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As financial planners, we at Wealth by Design, LLC strongly recommend you have adequate insurance in place to protect you from the big threats to you and your family’s viability. Without it, your financial plan is vulnerable to unexpected events.

Co-Founder of Wealth by Design, LLC, Barbara Bachelder, CFP® is licensed health and life agent in California. She offers all major carriers for health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, annuities and long-term care insurance.

Because insurance is expensive and because you are protecting against something that may or may not happen, our basic philosophy for buying insurance is to protect against the devastation of catastrophic events but minimize premiums. You pay the premium whether you use the insurance or not. Ideally, insurance will be the worst investment you will ever make because you will have a care-free life.

Health Insurance

  • Health insurance is essential for yourself and every family member, and now required by law.
  • With the arrival of the Affordable Care Act, (Obamacare) some are eligible of premium and out-of-pocket subsidies.
  • Now, more and more policies are offering restricted coverage for items they used to cover in full. For example, some policies offer very high additional deductibles for brand name drugs. As an agent, Barbara can help you match up the plan with your personal needs and choose the best policy for the most reasonable expense.

Disability Insurance

Disability insurance provides income if you are unable to work to earn money. If you and your family depend on your income, seriously consider purchasing disability insurance.

  • Many employers offer policies as part of their benefit package. If you have a policy, review the duration of benefit, the elimination period and the definition of disability. If you feel that this policy is inadequate, or you may be leaving this employer, consider purchasing supplemental private insurance.
  • If you don’t have a policy at work and are dependent on your income to live, research purchasing insurance on your own.

The key questions are:

  • If you or your spouse were sick or hurt and could no longer work, where would the money come from?
  • What percent of your current standard of living would you want for your family if you became disabled or died?

Life Insurance

People buy life insurance because they love someone or something.

As a part of your overall financial plan, life insurance allows the people you love to financially recover from your death. Adequate life insurance ensures that your death (and the death of your earning power) doesn’t destroy your family’s dreams.

It’s especially important to have insurance if you have young children or your partner earns significantly less than you do. They will suffer enough with you gone, don’t leave them with financial hardship. Life insurance can also be used to protect the future of your business, allowing the corporation or your partners to continue if you die.

As with health, disability and long-term care, life insurance requires decent health to obtain a policy. “Health buys it, money pays for it.”

Life insurance also comes in many forms. Term policies are like renting insurance for a period of time. Whole and universal life has the potential to insure you throughout your life and can be much more expensive. We can help you analyze what’s best for your situation.

The key questions to consider are:

  • If you or your spouse died, what responsibilities would you expect life insurance to provide for?
  • Do you need to support the mortgage so your family could remain in the same house or support your spouse for some period of time?
  • Will your children be able to go to college without your earning power?
  • Do you need to cover debt?
  • Do you need insurance to help pay for estate taxes?

Long Term Care Insurance

Long Term Care Insurance allows you to afford good care and protects your assets if you get a serious chronic illness. It also allows you and your family to have more choices about your care. Few of us want to think about it, but the reality is that four in ten of us 65 or older will require some type of long-term care during our lifetime.

This raises lots of questions:

  • Who will take care of me?
  • Who will make decisions about my care?
  • How can I make sure I minimize the burden for my family?
  • How will I pay for long term care if I need it?
  • Should I buy insurance?

While traditional long-term care options are expanding, so are the costs. Furthermore, many people over-estimate the role of government in paying for long term care.

The cost of paid care givers is also high. Studies show that unpaid family members and friends provide the bulk of long term care services. An unpaid caregiver may feel a deep resentment for the time and financial commitment they must make to an aging relative or friend.

BUYING A POLICY

Long-term Care Insurance, (LTCI) helps pay for care when you have difficulty with activities of daily living. If you are considering buying LTCI, you want to match the policy features with your particular circumstances and choose the best company for those benefits.

Benefit Choices

You choose:

  1. Which type of policy you want to buy,
  2. The amount of daily benefit that will be paid,
  3. The number of years you want the policy to pay benefits,
  4. The number of days (if any) before the company begins paying benefits after you qualify, and
  5. Inflation protection.

These five factors combined with your age, health and the insurance company you choose determine the premium you will pay. If you can purchase insurance with your spouse, most companies offer a discount in premium.

When to buy

If you are 55 or older, it’s time to consider purchasing long term care insurance You are more apt to medically qualify at a younger age and the premiums are much less expensive –they climb steeply as you age. Even if you pay premiums over many years before possibly needing care, the total cost will likely still be less than a year’s nursing home stay.

Buying a policy with Wealth by Design

In keeping with our overall commitment to your financial health, we view long term care are an integral part of your financial plan. We tailor our Long Term Care Policy recommendations to what you really need given your financial and family resources. We tailor the policy for your needs rather than push a one size fits all. Because Barbara is licensed with multiple insurance companies, we are not captive to any single product or company.

We only recommend top rated companies. Because we Americans are living longer and more and more people will need long-term care services, we feel it’s essential to go with a company which has substantial ability to pay claims and a solid track record of consumer satisfaction.

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