Editorial comment: Confidence builders needed--now

It goes without saying that workers who have lost their jobs or taken pay cuts due to the recession are not going to put LTC planning on their personal front burner. They are more concerned with food on table, roof overhead, and clothes on back. The same can be said for retirees who are seeing their retiree health benefits slashed or dropped, and their health care and housing costs rise.

Still, many people are still working, and they are probably more future-security-conscious than ever–exactly because of the consequences of recession all around them.

A new report from Age Wave, sponsored by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, Minneapolis, has data in support of that. The researchers found that 40% of the sandwich generation–those who are raising children and caring for parents at the same time–worry about whether they will have to provide financial support to their parents or in-laws.

If so, we might ask by way of extension, will the sandwichers have money left to fund their own care in their senior years?

For certain segments of the United States population, the lack of confidence detected in the EBRI survey and the worry detected in the Age Wave report may turn out to be the very incentives people need to start LTC planning in earnest.

But it will take a trained LTC expert to drive the point home. After all, when mired in doubt and despair, most people need someone else–preferably a trained expert–to help them envision a brighter future and to move toward it with confidence.

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–Linda Koco, Managing Editor, Products and Managing Editor,
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