et’s not jump right into the percentages of over 65’s who will need a nursing home sometime in their terrifying futures.  Let’s not open the dialogue with probabilities, odds and ominous statistics, - even if they are ominous -.   We’re not talking to the one-or-two in six-or-ten who may need this-or-that,  - although they may -.   We’re talking to individual human beings with considerable pasts, promising futures, hopes, and dreams, and plans.  Sift through it all and the question that needs addressing comes to this:

Will their ‘plans’ sustain their ‘hopes’ and ‘dreams’? 

...and if not, let’s fix that.  Perhaps you were involved in that planning process which now needs the benefit of informed modern scrutiny with an eye toward a Long Term Care contingency.  There’s no time like now, and no time like before another agent opens that door.

Eyes across America are wide to the numbing prospect of thousands of boomers at the doorstep of retirement.  It’s happening now!  But we need to keep something in proper perspective:

Forest-thinking is just fine, (think-tankers do it all the time),
but the selling and the buying still have to happen tree by tree. 

The statistics of need are out there, and voluminous, and real.  Come to that, they’ll back you up.  But a few general questions are revealing and basically rhetorical: 

General case-by-case objectives of retirees or wannabe retirees don’t vary dramatically, and are often evident in explicit or implicit expressions of hopes and dreams. 

Freedom and self determination, natural yearnings of the human spirit, don’t retire when we do.  Arguably, they increase in intensity and influence with freshly ransomed time available to practice them.  It comes to staying in control of a new kind of life’s adventure now that careers no longer define and govern.  This is it!, what they worked for.  Now, we need to help them to protect past efforts and future desires. 

So, by all means, be conversant in the evidence, understand the statistical markers, but use them sparingly, when appropriate to underscore or support.  The ubiquity and misuse of such evidence will soon render common sense a novel, welcome, and uncommon approach. 

Have the numbers, do the numbers, and know your stuff.  Talk about current realities and actual costs of the kind of long term care services they would choose if they had to, in the neighborhood where they would want to be.  Hypothesize to draw out preferences and talk about the worst case.  Feel around for comfort and gradually build the solution with their collaboration.   

There’s really nothing original about the questions.  They are common concerns seeking common sense solutions and uncommon expertise to plan for.  That’s where you come in.  

Instead of reviewing the probabilities of this or that, talk about the absolute certainties of what it will cost when it happens.  You could employ a real case study if you have one or a hypothetical such as the one below which is an exercise in simple investment account comparisons showing the economic impact of a Long Term Care need with and without Long Term Care Insurance in force. 

Click below to see this example, and feel free to use it! 
Click here for printable case study.