Yeah, true. I was like "But I won't have to pay rent if I get disabled!....Unless in a couple of years my mom actually needs the money. Huh."

Ugh, I should probably look into that. And long term care maybe--I'm guessing it's cheaper if you're younger when you get it?

As a single/no kids, I'm really not worried about long-term care. Medicaid will cover that shit! (In my experience, you can get in the door of a nice place with one month in cash and then get on Medicaid.)

That's good to know!

I was thinking about long-term care = wandering away from an African safari in the middle of the night with raw steak in my pocket, but then I realized that wouldn't be fair to the animals who would get in trouble for it. All the chemicals in my body wouldn't be good for them, in any case.

Not an expert here, but I did go to the university's workshop on insurance.

Disability insurance is about maintaining your lifestyle if you should become disabled an therefore unable to work. I think that it is particularly important for single people who don't have other sources of income like a spouse or substantial investments.

Long-term care insurance presumes that you are so sick that your current lifestyle is not an option. You WILL get long-term care, whether it is paid by you, or Medicare, or Medicaid, but you will have to run through all of your own money first. So long-term care insurance works to preserve your family's finances by putting the insurance company as first payer instead of your family's accumulated resources. It is crucial for people who are married or have kids.

Thanks Rick!

I think I have disability insurance through work. And the sign-up period was a month ago. At least they automatically adjusted me to paying for a single person instead of two.

Yeah, Connie, the sales pitch was that the work policy would give me 60% of my salary, so I should bump that up, given that expenses probably go up if you're disabled, not down.

The other funny thing that happened on this call was I said I am at my current job "for the long haul," and then had to amend that to say the next 2-3 years. I've never been anywhere more than four years!

Ugh, so for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, my management are thinking of assigning me a book of business earlier than expected.

I guess I could quit. I suppose I need to put aside some time this weekend to update my external resume and start looking at job postings for reals.

What Rick said, but not just for people who are married and/or have kids, for everyone. Medicaid will get you into a nursing home, but in my experience, private payers (including people with insurance) tend to get better care. Also, as Rick said, Medicaid won't pay until you have exhausted your own resources. Meaning, until you have $20 in the bank and have sold your house and car and cashed out your kids' college funds and are destitute. Medicaid also won't pay for things like dentures and glasses and Netflix and the good adult diapers. And care is expensive. Mom's care was $5000 a month, not including the above-mentioned "luxuries", and we were in the cheapest place that was acceptable, in a state with a fairly low cost of living.

If you don't have kids, get a small life insurance policy that's enough to cover disposal of your mortal remains, and maybe your debts if you care about that (I don't; after I'm dead, fuck 'em), and focus on buying disability and long-term care insurance. Me, I have as much as I can afford to buy.