Quick - You're Getting Older. Better Prepare Family and Finances for Long-Term Care
About This Article
Reality check. All of us are getting old, some at a quicker pace. Understanding the risk and the financial costs and burdens of aging is essential in preparing your family and finances for future long-term care.
Linda Maxwell
Linda Maxwell is a journalist who writes about aging, health, chronic illness, caregiving, and long-term care issues impacting older adults and their families.
The White House Conference on Aging is perhaps the most important meeting about aging and the related health issues of longevity held in the United States.
Reality check. All of us are getting old, some at a quicker pace. Understanding the risk and the financial costs and burdens of aging is essential in preparing your family and finances for future long-term care. This fact is the reason the White House brings in experts every ten years.
Quick - You're Getting Older
This is a once-a-decade conference sponsored by the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The purpose is to make policy recommendations to the president and Congress regarding aging. Every ten years, the White House brings in leaders from many areas to discuss aging and relate health issues, including long-term health care.
The last conference was held on July 13, 2015. Then U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy, M.D., M.B.A. told the crowd gathered at the White House and viewing via the internet that the issue of aging is a critical public issue.
“All of us our aging no matter what age we are at, to be clear.” — Vivek H. Murthy, M.D., M.B.A., former U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral
So we are all aging, as the former Surgeon General says. But does your current age reflect how old you feel? Like you're 40 years old going on 60? Or maybe, 40 going on 21?
Age may be just a number, but medical experts increasingly are saying it might not always be the right number to gauge your health.
How Quickly Are You Aging?
Your chronological age is just a number. Science now reveals that biological aging — the true measure of how your body is holding up — varies dramatically from person to person, and the clock starts earlier than most of us realize.
Not All Bodies Age the Same
A landmark study tracked nearly 1,000 men and women at ages 26, 32, and 38 — measuring 18 health indicators at each checkpoint. The findings were striking: while most people aged one biological year for each calendar year, some accumulated three biological years per calendar year. Others showed virtually no biological aging at all during the 12-year window.
By age 38, participants' biological ages ranged from as young as 28 to as old as 61 — a 33-year spread in people who were all the same chronological age. This research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, marks one of the first times aging has been studied dynamically — tracking change over time in young adults, rather than comparing older people who already show disease.
The researchers defined biological aging as the declining integrity of multiple organ systems. To track it, they relied on 18 biomarkers spanning from routine blood tests to more specialized genetic measurements.
Key biomarkers tracked in the study
- HDL cholesterol levels
- Telomere length
- Mean arterial blood pressure
- Kidney function markers
- Lung capacity measures
- Cardiovascular integrity
- Metabolic indicators
- + 11 additional markers
Of particular interest: telomere length — the protective caps on chromosome ends that naturally shorten with age. Shorter telomeres are associated with cellular aging and greater susceptibility to disease. Earlier studies on biological age used a single reading and focused on older populations who already had age-related illness. This study's real advance was tracking the pace of aging longitudinally, while participants were still young and apparently healthy.
Intervention to reverse or delay the march toward age-related diseases must be scheduled while people are still young." — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Why early detection matters
The long-term goal of this research is identifying signs of premature aging before chronic disease appears — sometimes years or decades in advance. Conditions like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and kidney or lung impairment often develop silently, with warning signs showing up in biomarkers long before a formal diagnosis.
Measuring biological age in younger people also opens the door to testing anti-aging interventions such as calorie-restrictive diets, exercise regimens, or therapeutic treatments — and evaluating whether they actually slow the biological clock or merely mask its effects.
Long-Term Care Connection
Health events don't wait until retirement. How your body responds to illness, surgery, or injury is shaped not just by your age on paper, but by how well your organ systems have held up over time. Someone who is biologically 61 at chronological age 38 faces a fundamentally different health trajectory than their peers — one that may involve a significantly greater likelihood of needing long-term care or rehabilitation services earlier in life.
Understanding your biological age — and taking steps to slow its advance — isn't just about longevity. It's about preserving independence, reducing the need for extended care, and arriving at your later years with your health reserves intact.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says if you reach the age of 65 you will have a 56% chance of needing some type of Long Term Health Care service before you pass. A 2013 U.S. Senate Commission report says 44% of all those who are receiving extended care services are under age 65.
These things, experts note, should be kept in mind when planning for retirement and the costs of long-term health care. Those costs are generally not paid for by health insurance or Medicare for those 65 and older. Only Long-Term Care Insurance will pay for these costs but you must have a policy in place before your health changes, generally in your 40s or 50s.
If your health is already poor you may have few options available unless you had planned ahead. Unfortunately, too many people wait until they have a health event to plan when it is best to plan before you retire when you still enjoy good health.
Preparing Your Family and Finances for Costs and Burdens of Aging
The consequences of aging are numerous. As we get older, the chance of needing help with normal living activities most of us take for granted increases substantially. With longevity, our risk of cognitive decline also increases.
The impact is not just financial. Yes, the cost of long-term care services increases each year. The national average cost for a skilled nursing home, according to a survey of long-term care costs by LTC News will be around $129,888 in 2026. The cost varies depending on location. The expected cost in 2040 should be over $180,000. That would take a big bite out of any budget.
Most extended care is not delivered in a nursing home. Assisted living facilities are less expensive and less institutional compared to a nursing home. The average cost in 2026 was $60,440 in base costs. Additional charges depending on the amount of help you need could increase the cost by as much as $1500 a month.
Most people would prefer to stay in their own home. The cost is not cheap but still less expensive than a nursing home. The 2026 costs, based on a 44 hour week, averaged $60,076 a year.
You can find the current and future cost of long-term care services where you live by using the LTC News cost of care calculator. Long-Term Care Insurance can be a great retirement planning solution, but act when you still enjoy good health, ideally before you retire.