As boomers move up into that ‘retirement’ age, where their parents probably started to fail, they are concerned about their future. Often we ‘hedge our bets’ by buying insurance ‘just in case’. To cover all those bases, we need insurance for our homes, our health, our cars, our income, our investments, and our future care should the worst happen.
The main concern in the beginning of ‘older age’ is health. The older we get, the more health concerns we will probably have. That’s just life. However, boomers often are more healthy than their elders, spending more time exercising and eating better. Even so, health insurance is expensive, an the out-of-pocket expenses can be astronomical for someone on a fixed budget. This is one reason a boomer may want to have supplemental insurance. Those that can’t afford it may just not get the health care they need, especially as the future of Social Security and Medicare are wobbly at best.
Then what happens if you have to go into a home? Do you have to lose everything you’ve ever earned and saved? Maybe, but long-term care insurance should be considered to keep this from happening.
The good news for boomers is that the insurance market knows that boomers need insurance and that they are savvy shoppers. They want the facts, not the hype, and they are willing to shop around and do the research to get the best product for their money. They may be senile some day, but today, they are taking care of themselves by making insurance companies compete for their business.
So that’s what they should do: do the research and make them compete for your business. Insurance is how they plan to keep what they’ve earned, and it should do for them what they need it to do at a decent cost.
Can everyone afford insurance? No, that, too, is a fact of life, but boomers have a lot of options as the largest group of consumers, so they need to use that to get what they need: good insurance!