Starting the Long-Term Care Conversation
Improving your approach to long-term care planning is important and the article “How to talk about long-term care planning now” by Margie Barrie addresses this nicely.
Teaching agents how to start the conversation has been a focus of mine recently as you can’t help your clients if you can’t get past the door.
Try this lingo on for size:
1. Phrases to Use During Any Long-Term Care Planning Client Presentation
- What’s your plan for when you get a little older and a little sicker and you need help to put on your shoes and pants and get breakfast?
- One day you are not going to be as healthy and good looking as you are today. (Suggested by Gene Cutler).
- 70-70-70: 70 million people are turning 70, and 70% will need long-term care.
- What have you allocated in your retirement portfolio for long-term care? The answer: Unless you have planned for long-term care expenses, you have allocated everything for long-term care expenses.
- If one of you has an extended health care need, which of your assets would you liquidate first?
- It’s good to have a plan other than impoverishment.
- This plan is not designed to make you rich. It is designed to keep you from being poor.
- Put a wall of protection around your portfolio.
- Is your portfolio sustainable?
- Wealth protection tool.
- Portfolio insurance.
- Having a plan in place gives you a map to follow.
- How are you going to fund this?
- When do you purchase a long-term care policy? Answer: You do it when you can comfortably afford it.
- Say when your health changes, instead of if. (Suggested by Linda Jobin).
- Recognize the devastating consequences of facing long-term care expenses without planning on the people you love. (Suggested by Harley Gordon).
2. Phrases to Use When Talking About the Asset-Based Product
- You are repositioning your assets by moving money from the left pocket to the right pocket.
- Stable, predictable and guaranteed.
- Live, die or quit.
- Provides greater leverage.
- Wash the taxation out of otherwise taxable investments.
- Harvest the gain in a more tax efficient way.
3. Phrases for Other Uses
- Repurposing.
- Reframe your thinking.
- Profitable new revenue stream for you (for working with referral sources).
- Growth is always on your mind.
- Long-term focus.
- Mission-focused.
- Long-term view.
- Are you a business owner? (Suggested by Janine Tate.)
- Any condition or disease that is named after a person is a bad condition to have.
- The Aunt Milly rule: If you would not sell this to your Aunt Milly, then don’t do it.
To get someone’s attention, it’s hard to beat one liners like these.