rnest egg is not everything when it comes to retirement. You are going to want a steady income, which can come from rental properties or even CDs.

Late Savings
You are never too late to start saving. Starting earlier is advisable, but as long as you save with vigor in the later years, you may be surprised how much your 401(k) or IRA grows.

Here is the video on Youtube:

Life Insurance – Retirement planning

Webmaster — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:59:08 +0000

Life Insurance – Retirement planning

Is Social Security going to be around when you need it? Maybe NOT, YOU NEED RETIREMENT PLANNING and LIFE INSURANCE!

Here is the video on Youtube:

Inflation and retirement

Webmaster — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:02:40 +0000

Inflation and retirement

The unrecognized facts of inflation and retirement and how to adjust

Here is the video on Youtube:

Study Examines Private Home Health Care Utilization

Be Safe Insure — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:24:40 +0000

Women Use Fewer Days Per Week; Most Users Over Age 70

More women receive privately paid for care at home for lingering health issues with more obtaining this care at older ages than men according to a new report from the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. Nearly 60 percent of those receiving care were women with over 80 percent age 75 or older the study found.

“Most studies include home care services paid for by Medicare or Medicaid which do not reflect the usage for the vast majority of individuals who pay privately or have long-term care insurance coverage,” explains Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. The independently conducted study examined the usage of home care services received by 1,000 men and women during a 1-week period in March 2010.

“The vast majority of both men and women home care recipients were over age 71 and most received care for three days a week or less,” Slome notes. The study found that 88.6 percent of users were women age 71 or older compared to 81.1 percent who were men. When it came to number of service days per week, two-thirds (66 %) of women utilized private in home care for three days a week or less. Just under half (49%) of men received care for three days or less. The remainder paid for four or more days.

Both men and women appear to pay for about the same number of hours of care per-day the study found. One fourth of women (24%) received only one hour of (daily) care, while three-fourths (76%) received care for seven hours or less. That compared to 73 percent of men. Costs for home health care vary by the type of services required as well as by location, experts note. “The average cost today is about $20 an hour,” Slome says. “Someone needing care three days a week for six hours a day is looking at a cost of between $20,000 and $25,000 annually which is why increasingly individuals purchase long-term care insurance with a home care benefit.”

The number of days care was required varied significantly by age. The study compared care usage among men and women age 64 with those age 82. “People do need long-term care services at younger ages typically as a result of accidents or illnesses,” Slome points out. The Association reports that the vast majority (90.7%) of long-term care insurance claims begin after age 70. According to the study, some 20 percent of women age 64 received care for a 7-day period while another 40 percent received care for 5-days during the weeklong period. Only 25.3 percent of women age 82 needed care for five days per-week or more.

Approximately 7.6 million individuals currently receive home care because of an acute illness, long-term health condition, permanent disability or terminal illness according to the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. Annual expenditures for home health care are $60 billion.

The comprehensive findings of the study will be published in the 2010 Long-Term Care Insurance Sourcebook available from the Association. A leading national home care service company that examined only individuals receiving care services paid for individually or reimbursed by their long-term care insurance conducted the study for the industry’s trade organization.

Protection during the Golden Years: Health insurance policy and Retirement

Webmaster — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:37:54 +0000

Protection during the Golden Years: Health insurance policy and Retirement

If you haven’t built your nest egg for retirement, now is the time start thinking about how you may need to subsidize your retirement income. Relying on Social Security alone may only provide you with a small portion of what you might need to live on. In order to have sufficient income for retirement, you may need to look at other options, such as increasing your savings, postponing retirement to a later date or working part-time during retirement.

Health insurance policy for retired person* or senior citizens can be confusing, specially with so many alternatives and necessities. However, health insurance policy is essential for retirees. As you grow older, your health apparently becomes more of an issue; you may visit the physician more, need to fill more prescriptions, or even get in-home aid. Before you retire, prepare for health insurance to ascertain that you get the best benefits.

The first step in planning your health insurance policy coverage in your retirement is to see if your employer provides insurance coverage after you retire. If the company does, you should surely consider it. Look at the insurance plan, the deductible, and the insurance coverage. A lot of near-retirees think that Medicare will address their medical payments, but this is not always the case. With this kind of insurance coverage, you will most likely get better health aid but at a more expensive cost. As a retired person, you will surely have a health insurance budget to sustain, and you will have to decide if the cost of your employer’s insurance is too expensive.

If your employer does not offer insurance coverage, Medicare will be an crucial and integral part of your health insurance policy if you are 65 years of age or older. Medicare works like conventional health insurance policy in that you have been contributing a small portion of every paycheck you earn into this plan. Once Medicare begins, you will make co-payments for office visits or treatment. Medicare will also address the expense of certain medical equipment or necessitates.

