By Brian M. Johnson, MBA, CLTC
If you’re approaching age 50 or thinking of retirement, keep this acronym in mind “SWAN.”
Surveys from folks in this retirement planning age group are interesting because these concerns are almost always in their answers to questions such as: What do you worry about after your working years are over?
Here are some top concerns:
• Outliving my money.
• Keeping my nest-egg secure (no or little risk of principal).
• Dying too soon.
• Becoming sick or disabled which in turn could eat up my retirement nest-egg.
• Becoming dependent on my children.
• Leaving a meaningful and significant legacy to my children/grand-children/charity.
These concerns are real-life and can happen to any of us without proper planning
This is where my “SWAN” comes in. It stands for Sleep Well at Night.
If you have this SWAN wish for yourself or a parent/family member, then you need to speak with a competent financial/insurance advisor that knows about a fairly new financial-insurance product that is extremely popular to folks approaching age 50 and above.
It combines long term care, critical illness and life insurance along with tax advantaged cash value build up that can be used as an annuity income stream for retirement.
It’s truly a multiple-trigger insurance plan that has death, living and income benefits. If you don’t need to leave a family member a death benefit, then consider using this as a bequest to your favorite charity, church or college. They will certainly appreciate it.
We recently worked with a local financial advisor and her client who wanted to SWAN. She was age 52 and in great health. We accomplished her goals (the bullet points listed above). She and her advisor accomplished her objective of, as she put it, “not worrying about her financial future.”
The problem that many of us have, is that infamous issue of denial—it’s not going to happen to me. And it doesn’t—until it does.
One of the big issues we have is that folks wait too long to get these plans implemented. And guess what? Their health changes for the worse, or they can’t get standard rates or they’re being denied any coverage at all.
I urge everyone to start this planning early. Don’t wait. It’s less expensive when you’re younger and many times you’re healthy enough to get preferred rates.
Statistics show that 70 percent of us will need some form of long-term care before we die.
Johnson is director of business development at New York Long Term Care Brokers Ltd.