Survey Identifies Long-Term Care Planning Resisters

Many older Americans have already started talking about future long-term care (LTC) needs, or intend to get around to the topic sooner or later.

Some most positively do not.

(Related: Most ‘Financially Fragile’ Need Retirement Planning Most)

Analysts at the Society of Actuaries (SOA) are heading to Chicago this weekend for the Intercompany Long Term Care Insurance Conference.

They’ll be bringing a new report based partly on telephone surveys of 202 adult children of parents ages 85 or older and 201 members of the “oldest old” age group, or people ages 85 and older. The survey participants who were 85 or older had to have less than $400,000 in financial assets.

The survey questionnaire included questions about topics such as the kinds of care the adult children’s parents and the oldest old survey participants needed, and how much care caregivers were providing.

The questionnaire also included questions about LTC planning.

SOA analysts found, for example, that 46% of the oldest old survey participants said that they had had no discussions about the type of lifestyle they wanted for the rest of their lives.

About 34% said they had already made plans for coping with LTC costs, and 11% said they intended to do that.

But 49% said they hadn’t planned for LTC costs and were not going to plan for LTC costs.

Similarly, 42% of the adult children with oldest old parents said their parents had planned for LTC costs, and 10% said their parents would do so later.

But another 42% of the adult children said their parents had not planned for LTC costs and had no intention of planning for LTC costs.

Resources

A link to the new SOA caregiving survey report is available here.

— Read How 5 Generations See Their Finances, on ThinkAdvisor.

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