Crafting Long-Term Care Conversations

Long-term care can be the subject of tough conversations — even for experienced financial advisors. During a recent panel interview taking place at our 2025 FinServe Summit, Terry Parham Jr, CFP®, RICP ®, TPCP ®, WMCP ®, CEPA ®, Terrell Dinkins, ChFC ®, RICP ®, and Scott Winslow, MSFS, ChFC ®, CLU ®, RICP ®, AEP ®, CCFC, spoke about their experiences having long-term care conversations with clients and tips and tricks other advisors can use to facilitate these conversations, as well as methods that make clients more comfortable with the sensitive subject matter.

Starting the Conversation

When discussing how she opens long-term care conversations, Dinkins advocated for a method that treats it like any other part of financial planning. She stated, “Part of the whole process of comprehensive planning is covering retirement planning, covering healthcare planning, covering legacy planning, and so I approach that subject by saying, ‘Now we’ve talked about the retirement aspects of the comprehensive story, let’s take a look at the healthcare component.’ And that takes the edge off so [clients] feel like it’s part of the whole cycle of comprehensive planning.”

Dinkins has a strong point at the core of this approach — long-term care planning is an important part of a comprehensive financial plan. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 70% of Americans turning 65 will need long-term health care later in their lives.1 With a percentage that represents nearly three of every four Americans who reach retirement age, long-term care is not a topic advisors or clients can afford to be shy about.

Winslow opts for a different approach: based on his experience, he believes that many clients who have not seen a family member or other loved one go through a long-term care crisis may not fully grasp the depth of the situation and the importance of long-term care. Winslow says, “The first thing I’m going to do is ask them about their family and what they’ve experienced. We know that that conversation with someone [who] hasn’t experienced that is going to be much more difficult, but that’s how I bring it up. And if you get them talking about that...we’re leading them into a conversation to provide solutions and modeling to provide a better outcome for them.”

Setting Goals

Winslow went on to discuss another important component of any form of retirement planning — clients have likely already pictured what they want. He says, “It’s about lifestyle too. Do you want to have people coming in and helping you and have a... better life for you and your spouse at the end stages of retirement, so your kids can enjoy you and not be remembered by those awful crises that can happen at end of life?”

Breaking Trends

Long-term care conversations can also be incredibly important due to their ability to break trends. According to Parham, many families who have not historically had the means to pay for care may default to assuming children or grandchildren will provide long-term care services for their older relatives who need it. As Parham states, “That’s a big mental shift...it comes back to education and diving into those sometimes-uncomfortable conversations to show the different doors that a person can decide to walk toward and just help them find the one that’s best for their circumstances.”

Perspective

To Parham’s point, long-term care solutions will differ from one client to the next. However, as the need for long-term care is highly prevalent, advisors should be facilitating these conversations with clients to avoid the potential long-term care crises that can occur when clients do not have a plan in place.

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