08/11/2025
Let us help with your Long Term Care planning!!
Tom lived in Sarasota, Florida, with his wife, Linda.
For years, they talked about long-term care insurance—but Tom always said, “We have investments. We’ll be fine.”
Then Linda had a stroke.
Suddenly, “we’ll be fine” turned into $10,000 a month for her nursing home. Tom didn’t have coverage, so he started withdrawing an extra $120,000 each year from their investments to pay for Linda’s care.
On paper, he still lived on $200,000—but now he had to take out $320,000 total just to cover everything.
That decision cost him.
Because of the extra withdrawals, his federal taxes jumped by nearly $29,000 per year.�
And thanks to IRMAA surcharges, he and Linda now pay an extra $350 per month for Medicare—over $4,000 more each year.
And Florida? No state tax. But federal taxes and Medicare penalties didn’t care where he lived—they just followed the income.
Tom could have bought a lifetime long-term care plan years ago for less than what he now pays in penalties and taxes alone.
Now he knows: the real cost wasn’t just the care—it was the price of doing nothing.
