Often, when people think about estate planning in New York, they think about planning for their death. However, good estate planning should include a long-term care plan to account for healthcare and other situations.
Set goals to cover the what-ifs
Conversations about long-term care are always challenging to have. But they are essential if you’re going to lay out what you want your life to look like if you become medically incapacitated. This includes identifying the tools needed to accomplish those goals and how you will pay to achieve them.
For many, a goal is to stay out of nursing homes or pick the home that they’d like to enter. However, this goal could be at odds with the goal of protecting any assets that they want to leave behind. This illustrates why understanding and planning for cost of long-term care is a vital part of estate planning.
Evaluate your current health
It’s almost impossible to predict whether you will need long-term care. However, you can create a long-term care plan by evaluating your health. If you have a chronic health condition or a family history of severe health conditions, it’s logical to predict that you have a higher chance of needing long-term care.
Therefore, it’s reasonable to research long-term healthcare costs and options associated with financial planning. These could include looking into the ins and outs of assisted living, caregivers, or home health aides.
Put together a hypothetical budget outlining the cost of assisted living for you and your spouse. Compare this with your sources of income to help you understand if you have enough money to cover these future eventualities. Planning ahead by incorporating a long-term care plan into your estate planning can help you protect hard-earned assets and set you up to have the brightest future come what may.