Perception Is Everything

I am often asked why I wanted to get into the insurance industry since I have always worked in the field of mental health.  After years of helping people in crisis situations related to sudden or chronic health issues, and seeing the impact on my clients and their loved ones, I started to ask myself, why don’t people make a plan for long term care?

So, I started to ask friends and colleagues who work in the finance and insurance industries, Why don’t people make a plan for long term care? Here are just a few of the things I’ve heard them say:

• My clients have enough money to self insure
• My clients can’t afford it
• My clients don’t want to talk about it
• Financial Advisors don’t want to talk it
• Men don’t want to talk about it

These responses simply led to more questions for me. What happens to all of the people in the middle that can’t self insure, or that could afford it? Who would want to self insure and pay dollar-for-dollar for care, as opposed to possibly pennies on a dollar for care? Do people think that not talking about something will stop it from happening? What about formulating a plan to protect your income and savings makes it difficult to talk about? Do men not care as much as women about their money and family’s best interest?

As a social worker, I work with my clients on cognitive reframing, changing our point of view on any given situation, where the facts will remain the same, but we shift how we see it. It became obvious to me that the topic of long term care needs a serious reframe!

Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss. The biggest risk to your retirement income is needing to pay for long term care. 70% of people over the age of 65 will need some form of long term care. These are the facts, we can’t change them, they remain the same.

However, we can make a shift in how we see the situation, a reframe. Moving conversations to be about longevity of life,  income protection, leveraging assets, preserving the well being of loved ones, and most importantly, self empowerment, could just be the shift needed to change the perception.