My youngest child is incredulous when I tell her that mothers know everything.
“Mommy, how can you know everything?” she’ll shoot back with her little hands on her hips.
“Because, I just do,” I say.
I’m teasing her, of course. But I do tell to my 6-year-old that if I don’t know something, I will either find out the answer for her or show her where to get the information. That’s how I approach the many questions I get during my regular online discussions. If I don’t know, I’ll try to point you in the right direction as I did for the following readers in a recent chat:
Question: Who should buy long-term care insurance? How do you evaluate the various plans?
Answer: For those who don’t know, long-term care insurance can cover the cost of nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and in-home care. In most cases, the insurance will cover expenses for those who need assistance with such daily activities as eating, dressing and bathing, or who have a severe cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer’s disease.
This is expensive insurance. Depending on your age and the options you choose, yearly premiums vary greatly from $1,000 to as much as $8,000. I suggest you visit www.aarp.org, which has a lot of really good information on buying long-term care insurance. I certainly plan on buying it when the time is right.
One consideration with this type of insurance is: Do you have assets that you don’t want to spend down should you need long-term nursing home care? If you are nearly broke now, you may not be able to afford this insurance and you would quickly qualify for state aid.
Before you buy, also read “A Shopper’s Guide to Long-Term Care Insurance,” produced by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, www.naic.org.
Question: I’m young (think 30 years or so from retirement) and have several health problems, some of which have been difficult to diagnose. My mother is afraid of my becoming incapacitated and wants me to have long-term care insurance. I’m just not sure it’s right for me. I don’t think the AARP site will help.
Answer: Look at the Web sites such as the one belonging to AARP. They offer plenty of tips on policies, when to buy, etc. If at this young age you anticipate some major health issues that will require care sooner rather than later, you might consider long-term care insurance. But if you’re only guessing and it might be 30 years before you need this care, don’t pay for this insurance yet.
Question: My husband and I are in our mid-50s, childless, retired, and have substantial assets, including two homes (a primary residence and a beach home). We also have retirement savings upward of $1 million. We enjoy our life together, but we’re going around in circles about how to do our wills.
Other than two nieces who are below college age, for whom we want to set aside enough for college in case their parents don’t quite manage it, we don’t particularly feel that we owe adult nieces and nephews a substantial chunk of change. But we want to arrange it so that we leave our assets to each other first, and then upon the second death distribute some part to relatives but the majority to charities. How do we set up our wills to do that?
Answer: I’m not an expert in this area so I would highly recommend you sit down with a good estate attorney (ask around for recommendations).
Aside from charities, may I also recommend you set up a trust that would help extended family members go to college? I helped set up one for an elderly aunt who, like you, doesn’t have a lot of direct heirs. Part of the money she leaves will be distributed to any heir for generations to help pay for college. There are rules for the distribution, of course.
Can’t touch the principal and those heirs applying have to maintain a certain grade point average. But I just thought how wonderful it would be to set up a family college scholarship fund.
Question: Does placing a fraud alert with the three credit agencies hurt my credit score?
Answer: Placing a fraud alert on your credit reports does not affect your credit score. And you should place it on all three if you think you are the victim of identity theft.
But please keep in mind, some lenders may still overlook or ignore the alert. It’s not foolproof. You may want to consider getting a security freeze instead. To find out the details of a security freeze, which even blocks creditors from pulling your credit reports or credit scores and thereby makes it very difficult for someone to get credit in your name, go to www.financialprivacynow.org.
In many states, it doesn’t cost you anything to put a freeze on your files if you have been a victim of identify theft.
Washington Post Writers Group
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