Make the Most of November as LTC Awareness Month

Need some ideas on helping promote November as Long-Term Care Awareness Month?
Here are four things that I think will help you:

1) 2 1/2 minute presentation to clear up the myths with sources for all the data.The only thing not there is that 51% of the policies in 2008 were sold at work. That source is: “MultiLife in the Large Group Market”, Session 09-19, 9th Annual Intercompany LTCI Conference, Reno, Nevada March 30, 2009. This presentation is extracted from the Agent Manual in my new High-Impact Worksite Selling System. It makes a great outline to review with employees at the beginning of the personal consultation so they remember what they heard in the employee education presentation.

The myth still prevails that LTCI is nursing home insurance for old people - so whatever you can do to dispel that is wonderful. The less than 15% of care being in a nursing home really helps as does making it real that anyone can be hit by a drunk driver or being in an accident at any age. Next is that something else will pay - Medicare, health insurance, disability income (just like you thought) when the reality is that younger people will probably have to move back home and older people wind up on Medicaid because they didn't buy LTCI. The reality is also that people are self-insured until they buy LTCI, whether they have made a conscious decision to do that or not.

Someone with $3 million may think self-insurance is the way to go. At 5%, the $3M generates an annual income of $150,000. Take $70K out of that for 8-10 hours of daily home care and where did the income go? In a bad economy, the $3 million may be $1.5 million, and the annual income is only $75,000...now what happens?

Terry Savage's new book (The New Savage Number, John Wiley & Sons, 2009) p. 218:

"What's the greatest risk in your financial plan? We've seen how a stock market crash can devastate retirement plans. But the greatest risk is not the longevity of this bear market, or even another bear market. It's the devastating cost of long-term care. And just as many pre-retirees didn't take the possibility of declining stock prices into consideration when making their retirement plans, most people don't consider the costs of living longer and the health-care and lifestyle implications."

2) the Social Security benefit statement with the line about Medicare not paying for LTCI

3) a True Cost of Waiting example of how much less it costs to buy younger

4) Four slides that are in my High Impact Worksite Selling System – you enter the premium and the slides calculate the projections for you. These four show numbers for a 40 year old and a 50 year old buying the best kind of inflation - the kind that grows forever - so it is a powerful example of how little they spend to get a huge amount of benefit and how quickly all the premium is paid back at claim time. The idea of saving the premium is blown out of the water as well. The slides show saving the premium at 8%. If I had used 6%, it would have been even more dramatic. The 40 year old would save $79,000 in 30 years before taxes and investment fees instead of $113,000 at 8%, and the 50 year old would save $94,000 before taxes and investment fees instead of $135,000 at 8%. Both would have a tax-free benefit pool of $657,000 in 30 years...no contest!

*rates are the same for single or couples in this example