I had a lively dialogue Friday afternoon with two very smart CPA’s who are in the market for long term care insurance.

Why?

They work with numbers every day and know that “someone turning 65 today has almost a 70% chance of needing some type of long term care services in their remaining years.” You’d expect this kind of statistic to originate from an insurance company sales piece. In fact, it’s a direct quote from LongTermCare.Gov, a website managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Here are two more statistics:

• Women need care on average longer than men; 3.7 years versus 2.2 years.
• While about a third of 65 year olds may never need long term care, 20% will need support for more than 5 years

Already sold on the need, my two CPA friends wanted me to tell them how much coverage to buy and if they should pay the higher premiums to guarantee benefits would be paid for life.

It struck me as ironic two CPA’s wanted me to assess the perfect balance between affordability and risk tolerance.

Apparently they thought they were visiting with Nostradamus!