However, Medicare did not cover a number of items that are typical of health insurance. The government recently updated Medicare and split it into three parts: Part A, B, and C. Part A covers hospitalization, such as home healthcare, hospital stays, and hospice aid. This part does not need a premium. Part B covers the more routine medical expenses, such as office visits and laboratory tests, while Part C enrolls you into a fee-for-service or managed care plan that cuts down your out-of-pocket costs. Despite these different alternatives, Medicare bounds your insurance coverage by not covering certain kinds of care or illnesses and diseases. Thus, there is also Medigap insurance coverage, which helps fill in the gaps in health insurance policy that Medicare leaves. Medigap insurance coverage differs from state to state and has different payments.

Beyond Medicare and Medigap, there are also long-term care insurance policies that you can purchase. You often see these plans promoted on the TV at very low costs. These policies can help cover the costs of a nursing home or home health care. With so many different choices and restrictions, if you are retiring soon, you should take a look at your budget and what you can afford as well as what sort of insurance coverage you feel you will require.

Rolling Your 401k

Be Safe Insure — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:55:20 +0000

When we start out work for the first time, we believe that we would stay with the same company until retirement and have a comfortable retirement life with all the money we have saved in our 401k account. Unfortunately this does not happen. In present day and time, we end up changing jobs several times before we reach retirement and this poses a lot of questions about what we should do with our 401k benefits.

When changing a job, you have a few choices with regard to your 401k account. You can either keep the 401k with your old employer, if they allow it, you can rollover your 401k account to your new employer, or you can rollover your 401k benefits to a self-directed IRA.

Keeping your 401k with your old employer will have no benefit for you or your employer, and most employers prefer that they ex-employees transfer the money. So, the next best option for you is to rollover the 401k benefits to your new employer.

Most 401k plans have just 15 mutual fund choices and you will benefit from rolling over your 401k to your new employer if your plan has a loan provision where it will be easy for you to borrow money.

You can also rollover over your 401k to a self-directed IRA and this is of two types — contributory and rollover IRA. In a contributory self-directed IRA, you can contribute annually but you can no longer roll back the 401k part to another new employer’s 401k. However, a rollover IRA is more flexible. A rollover IRA allows you roll back the proceeds to a 401k plan so that you can take advantage of the loan provision in the 401k plan. However, you should not make annual contributions to this IRA because of tax reasons. A rollover IRA is set up through a brokerage firm which means you will have access to the entire gamut of mutual funds that the firm has to offer.

By Kum Martin

about the author

How To Make Money In Annuities,
401K Tax Penalty,
Guaranteed Minimum Pension For Widows

Income Tax Burdens For the Non-Spouse Beneficiary: Perils of Failing to Roll a 401k into an IRA

Be Safe Insure — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:54:16 +0000

Have you heard about a “stretch IRA” and wondered if it was some special kind of IRA? Well, it isn’t. In the simplest terms, a stretch IRA is an IRA that has a beneficiary designation that provides for the possibility of maintaining the tax deferred status of the IRA after the death of the IRA owner. You might be thinking, “I wish I had a stretch IRA. I only named my spouse as my primary beneficiary and my kids as my successor or contingent beneficiary.” Well, guess what? You have a stretch IRA. After your death, your spouse and/or your children could continue to defer income taxes for many years after your death, as long as they are prudent and only take the annual minimum required distributions mandated by law.

While the “stretch” concept applies to some retirement plans, many heirs of 401k owners could be in for a rude awakening if their parents fail to plan properly.

With proper planning you can put in place the mechanisms to stretch taxable distributions from an inherited IRA and certain retirement plans for decades, sometimes as long as 80 years after the original owner dies. If, however, the employer’s retirement plan document stipulates the wrong provisions, the stretch may be replaced by a screaming income tax disaster. The heirs could be in for a tax nightmare if Dad never transferred his retirement plan into an IRA.

Many investors fail to realize that the specific plan rules that govern their individual 401k or other retirement plan take precedence over the IRS distribution rules for inherited IRAs or retirement plans.

The distribution rules that come into play at the death of the retirement plan owner are usually found in a plan document that few employees or advisors ever read. Many, if not most plan documents say that in the event of death, a non-spouse beneficiary must receive (and pay tax on) the entire balance of the retirement plan the year after the death of the retirement plan owner. These retirement plans don’t allow a non-spouse beneficiary to stretch distributions. For example, if there is a $1 million balance, the non-spouse heir or heirs will have to pay income taxes on $1 million. Then, the remaining balance, roughly $650,000 ($1 million minus the $350,000 immediate income tax hit) would be outside of the tax-deferred protection of an inherited IRA.

Had the 401k participants taken that money and transferred it into an IRA before he died, the non-spouse beneficiary would have been able to stretch the distributions based on his or her life expectancy. Failing to make the IRA transfer will result in an unnecessary massive income tax burden for the non-spouse beneficiary.

By James Lange

About the author

Top IRA expert and author of Retire Secure!, James Lange, can keep you from jeopardizing your family’s security. He has developed tax-savvy retirement and estate plans for over 1400 U.S. citizens with appreciable assets in their IRAs and 401(k) plans. Boost your family’s financial security with a regular dose of great information. Sign up for his monthly Retire Secure newsletter at http://www.paytaxeslater.com. Sign up now and get a free bonus report on the best order to spend your retirement assets.