Tag: long term care
Have a Business? Good. Now Plan for the Long Haul!
Starting a business is far from simple: it involves tasks and thinking that may be completely new to you. Once you start your business, though, it becomes an inherent part of your life. For many people, their businesses are like their babies. They have created them, nurtured them, and watched them grow into something successful over time. With all that work under your belt, making sure you don’t lose your hard earned profits from business is important to keeping both you and your company financially afloat.
Planning Long Term
More and more, older individuals are beginning to branch out and start their own businesses. No longer just young entrepreneurs, start-ups are shifting towards an older population. Boomers who aren’t ready to retire just yet but don’t want to continue their same job are turning to start ups to help fulfill their desire for an exciting and challenging position. Whether you are in your 30s or in your 60s, though, it doesn’t matter. The need to protect your assets is the same.
If you have experienced success in your business, chances are you have made it out pretty well financially. Hopefully you have enough money saved to cover your retirement (or are at least on your way to that goal) and have a basic plan for your golden years laid out. There is one event that can quickly disrupt and disassemble all of your nicely organized plan and bring it to rubble. Long term health care can happen to any one at any time and often involves huge health care bills that most people can’t afford without prior planning.
You might be thinking, “Long term care? That’s just for old people!”. Well, that may have been the case at one point, but that is certainly no longer the case today. In fact, 40% of all individuals receiving long term care are between the ages of 18 and 65. Long term health care isn’t just for the elderly. It involves services for a number of things including bad falls, recovery from illness or surgery, heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and other conditions that require care and assistance, whether it is for just a few months or several years. Pigeonholing long term care into something only for seniors that isn’t necessary can end up costing you big.
Protect Your Business
Because long term care can happy at any time, it makes sense to plan early. Looking into coverage when you are 20 might not make sense, but when you reach your 40s or 50s, it is the ideal time to begin planning for long term care. Just one year of home health care costs more than $40,000. If you have put all your time and energy into your own business and suddenly suffer a bad fall at work, you may be forced to spend all that hard-earned money from your business on your own care. Not exactly the ideal situation, is it?
Business owners are typically savvy people. They can recognize true risks and understand the need for various protections to help keep their business up and running. Long term care is something that if you research for just a few minutes, you will recognize is a huge risk. Too many people have spent through their retirement savings because they weren’t aware of the risk that long term care posed to their assets, leaving them desolate. Putting hard work into your own company means you need to recognize the value of your hard work and help shield your assets from any risk that might come your way, because many exist.
Most states in the US have partnership plans that help individuals plan for long term care, so looking into the program in your state can help you begin the planning process. Planning for the long haul is crucial to any successful business. You must be prepared for any curveballs that could be thrown your way, and long term care is a very expensive curveball.
Owning your own business is an amazing experience that is unlike anything else. The ability to control every aspect of your own work makes all the hard work worth it. Just don’t risk it all by failing to plan for big health care costs later down the road. If you are looking into starting your own business, please read our previous post on strategies to help you decide whether or not beginning your own company is right for you.