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Safeguarding your family’s financial future
During your working years, many types of insurance are usually considered to be necessary. For example, life insurance protects your family’s financial security and disability insurance protects your income. In retirement, life and health insurance is to a large extent optional, but may still be regarded as essential to many retirees.
You won’t be getting disability insurance once you’ve stopped working, as this coverage replaces your income from employment or self-employment. Also, disability insurance typically offers coverage up to age 65.
Critical illness insurance policies are available that provide protection up to age 75 or for your lifetime, but you need to purchase such a policy by age 65 or earlier. Premiums are more expensive for coverage during retirement because there’s increased likelihood of suffering a heart attack or stroke, or being diagnosed with cancer at older ages. With this coverage, retirees who make a claim are able to preserve retirement savings by using the insurance benefit to cover expenses associated with the critical illness. Expenses could include out-of-country medical procedures, home modifications or nursing care.
Generally, people purchase long-term care insurance for one of two reasons. They want to ensure they’ll have the funds to cover health care costs if they need long-term care. Or, if they require years of care at a later age, they want to preserve assets they wish to leave to heirs.
Long-term care insurance benefits can be used to cover the costs of home care or a long-term care residence. Benefits are payable if you can no longer properly care for yourself and need help with the activities of daily living, either because of a chronic health condition or deteriorating cognitive abilities.
You can apply for long-term care insurance well into retirement, but if you purchase a policy at a younger age you’ll benefit from more economical premiums. Also, if you wait too long, you risk developing a health condition that could make you uninsurable.
Another option is to self-insure. Set aside a sum of liquid investments you can access during retirement to cover any unexpected health care needs.
In retirement, you can use permanent life insurance to meet a variety of estate planning needs. Life insurance proceeds can cover taxes payable on estate assets, preserving the value of your estate for heirs. You can balance inheritances among beneficiaries, when one child might receive vacation property or the family business and you name another child as life insurance beneficiary. If you have an adult child with a disability or special needs, life insurance can fund a trust established for their care. As a charitable donation, you can potentially leave a larger gift using life insurance and benefit from flexibility in how you use the tax deduction.
You can purchase life insurance for estate planning before or during retirement. If your estate planning needs change over time, you can apply an existing policy to a new need simply by changing the beneficiary as required.
In retirement, Canadians can purchase a private health insurance plan that’s similar to an employer’s group benefits plan, covering costs such as dental care, vision care and many other health care services. Here are some of the approaches and thoughts that different retirees go through in deciding whether to purchase an extended health insurance plan: