That depends on WHY you are 'skipping' LTC. Are you just ignoring a future need, or can you afford to self-insure? Do you have family who can honestly, in this uncertain financial environment, afford to take care of you and hire the home healthcare services you will need as you age?

The people I know who have retired and not been hurt by these bad times had good financial advisors with fiduciary responsibility to them; e.g., they were able to pay, and WILLING to pay, for good advice.

The people I know who are having a much tougher time, refused to pay for good advice and thought they had done a good job planning. But it turns out they hadn't, and when the economy went bad so did their retirement plans.

We were fortunate to have received good advice even though we are not, and never have been, wealthy or even upper middle-class. We weren’t even good savers and used to carry a lot of debt. But 10 years ago, we ‘buckled down’ after realizing it was time to get serious about planning for a good retirement, instead of just HOPING for one.

So we paid off our debts, including the mortgage; got our affairs in order, and went through every ‘worst case’ scenario we could conceive of, so that we would have options not only now, but for the future. We have weathered the market storms with very little damage.

More importantly, what little loss we suffered has made absolutely no impact upon our lifestyle. Disability, lingering illness, or death to one of us, will not adversely affect the surviving spouse. This was our true retirement goal - not just an age but a lifestyle goal.

Financial planning is a holistic process. You cannot take one element out and expect to have a comprehensive plan uniquely suited to your own set of circumstances and preferences. Ignoring unpleasant scenarios will only weaken the strength of your planning process.

It would be like pulling the legs off a spider, one by one. Its balance might survive the loss (ignoring) one leg; possibly even two. But remove (ignore) too many supports, and the spider eventually falls down and is unable to get up again.