I would offer that the best way to approach this is to talk to an (or more) expert(s) in the Financial planning and/or Insurance field; preferably someone who can address both. We all make our financial decisions based on a combination of what we can afford and what we think we need. I, like many others, was probably a bit penny-wise and pound-foolish at times.

As for my LTC, I waited until I was 64 to purchase ( a few years ago), mostly due to a bit of hounding by my daughter and Insurance/planner/friend. The premiums are higher than many of those mentioned by the younger folks posting here. However, they are also based on a number of variable factors such as: daily benefit, inflation rider, home care as well as facility care, alternative payment options, lifetime maximum benefits, etc.

a couple of years prior to this (when I was nearing retirement), I had some sessions with the planner/friend where he created a number of different scenarios of how my wife and I could live and spend our retirement including factors based on growth, death by me or my wife, long term illness, etc. Then we included scenarios with both additional life insurance and LTHC Insurance. It still took me another couple of years to finally take the LTHC insurance.

I subscribe to CR also, but sometimes they get stuck on repeating the same thing for a number of years. Most other general type statements I have seen on this say that if you have no assets to speak of or if you have over $2M to self-insure then maybe you skip the LTC. As has been mentioned, however, this depends on your sources of income. If the only source is the $2M and you need to draw from that for another 20 years, then maybe that won't do it.

There is no one answer, so I suggest you try to get some reputable help and run a number of scenarios. Even this is not foolproof since we did all of our scenarios based on my retirement income, assets, etc, and then the market crashed 2 years later.