The biggest financial threat to your retirement isn't the stock market. It's a nursing home!

At $60,000 to $90,000 a year in Mississippi, a three-year stay can consume everything a family spent 40 years building. And Medicare, the program most people count on, covers almost none of it.

Medicaid will cover long-term care, but it has rules. Specifically, a five-year lookback that means planning done after the fact doesn't count.

The families who protected their estates didn't get lucky. They planned while they were still healthy.