Pumpkin Spice, Holidays, and Long Term Care

Here are a few indicators that summer is over:

• Labor Day

• School buses out on the streets

• And pumpkin spice…in, well, just about everything

I don’t remember this phenomenon of pumpkin spice infiltrating autumn 20 years ago; but I do know that today it’s inescapable. From coffee to air fresheners, to (believe it or not) Milk-Bone dog treats!

My guess about the appeal of pumpkin spice is that just when we are mourning the loss of summer, the scent evokes coziness and comfort. A kind of autumnal consolation.

If pumpkin spice were a holiday, it would be Thanksgiving, not Halloween—for good reason. Less than a month apart, those two observances couldn’t be more different: scary ghouls versus the familial table, brimming with the bounty of the harvest.

This train of thought has led me to reflect on another two adjacent-but-different concepts: retirement planning and long term care planning. In this context, retirement planning would be Thanksgiving, while long term care planning is all Halloween.

If retirement planning is planning for comfort, long term care is lurking in the shadows—among the scariest things to experience in retirement. Scary for a lot of reasons. Financially it can be super-scary, since the need for care may derail all our other retirement plans.

We certainly plan for other scary possible outcomes. We purchase life insurance decades before we could reasonably expect to die, just in case. We add coverage for valuables to our homeowner policies because…well, you never know.

But we do know that the likelihood of needing help—with dressing, bathing, getting out of bed, and moving to a chair—is high, when we consider how long we may live. Statistics show that most Americans will live a long time. We may have been the young person buying and roasting our first Thanksgiving turkey. And eventually, we aspire to being the elderly relative at the table— glad that we don’t have to lift a 20-lb. turkey out of the oven!

The people gathered around your Thanksgiving table are the very same ones who are most hoping that you do your long term care planning. They’re the friends and family who will step up to help you in your hours of need— your contemporaries and the youngsters as well. Any planning, and funding, lifts the burden off all of your shoulders.

When you stop to think about it, you would most likely hope that the elders at your Thanksgiving table this year already have long term care insurance in place. They are the people who you may be called upon to help.

Could getting your own long term care insurance policy be the best thing you could do right now for those you care most about?

If you have any questions about your long term care insurance or planning please do be in touch. Baygroup Insurance can be contacted at http://www.baygroupinsurance.com/forms/contact-us or call us at 410-557-7907 for more information.