Here’s a way to minimize bet for long-term care

The time has come to try artificial intelligence over intuition in one critical financial decision: covering the costs of long term custodial care.

With the rising costs of custodial care, any family could find its savings demolished by the need to pay for care— especially in the case of dementia, Alzheimer’s or stroke.

The 2025 Genworth Cost of Care Survey says the national median annual cost for an in-home health aide is $82,530, and assisted-living community costs are $70,800— andmuchhigher in urban areas.

The alternative, Medicaid-funded nursing home care, is looking less and less attractive every day.

Onthe other hand, you might buy longterm care insurance and never use it. These days, that "use it or lose it" policy has been largely replaced by a combo ofLTCand death benefits, so if the care isn’t used, the death benefit goes to the heirs. And it locks in the coverage with no exposure to rising premiums.

Still, many people figure they can "self-insure" for the "reasonable costs" of long-term care. Is that a smart decision?

Or do youwant to buyLTCinsurance, so you can leave your estate to your spouse or children? And do you trust this decision to intuition, or guesswork, or luck?

TheWaterlily solution

We hear somuchthese days about the benefits of artificial intelligence. But when Waterlily founder andCEOLilyVittayarukskul explained howshewas using AI to showpeople the real likelihood of needing long-term custodial care, I must tell you Iwas simply blownaway.

Letmesay at the outset, this is not a programtrying to sellLTCinsurance.

In fact, it’s available at minimal cost to insurance companies and agents, wealth advisers and care providers, and only tangentially to the public. This young tech geniuswhostarted college at age 14, and interned atNASA at age 16, was motivated by the impact that uninsured care costs had on her ownfamily.

Graduating fromtheUniversity of California, Berkeley, with a degree in genetics and data science, Lily led product and engineering teams at multiple startups before foundingWaterlily, a company dedicated to making health care and its costs accessible, understandable and empowering for all, according to its mission statement.

She explained tomethat its algorithms use predictive AI that instantly analyzes frommore than 500 million historic datapoints to build a comprehensive care plan and model the ROI (return on investment) for your alternatives— ranging fromselfpay to insurance policies.

Asimple 3-minute online intake question is used to model your likely long-term care needs and best solutions— whether you’re starting to consider this at age 40 or are staring at the imminent need for care. The plan builds out a care/financial plan based on the impact on your family.

In simple terms, it shows you the "money in-money out" alternatives.

Waterlily can model the progression of care needs— fromearly or moderate care to full-time care, predicting the hours of care needed and future costs. That includes the amount of hours a family member might be required to contribute to your care.

It can review your coverage by reading your current long-term care insurance documents or help agents demonstrate choices between policy types to estimate the hypotheticalmaximumbenefit.

Waterlily gives you the odds— and costs.

This is not a sales pitch. If you knew there was a 1 in5chance that your housewould burn down, you’d buy insurance.

Waterlily.comis currently allowing selected individuals to join itswaitlist to use the programonline, free, to figure it out for themselves.

Plain old regular intelligence says that’s definitelyworth a try. And that’s the Savage Truth.

Terry Savage is a registered investment adviser and the author of four bestselling books, including "The Savage Truth on Money." Terry responds to questions on her blog at TerrySavage.com.

Terry Savage

The Savage Truth