Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Hi, I'm Christine Benz from Morning Star and welcome to the How to Retire podcast.

It's a companion to my book which is also called How to Retire.

Each episode will provide a bite-sized lesson about how to do some

aspect of retirement well. If you read my work regularly, you know that I'm a little bit obsessed

with the topic of long-term care, not just how to pay for it, but also all of the other dimensions

of it, like the impact on families. To help discuss that topic, I reached out to

Howard Gleckman. He's the author of a book called Caring for Our Parents, and he's also a senior

fellow at the Urban Institute, where he's affiliated with the Tax Policy Center and the program on

retirement policy. He also writes a great blog for Forbes. I asked him to discuss the basics of long-term

care, as well as the financial ramifications and implications for caregivers.

Howard, thank you so much for being here.

Christine, it's great to be with you. Well, it's great to have you because this is such an

important topic, and it's one that we only

touched lightly on in the book, so I wanted to go a little more deeply on the topic today.

But let's just start with some stage setting and talk about what long-term care is and how

it's different from conventional health care that we might receive.

So long-term care is not health care.

Long-term care is the personal assistance that people need to live the best life they can.

It might be balancing a checkbook.

It might be transportation to the doctor.

For people who are more frail, it might be help eating or transferring or going to the bathroom.

...