Long Term Care Insurance

[LivingAlmostLarge]

The maximum is $36k paid per person. You are taxed 0.58% on uncapped salary. It is $580 per 100k and break even is $120k salary

[Like2Plan]

Does anyone have LTC insurance? What do you pay for it? How much coverage do you have? What made you buy it? Where we lived passed a law charging people LTC tax if you don't have your own policy to opt out of. The tax is .58% or $580/100k of salary. The kicker is you must reside in WA state when you retire. You get a maximum of $36k paid out and it will be only after 10 years. IF you retire elsewhere then you get $0.

Is that per person or does it cover both spouses? Do you get the same coverage whether your salary is 25k, 50k, 100k or 100k+ ? Is there a maximum per month that is paid out?

We have private policies. To be honest, it might be hard to evaluate a private policy because all 3 of our policies have had an increase in the premiums. Mine has been adjusted twice (I have had it for about 17 years). DH's has been adjusted once, although the company asked for 2 premium increases (one was rejected by the state insurance commissioner). The third one was mostly paid by his employer--the rates were due to increase and the employer didn't want to pay for it anymore. We were offered the option of paying 100% of the premiums (it was too expensive and the benefit was small) or a refund of all the premiums paid at some time in the future to go towards LTC- (it is not a lot of $$) I have to look up the benefit for each policy (there is an inflation factor). Our state gives us a small tax benefit for having LTC policies.

[Snicks]

I think the biggest concern is if you are married and one of you goes into the home and the other spouse could be financially devasted

[QuarterMillionMan]

282102.pdf (genworth.com)

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Does anyone have LTC insurance? What do you pay for it? How much coverage do you have? What made you buy it? Where we lived passed a law charging people LTC tax if you don't have your own policy to opt out of. The tax is .58% or $580/100k of salary. The kicker is you must reside in WA state when you retire. You get a maximum of $36k paid out and it will be only after 10 years. IF you retire elsewhere then you get $0.

Hence the desire to potentially buy a portable independent LTC policy. Obviously I had no plans for this because we plan on self insuring, We would be paying around $1200/year January 1, 2022. But now what?

There are so many different options and benefits. It is not a straightforward decision.

Do we get 2 or 3 years? Do we get a policy with 3% COLA annual adjustment. So for a 3 year plan at $190/day = is $1766 Omaha or $1507 National General. Payout is a maximum $208k with 3% COLA ajustment. Or for $139/year we could do a $50/day $36.5k plan without a COLA. None of it seems wonderful to be honest.

What are your thoughts? I don't want to buy it but think of it more as a tax avoidance. I am unsure if we'll live where we are when we retire. Probably not. Even at a $1500/year premium the chances are we will pay that much with the tax. So anything around $500 seems smarter to avoid tax.