This week, we’re talking about long-term care and why it’s important to make some decisions today about how you’re going to pay for long-term care in retirement.

Today we’re starting at the beginning to clarify what long-term care actually is. When many people think of long-term care, they think of nursing homes. But long-term care is a very wide spectrum of care that you or your loved ones might need when you can no longer perform everyday activities on your own.

Long-term care is defined by needing help with everyday activities, also called "activities of daily living." This includes bathing, dressing, grooming, using the toilet, eating, and moving around—for example, getting out of bed and into a chair.

When defined in this way, it’s easy to see why so many of us will need long-term care as we age.

Today, most long-term care is provided at home by unpaid family members and friends. In the case of dementia or Alzheimer's, long-term care could mean living at a memory care facility.

So it’s a wide spectrum of care. And chances are very good that you will need long-term care as you age. Tomorrow we’ll talk more about those statistics, but for today, I want you to think about how you would handle your own long-term care needs in retirement.

Even if you don’t need round-the-clock memory care, do you have family members who are willing to help out or willing to let you move in with them if you can no longer live on your own? Many children who provide long-term care to a parent reduce their hours or stop working entirely to help out an aging parent. They often end up contributing financially as well on top of the lost wages from not working. Are they going to be ok with that and are you going to be okay with that?

Would you be comfortable living in a retirement community or a nursing home or is it critically important that you stay in your own home?

First understanding how and where you want to live if you require long-term care is an important first step because it influences decisions you’ll make about paying for long-term care.

That’s it for today, Thanks for listening!

Tomorrow, come on back, because I’m going to cover the eye-opening statistics about long-term care.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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