August 16, 2018

There are many different steps you can take to increase your chances of a successful retirement and many years lived beyond that point. Longevity has increasingly become an important component of overall estate, financial and retirement planning. Since although people are living longer, they are also more likely to be in need of long term care assistance.

While a long life might be seen as an excellent gift, there are also legal and financial challenges that could be present. The earlier you can work to address or to prepare for these, the easier your older years will be. A non-smoking 65-year-old man today has a 50% chance of living until age 85 and a non-smoking 65-year-old woman has a 50% chance of living until age 88.

These four different steps can help you to be aware of the risks and the benefits of living into old age. These include:

• Contemplate long term care since it’s likely that at least one member of a married couple will end up in a nursing home. Traditional long-term care policies can be extremely expensive, so make sure you do your research before selecting how to protect yourself.
• Plan for incapacity. While it’s easy to assume that you might never be at risk of being incapacitated and unable to make decisions for yourself, failing to prepare for this possibility can take an emotional and a financial toll on your family members. Make sure that you’ve contemplated who can step in to make decisions on your behalf in terms of medical care and your financial needs.
• Avoid probate by using an experienced estate planning attorney so that your loved ones can avoid this lengthy and problematic process.
• Minimize your taxes. Make sure that you sit down with a knowledgeable estate planning attorney to discuss whether or not your estate will be affected by federal estate taxes. Even if it is not, there are plenty of steps you can take to maximize the money that you have set aside for your loved ones as well as for your own retirement.