Advanced Wellbeing offers financial therapy insights each week to inform more details about financial therapy.
Dying and money collide in ways most of us never think about until we have to. When someone receives a terminal diagnosis, they and their loved ones are forced to deal with emotional and financial complexities around death at the same time. A financial planner who is also a trained death doula helps clients navigate both.
If you have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, you are likely to see dramatic increases in your costs next year. This is due to a combination of factors that a July 18, 2025, article from CBS News calls a “one-two punch” of “double-digit premium increases along with a sharp drop in the federal subsidies that most consumers depend on to buy the coverage.”
What does a “private equity firm” do? These investment companies buy private businesses with a goal to increase their value and sell them for a profit. If a PE firm owns your hospital or long term care facility, cost-cutting may result in lower quality care.
One of the saddest experiences for a financial advisor is, despite our best efforts, being unable to protect elderly clients from themselves when they are losing cognitive abilities. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this happen several times and have struggled to find solutions. There are no simple answers, but we do recommend several strategies.
A study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund in January 2023 compared U.S. health care costs with those in other developed nations, the majority of which have some form of universal health care. The U.S. was the most expensive. Yet any comparison of a country’s health care costs must also consider any differences in tax burdens.
The high cost of health insurance raises two questions: One, are health insurance companies reaping excess profits while policyholders pay hefty premiums? And two, why don’t more insurance companies jump into the health insurance market, providing needed competition that would help drive down the cost of health insurance?
In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens vividly brought to life one of fiction’s most famous misers, Ebenezer Scrooge. The common view is that Scrooge cared for no one but himself. In truth, he didn’t care for himself any more than he did for others, and he refused to use his wealth for even basic self-care and wellbeing.
An essential component of planning for retirement and old age is building financial resources to pay for long-term care. Yet having enough money is not automatically a guarantee of getting the best care you need when you need it.
The biggest problem is availability. Why is it so common to wait for a health crisis before we arrange for care?
Last week’s column concluded that, while long-term care insurance is unaffordable for most Americans, everyone needs a long-term health care plan.
Two major issues to consider in creating your own long-term care plan are where you will live and how you will pay for the care you are likely to need. In part because of cost, most seniors want to stay in their own homes.
If you want to stop a conversation cold, just ask a group of friends, “Do you ever worry that you might outlive your retirement income?” The response is likely to be nervous laughter. It doesn’t occur to most people to seriously consider this possibility.
The greatest financial risk for depleting retirement resources is an unexpected and lengthy stay in a long-term health care facility, like a nursing home or an assisted living center.
