Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
Guides › Long-Term Care Planning
Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: hybrids (life insurance or an annuity with a long-term-care rider) fix the two things people hate about traditional policies — premiums that can be raised on the whole class later, and decades of payments that vanish if care is never needed. In exchange you pay materially more per dollar of care benefit, usually as a large single premium or a short fixed schedule. Hybrids buy certainty; traditional buys efficiency.
This is a product-design question. Get a designer.
Hybrid quotes are bespoke — the same dollars structure five different ways. The matching service below introduces you to advisers who pay to meet you. Ask specifically whether they sell both designs or only one.
Before you start, what actually happens. The form is run by Kapitalwise, our advisor-matching partner. Kapitalwise sends your details to advisers who pay for the introduction, so expect calls and texts. Clear Money Guide is paid when you submit the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. This is free to you and there is no obligation to hire anyone.
The Kapitalwise form opens here — you stay on this page.
What happens when you press the button
It asks about nine questions — age, investable assets, location — then your name, email and phone number, and verifies the phone by text. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button.
The structural trade
Traditional: pay-as-you-go premiums, larger care pool per dollar, but carriers can — and historically did — raise rates class-wide with state approval, and a lapsed policy after year 20 returns nothing. The modern policies are priced far more conservatively than the notorious early generations, but the structural right to raise rates remains.
Hybrid: premiums are contractually guaranteed, whatever is not used for care goes to heirs as a death benefit, and refund riders can return the premium if you walk away. The costs: a much larger commitment up front, a smaller care pool per dollar committed, and an opportunity cost on the lump sum that the breakeven calculator can price — enter the lump sum’s foregone growth as the premium path and compare honestly.
Who lands where. The person with a large taxable cash position who hates use-it-or-lose-it and wants a guaranteed contract tends to land hybrid. The person maximizing care coverage per dollar of cash flow, and disciplined enough to hold a policy for decades, tends to land traditional. Both beat the most common outcome — deciding nothing until underwriting decides for you: the cost of waiting.
Baseline prices for the traditional side: 2026 premiums by age.
A life policy’s care rider is a third option again, and the tax section it sits under changes what it pays — 7702B versus 101(g).