Long-Term Care Could Cost You $115,000 a Year—Here's How to Prepare

It's the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily. I'm your host, Mike Milligan, Certified Financial Planning Professional. It's Thursday, August 6th. I just landed in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I'm heading over to my broadcast experts team today and probably running on my 3rd Diet Coke, to be honest with you. Today's pillar is one families do not want to talk about and the one that ends more retirement plans than any market downturn ever will. It's long-term care planning. And we're going to talk about what's happening in the markets today. Educate, coach, play, and never miss a moment. Let's go.

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Today is a setup day for Friday's job reports and a heck of a heavy secondary earnings day. We're gonna get the weekly initial jobs claims. Uh, in a normal week, nobody discusses this. This week, it's the last labor data point before payrolls on Friday. Watch it. If claims spike, the payroll setup shifts. Also Thursday morning, productivity and unit labor costs for BLS 2nd quarter. Unit labor cost is one of the Fed's less followed but favorite inflation reads, or at least we think it is. FedWatch has a couple of committees formed right now to reshape what data they look at, but historically that has been something they do look at. ConocoPhillips, one of the 2 U.S. super majors in the energy side, gives us an energy read. Expect commentary on where oil prices have been in the second quarter, over $100, averaging in the $80s up to $90s. And what does this— what does shareholder return look like as a result of that? And then let's see what they're doing with AI. It's going to be an interesting read. Airbnb's going to report also. This is on discretionary travel, right? Second quarter, remember travel for graduations, the beginning of Holiday summer or the summer season. And don't forget the World Cup was here. Do you think people that came over the World Cup stayed in a few Airbnbs? The, uh, we're gonna see how that applies. Uh, we also get The Trade Desk, DraftKings, and, uh, Regatta Computing if you follow Quantadeeps. So let's see, let's see what we can expect from this. Remember, recording this on Sunday. Ahead of this. So this is my best case, knowing what, what nothing else that happened Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday in the market. Let's say claims come into the 220,000 to 235,000 range on jobless, and there's roughly in line. There'll be no market move. Let's say Airbnb beats, Airbnb beats and reaffirms booking guidance because of the World Cup effect. We'll see if they say that. That's just my take, the World Cup effect, and then a strong summer season. Let's say ConocoPhillips prints a solid quarter, which we would expect with oil prices being where they were. Let's say Thursday closes in the green, waiting, setting up for Friday's numbers. Let's say on the other side, what news could drive the market down? Well, unless something major happens Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, well, Thursday what could happen is claims above 260,000 on the jobless side. 260,000, that would rewrite the Friday narrative. Let's say Airbnb cuts guidance and just say that maybe the hotel chains are having a comeback because of the World Cup. Who knows? And they— that Airbnb says the American consumer just changed vacation plans. They canceled. What matters? Because that matters because travel has been the sticky spending category holding up services. And then Thursday, the Treasury Department is expected to release its quarterly refund announcement, which sets the auction sizes for the next 3 months. If they raise Logan auctions sizably, The 30-year window, 30-year could move, the yield could move. And after Wednesday's last, last week, we know what a moving 30-year, 30-year yield does to equities. It's not strong.

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Well, today's pillar of The One of a Kind Financial Plan, the book I wrote and released on September 30th, 2025, available on amazon.com. Is long-term care planning. I've spoken about long-term care planning because I'm also going to drop another book called Graceful Transitions as part of our plan at One Oak Financial to help people plan with those in the healthcare field before it becomes too late. The fact is, a person turning 65 today has roughly a 70% chance of needing some form of long-term care services during their remaining lifetime based on the Federal Administration for Community Living data. It's not a 20% number or 40% number. That's 70%, 7 out of 10. And the average cost of a private room in a nursing home in the United States now runs 6 figures per year, well over $115,000 a year in most states, and materially higher in the high-cost states. Home health aid services average around $75,000 per year for full-time care. These are numbers that in financial plans The personal note. I've sat across from families who did every other pillar right. They saved, they Roth converted, they claimed Social Security at the right age, they had a real income plan, and then a spouse gets diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. The mental and the psychological anguish that happens when that happens then gets compounded when a plan that had not been focused around long-term care is not ready to be implemented. Within 36 months, the household portfolio that was supposed to last 30 years has been severely dented, some drained not by market loss but by care costs paid out of pocket month after month. The surviving spouse who is still healthy is now looking at retirement with a fraction of the assets the couple planned around. That is what long-term care planning exists to prevent. And there is no honest way to teach this pillar without saying first that everyone thinks it's not going to happen to them. And second, that when it does, the emotional weight makes rational financial decisions almost impossible. Long-term care planning is the practice of making the decisions today when nobody is sick so you do not have to make them under duress. There are essentially 3 ways to prepare. I teach all 3 so families can choose what fits in their situation. Option 1 is to self-insure. Set aside a dedicated pool of assets, usually 7 figures, honestly, or at least money that could grow to 7 figures, for care. This works if you have enough net worth to actually cover 3 to 5 years of full-time long-term care for one or both spouses without having to break the surviving spouse's plan. Option 2 is traditional long-term care insurance. I own it personally. I turn 50 in 2026 and I've bought long-term care at What I believe is a significant discount because of the time that it has before I would need it. These, these are use-it-or-lose-it policies. Premiums can rise. Coverage triggers when you cannot perform 2 of 6 activities of daily living. And in my case, I added a return of premium rider. So at least my wife and my kids would get back what I paid for it. Now, those dollars that I paid would not be worth the same thing then as they are now. But it's not a complete use it or lose it. Then option 3, which I also looked at, is a hybrid life insurance-based or annuity-based long-term care rider. These are more common today than traditional standalone long-term care because they solve what if I never need care problem. If care never happens, the death benefit passes to the family. Different products, different underwriting, different features, different limitations, and every one of them has to be evaluated to get your specific situation. The point of this pillar is not to sell anyone insurance. The point is to force the conversation because the family that talks about this when everyone is healthy and writes down the answer is a different family than one having to have the same conversation in an ICU waiting room. The Never Miss a Moment tie is the hardest of the week. The moments long-term care threatens to take from your family— anniversaries, birthdays, grandchildren, weddings, quiet Sunday mornings. These are the moments the plan is designed to protect. And the family that puts a long-term care plan in place does not do it because they expect to be sick. They do it because they refuse to let a diagnosis take those moments from them. We're not chasing returns, guys. We're building a one-of-a-kind financial plan for your one-of-a-kind life. Long-term care planning is the pillar that guards the plan against the one thing They can quietly consume it.

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That's been the show for Thursday, August 6th. Claims in the morning, that's the last labor data before the payrolls on Friday. Airbnb after the close to see what the World Cup effect had on people traveling to the United States and how our consumers are traveling this summer. There's a refunded announcement and we'll see how that's going to impact the interest rate story in 30, 30-year yields. And after all of it, the pillar most families do not want to talk about and cannot afford to avoid. If your plan does not have a written long-term care answer, that is the missing pillar. This has been the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily for Thursday. I'm Mike Milligan. I'm an investment advisory representative with Advisory Alpha LLC. Ideas by Mike, doing business as One Oak Financial, is an unaffiliated entity of Advisory Alpha LLC. This has been for educational purposes only. Do not make investment decisions today based on this Based show. off this show without first consulting a licensed financial professional. If you want to reach out to me directly, text the word ideas, I-D-E-A-S, to the number 600-700. Call our office at 757-909-7151. I am learning. Estoy aprendiendo. So are you. Educate, coach, play. Never miss a moment. I'll see you tomorrow.

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