A Nationwide Financial consumer survey conducted in 2025 highlights an enormous problem for the advisory community, indicating that fewer than 20% of American adults have any plan in place to fund future Long-Term Care (LTC) needs.  The rest?  They’re self-funding…whether they realize it or not.

Regardless of your role, every member of the advisory community—including you—is entrusted with guiding clients through life’s most consequential transitions, including loss of independence, cognitive decline, and the need for LTC.  Yet, despite the availability of a broad range of insurance-based solutions to address that risk, most in the advisory community either fail to recommend them or allow clients to default to self-funding those future expenses.  

From an advisory perspective, a massive demographic wave, the Silver Tsunami, the Baby Boomers, etc., have arrived, so it's not some futuristic trend.  It’s a direct and growing force that will impact the time, resources, and practices across the financial services spectrum.  However, the inability to see the consequences for the consumer and LTC isn’t just an advisory blind spot; it’s a lack of self-awareness cascading into unintended consequences.  Those consequences won’t stay hidden much longer because, when millions of Americans actually need care, and there is no plan, the following realities become impossible to ignore…..

Client Engagement and Education:  Clients without a formal Long-Term Care plan won’t just need engagement and education—they will expect you to guide them through the complexities of finding, coordinating, and funding care, because they’ve been paying you to do exactly that. That means proactive communication isn’t optional, and neither is understanding the care resources and options available in every market where your clients reside.

"Claims Processing" and Administrative Resource Allocation:   From the largest wirehouse firms on down, this has been ignored for decades. Clients encouraged—or allowed—to self-fund Long-Term Care don’t come with a claims department, and now the advisory community must own it. Advisors, attorneys, CPAs, and others will be expected to guide clients through complex paperwork, documentation, and the processes required to access, manage, qualify for, and pay for care, forcing the allocation of time and resources to administrative responsibilities no one was ever trained, staffed, or compensated to handle.

Specialized Knowledge and Training:   With so many clients self-funding Long-Term Care, specialized knowledge won’t be optional—it will be expected. Understanding how care is delivered, managed, and funded becomes essential, often requiring additional training, certifications, or collaboration with specialists. Without it, advisory guidance is being delivered on a risk that is not fully understood.

Collaboration with Other Professionals:   Clients who self-fund their care will require coordination with attorneys, CPAs, care providers, and placement specialists, so what was once a focus on core competency mushrooms into a multi-disciplinary responsibility.  Whether you're ready to support it or not, this is what happens after kicking the can down the road for decades.

Adapting Revenue Streams:  The growing number of clients self-funding care doesn’t just create planning complexity—it creates economic pressure across the advisory community. As care costs are funded, assets are depleted, and decisions become reactive. At that same point, the demands on time, coordination, and administration increase, and force service models and compensation structures to evolve to support work no one will be paid for.

Ethical Decision-Making:   Ethical considerations are foundational to those self-funding Long-Term Care, as decisions shift to the responsibility of ensuring their interests are protected, not just financially, but also in how care is ultimately delivered. That means being prepared to clearly define how care preferences will be maintained, how senior living options will be accessed, and how those outcomes are sustained as conditions, costs, and circumstances evolve.

Compliance and Regulatory Considerations:  Compliance with laws, regulations, and taxation governing Long-Term Care will become unavoidable as more clients self-fund. Planning that was once ignored becomes the harsh reality of paying for and managing care—requiring clear documentation, consistent application, and defensible recommendations as care-related decisions intersect with tax, legal, and financial outcomes.

For those reading this and rolling your eyes, do you remember Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, and Countrywide—and where you were in August 2008?  The risks in the housing market weren’t unknown. They were simply dismissed, misunderstood, or rationalized away until the consequences became unavoidable.  Long-Term Care is no different. The risk is already known. The consequences are already understood.  The only question is whether the advisory community addresses it now—or waits until it plays out in real time, one client, one family, and one failed plan at a time.

The advisory community’s tacit approval of the self-funding for Long-Term Care isn’t a neutral position.  It’s a decision with consequences, because when the need for care arrives without a plan, what follows isn’t theory, modeling, or debate. It’s execution, and it’s chaos, and it’s families, assets, and decisions in crisis.  At that point, the absence of planning becomes exposed as incompetence or neglect, for a known risk carried by the consumer. 

Ignoring LTC risk won't eliminate it....It only delays the moment it becomes your problem too!