Prepare far ahead for long-term care costs

November is Long-Term Care Awareness Month – a month dedicated to educating the public about the need to prepare for the potentially devastating costs of long-term care. And the more you know about these expenses, the better prepared you will be to deal with them.

To begin with, just how expensive is long-term care? Consider this: The average cost for a private room in a nursing home is more than $87,000 per year, according to the 2014 Cost of Care Survey produced by Genworth, a financial-services company.

And the average cost of an assisted living facility, which provides a level of car...