Free course · Retirement · Beginner
The Care Bill Nobody Budgets For: Planning for Long-Term Care
A free beginner course on long-term care planning, for anyone thinking about their own later years or helping a parent with theirs: who pays for care, what coverage costs, and where Medicaid fits.
- Lessons
- 4
- Time
- About 53 minutes
- Level
- Beginner
- Cost
- Free, no sign-up
Who it is for
People in their 50s and 60s planning for possible care costs, and adult children helping a parent understand the options.
By the end you can
- Explain what long-term care covers and which costs Medicare leaves to you
- Compare traditional long-term care insurance with hybrid policies and self-funding
- Describe how the Medicaid five-year look-back treats gifts and transfers
- Put a hypothetical care cost into your own retirement plan
Lessons
- 01 What Long-Term Care Is and Who Pays: Medicare, Medicaid, You
What long-term care is and who pays for it: the activities of daily living, the narrow Medicare skilled nursing benefit, Medicaid's role and a worked cost sum.
- 02 How Long-Term Care Insurance Works: Benefits, Waiting Periods, Riders
How long-term care insurance works: the daily benefit, benefit pool, elimination period and inflation rider, with worked sums and the triggers that start payment.
- 03 Hybrid Long-Term Care Policies and Self-Funding: Weighing the Options
Hybrid long-term care policies and self-funding compared: how life and annuity hybrids work, what they trade away, and how far a set-aside reserve stretches.
- 04 Medicaid and the Five-Year Look-Back: Planning Ahead for Care
Medicaid and the five-year look-back: how gifts create a penalty period, which assets are exempt, spousal protections, Partnership policies and estate recovery.
Call a few care providers near you and ask what they charge. Ask what a home health aide costs by the hour. Then ask the monthly rate for assisted living and the daily rate for a nursing home, and write every answer down with the date you asked, since prices change and you will want to compare them later. Those local numbers are the starting point. Care costs differ a lot from one town to the next.
The lessons use hypothetical figures. Swap in your local ones as you go.
Who it suits
It suits people in their 50s and 60s. Plans made early have more options. It also suits adult children helping a parent, often under time pressure, who need to sort out quickly what is covered, what is not, and what the family may end up paying for while the paperwork catches up.
Long-term care means help with everyday living over months or years. Bathing, dressing, eating, moving around the house. It can happen at home, in a nursing home or in assisted living, and much of it is not the kind of care health insurance was built to pay for.
What to have ready
Bring the local prices from your calls. Bring any policy you hold that pays for care. Read each benefit page first. Note the daily or monthly benefit, the waiting period and how long payments last.
Helping a parent? Gather their policies and a rough list of assets and income.
How to work through it
Take the lessons in order. The course starts with what care is and who pays. Medicare’s gaps explain why every other option exists. It then moves through traditional long-term care insurance, hybrid policies that pair life insurance or an annuity with care benefits, and paying from your own savings, and ends with Medicaid, its five-year look-back and why transfers made inside that window cause problems.
Work each example with your local prices in place of the hypothetical ones. The quiz at the end of each lesson checks the arithmetic.
What it leaves out
Legal advice is outside the course. Medicaid rules vary by state. Moving assets to qualify can backfire if done wrong. Take Medicaid planning to an elder law attorney licensed in your state. The course names no insurers or policies either.
Where to go after
Care costs belong in your wider plan. The course on building a withdrawal plan shows how to fit them into spending and savings, and the guide to how much you need to retire helps size the total. HSA money can pay qualified care premiums up to a yearly limit. The lesson on the HSA explains. Care paid from pre-tax accounts is taxed as the money comes out, and a large withdrawal in a single year can push you into a higher bracket and raise Medicare premiums two years later, which the course on tax landmines after the last paycheck works through.
Questions traders ask next
Does Medicare pay for long-term care?
Medicare pays for a limited stretch of skilled nursing care after a qualifying hospital stay, under conditions Medicare.gov sets out. Help with daily activities such as bathing, dressing and eating, known as custodial care, is generally not covered, and that help makes up most long-term care.
What age should I start planning for long-term care?
Planning is easiest in your 50s and early 60s. Insurance is priced by age and health, so waiting can mean higher premiums or being turned down. Starting earlier also leaves time for the Medicaid look-back to run on any transfers you decide to make with legal advice.