Why Suze Orman Is Wrong About Long-Term Care Insurance for Retirees With Over $2 Million

Suze Orman has spent decades urging Americans to buy long-term care insurance. In her AARP column on the subject, she described spending more than $2 million on her own mother’s late-life care and pushed readers not to repeat the gamble. Her recurring line, repeated on her show and across her social channels, is blunt: “Every parent in their 50s and 60s owes it to their kids to consider long-term care insurance as family protection. I know the premiums are steep.”

For a 65-year-old couple sitting on $2.4 million in retirement assets, that advice is wrong. The premium dollars buy a policy whose worst-case payout the portfolio can already absorb, and the math leaves heirs measurably poorer when a claim never comes.

Running the actual numbers

Start with what the policy costs. Per current pricing for a couple at 65, hybrid life-LTC coverage runs $5,000 to $8,000 a year combined. Traditional standalone policies come in cheaper: the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance’s 2025 price data puts the average annual premium at $3,280 for a healthy 65-year-old man and $5,290 for a woman of the same age. The AALTCI’s freshly released 2026 Price Index, published in July 2026, pegs the combined annual premium for a couple both age 65 at $7,030 with a 3% compound inflation rider included. Either way, cash leaves the household every year until a claim or death.

Stretch that out 20 years, to age 85, when the typical LTC need arrives. Cumulative premiums total $70,000 to $160,000. Redirect those same dollars into a portfolio earning 6% a year and they compound to $130,000 to $300,000. The 6% assumption is reasonable: the 10-year Treasury was yielding approximately 4.7% in mid-August 2026, touching a 20-month high, so a bond ladder alone closes much of the gap, and a balanced portfolio with equity exposure has historically cleared the rest over 20-year stretches.

Now look at the liability side. The 2025 CareScout Cost of Care Survey, one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, found that nursing home care runs $9,581 per month for a semi-private room and $10,798 per month for a private room. Those figures represent more modest year-over-year increases of 2% and 1% respectively, a significant deceleration from the 7% and 9% jumps recorded in 2024. Assisted living, a step below full nursing facility care, hit a national median of $6,200 per month, itself up 5% from the prior year. The Administration on Aging puts average care duration at roughly 2.2 years for men and 3.7 years for women, putting the total expected lifetime bill somewhere between $200,000 and $475,000 in today’s dollars. Care costs have risen faster than general inflation across nearly every year of the past decade, so the real number for someone entering care a decade from now will be higher still.

The self-insurance pool covers that expected liability. If neither spouse ever needs extended care, the money stays in the estate. Premiums paid to a carrier do not.

The variable that flips the answer

Portfolio size, and almost nothing else, determines whether Orman’s advice helps or hurts. A $300,000 care bill on a $2.4 million portfolio takes a 13% bite. That same bill on a $700,000 nest egg takes 43% and leaves the surviving spouse exposed for decades. The math, not the philosophy, is what separates these two households.

That is why the breakeven for traditional LTC coverage sits between $500,000 and $1.5 million in liquid retirement assets. In that range, the premium buys genuine protection against ruin. Above $2 million, the carrier is selling coverage against a shock the portfolio already absorbs, while collecting 20 years of premiums in the process. Context matters: Milliman data from 2024 shows that only about 5.8 million Americans currently hold standalone LTC coverage, a figure that has stagnated even as care costs climb. The households that benefit most from those policies are not wealthy retirees. They are the families that a prolonged care event would wipe out entirely.

What this couple should do instead

1. Earmark an LTC sleeve. Set aside $300,000 to $500,000 in a conservative bond ladder dedicated to potential care costs. At the 10-year Treasury yield near 4.7%, the sleeve generates roughly $14,000 to $23,500 a year in interest while preserving principal.
2. Price a hybrid before dismissing insurance entirely. A hybrid life-LTC policy pays a death benefit if care is never needed, which removes the “use it or lose it” problem of traditional coverage. For families who want a backstop without the premium-burn risk, this is the version worth a quote.
3. Pull the CareScout Cost of Care numbers for your state. Care costs in Connecticut differ sharply from those in Mississippi. The 2025 survey covers data across all 50 states at the Metropolitan Statistical Area level, so plug your state’s actual monthly figure into the same arithmetic above.
4. Map the Medicaid look-back. In most states, Medicaid reviews the prior 60 months of asset transfers before determining eligibility for long-term care coverage. California has been phasing out its look-back period, with full elimination expected by mid-2026, but rules elsewhere remain firmly at five years. Couples planning to protect non-portfolio assets need that clock running well in advance of any potential need.

Orman’s advice fits the median household. For the couple sitting on $2.4 million, following it costs six figures over the next two decades.

Editor’s note: This pass updated the AALTCI premium reference to include the 2026 Price Index figure of $7,030 combined annually for a couple both age 65 with a 3% inflation rider, published by the AALTCI in July 2026. The 10-year Treasury yield was refreshed to approximately 4.7% as of mid-August 2026, reflecting a 20-month high. The Medicaid look-back language was revised from “49 states” to “most states” to account for California’s ongoing phase-out of its look-back period. The excerpt was also corrected to align with Orman’s own published figure of more than $2 million spent on her mother’s care.

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