Good day to you!  Here is February’s schedule:

Do you have everything planned out for your retirement? Does your plan include long term care? Statistics show that approximately 75 percent of Americans, 65 years and above will in due course require long term care.

The cost of this type of care is constantly rising. In order to afford LTC, experts say that you will need a quarter of a million dollars in as little as three years. With that said experts highly recommend long term care planning as early as possible to prevent financial difficulties in the future.

Why You Need To Plan For Your Retirement

Retirement is indeed an important life event that you will experience. You need to plan ahead in order to meet your goals and to stay on top of your finances. If you will look at both personal and financial stand point, to have a comfortable retirement you need to exercise good judgment…

New rules published last week by the Illinois Department of Insurance have made subtle yet significant changes to the training requirements for producers who sell long-term care coverage. Those same rules also provide some long-awaited guidance for insurance carriers who are interested in offering LTC policies in conjunction with the state’s somewhat mysterious Long Term Care Partnership Program.

Are There Changes to Licensing Requirements?
For producers wanting to sell LTC products, the basics of the licensing and training requirements remain the same: An individual who wishes to sell LTC insurance in the state must first have a health insurance license and complete an 8-hour “Long Term Care (Partnership)” training course. Then, in order to continue selling the insurance, the licensee must complete an additional 4 hours of LTC training every 2 years.

What’s The New LTC Training Deadline?
Until now, the 2-year deadline for completing the 4 hours of additional…

Don’t think you will need Long Term Care Insurance, you may want to think again! Nearly 60 percent of those over age 65 will require at least some type of long-term care services during their lifetime.

What exactly is Long-term care insurance (LTC or LTCI)? It is an insurance product sold in the United States and United Kingdom and helps provide for the cost of long-term care beyond a predetermined period. Long-term care insurance covers care generally not covered by health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid.

People who require long-term care are generally not sick in the traditional sense, but instead, are unable to perform the basic activities of daily living (ADLs) such as dressing, bathing, eating, toileting, continence, transferring (getting in and out of a bed or chair), and walking. Read more…

I gained a new perspective today.  I hope I remember it.

I gave Mom her bath and got her dressed as usual.  And as usual she hollered and shouted. And she yelled “I hate you!” and “I’m going to kill you!” as loudly as she could.

I’m getting used to it, but it is still hard to hear.  I told my Dad about it and he said, “Yeah, she shouts that to me these days too.  I don’t know where she even got that language.  It’s nothing she would have said in the past.  She wouldn’t even have thought it.”

And I agreed. So I did my best to shake off the hurtful words as I helped Mom with her lunch. And then I just sat for a while by Mom, on the love seat.  I held her hand and marveled at how soft her skin was. And she was…

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, one in three dies with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. If you do not die from Alzheimer’s, you die with it.

Are you cowering yet? Are you looking about you and wondering if you are one of the three? When you lose your glasses, do you find them and get on with your life, or do you obsess? Although we do not yet understand the constellation of factors that lead to Alzheimer’s, there is a genetic pre-disposition, and as the daughter of two parents who died with Alzheimer’s, I am at a risk that goes beyond one in three. Do I look over my shoulder? You bet!

But I’ve moved beyond obsession. When I was knee-deep in caregiving and observing my parents’ decline on a daily basis, I was obsessive. If I forgot a friend’s name, I would put it down to Early Onset. I kept track of my lapses. Obsessively…