Kristi Rodriguez (Credit: Nationwide)
Long-Term Care Awareness Month starts Friday, and Kristi Rodriguez is one of the leaders in talking to financial professionals about how to spread long-term care (LTC) planning awareness.
Rodriguez is now vice president for thought leadership at Nationwide Financial. She oversees the company's Nationwide Retirement Institute think tank program, advanced consulting, practice management, and training and development teams.
She oversaw the recent Nationwide Retirement Institute retirement and caregiving planning survey project.
Rodriguez recently visited ThinkAdvisor's offices in New York to talk about the survey, and about Nationwide's efforts to get more Americans thinking about, and planning for the future.
Rodriguez has a bachelor's degree from Hampton University. She worked for a unit of UnitedHealth Group Inc. in business development, diabetes management and Affordable Care Act implementation in Connecticut from 2003 through 2012, then spent three years in marketing at Aetna Inc. before moving to Nationwide.
Here are three things Rodriguez said about LTC planning, drawn from her remarks during that visit.
1. Few consumers, or financial advisors, jump to talk about LTC planning.
The sample for Nationwide's recent survey included 1,462 people, ages 50 or older, who had investable assets of at least $50,000, and who were already retired, or planning to retire within the next 10 years.
About one-third of the participants said they were not talking to anyone — even their own spouses — about future LTC costs, Rodriguez said.
"No one wants to think about that," Rodriguez said.
Half of adults say they would rather die than live in a nursing home, Rodriguez said.
