The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: kythuen on May 29, 2013, 08:46:47 AM
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So, I'm working right now to get my father into an assisted living facility up north near me, and it's raising a ton of questions for me - not just about his finances, but about mine as well.
He's 82, and he's actually very well provisioned for his old age. He's got both a military pension and social security, which means he's "taking home" more right now than I am - and his job is watching golf with his eyes closed! He's making more than enough to house him in a pretty nice place in a shared room. He could probably handle a single room, but doesn't want money to be quite THAT tight even though almost every need will be provided for.
We're doing this because while he can still do a lot of things, it's no longer really safe for him to be living on his own. We've even passed the point where either of us would feel comfortable with him just moving in with me - I'm out of the house upwards of 10 hours a day, and he just needs more than that.
We've got other issues to worry about, but as I work through this, I keep thinking about the advice we get and give about figuring out your monthly expenses as a base for planning retirement (or early retirement). How are people factoring in the possibility of living so long that they can't live alone anymore? Are people just planning to live with relatives? Or just praying to drop dead in perfect health at an extremely advanced age? Long term care insurance? Relying on Medicaid? Or are people actually adjusting their expected expenses after a certain age to reflect the highway robbery of assisted living or a nursing home?
I'm just curious about what kind of plans people might have. Personally, at this point I have NO plans, which strikes me as a bit silly.
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We have a live-in caregiver program in Canada that allows you to hire nurses from ex. the Phillipines to live in your home. I plan to stay in my home as long as I possibly can and go this route if need be. I've bought a place that can accommodate aging (no stairs) and will make modifications if they become necessary. By this time our triplex will be paid off and I would also be okay offering a discount rent or rent to own to family and friends. I prefer my own community of people to a home.
My mother is a lot more extraverted than me and I think she would actually prefer the retirement home to assisted living scenario. Here in Canada most of the homes are income tested.
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I work in the senior living field and I'm glad to see someone bringing this up. I always lumped all this stuff together as "nursing homes" but there's actually a pretty amazing range of different living situations available, and some of it is really nice. (Don't worry, I'm not going to try to sell you anything). If you keep up your health and make the effort to stay active it's actually entirely possible to have good friends and an engaged lifestyle up into your 90s. Relying on Medicaid is not a good idea, often the only places that will take Medicaid are not going to be the ones where you would actually want to live (or see your loved one living). Long term care is tricky, there are a lot of companies leaving that business but its worth looking into. It's a good idea to have all these conversations with your family members way in advance so you have some idea of what everyone is hoping for.
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My dad took the fingers-in-ears-lalala approach to planning ahead and is now living in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid as he declines into dementia. I neither want to (see "lalalala") nor could care for him (and I do manage his affairs, visit regularly, and advocate for him), but it's still a pretty unpleasant setting to have to witness, much less live in.
My mother (my parents are divorced) has LTCI insurance and is planning to move into a retirement community that offers everything from (fully) independent living to skilled nursing. That (the retirement community) will of course cost a big chunk of change. Yes, my parents were an ant married to a grasshopper. Yes, I am inordinately grateful my mother is such a good planner (I would, in fact, knock myself out to care for her and indeed will if the need arises, but it is good to know she has other resources in place also). I have suggested she consider buying a home in our modest neighborhood with the understanding that I'd help her out as she ages, but she has said that once she sells her current house she doesn't want to deal with home ownership any more, and the retirement community she is contemplating will of course provide many more care options than I could.
As for me, I'm planning on fiscal conservatism. I intend/hope to stay in the home I live in now, which is a modest one-story in a liberal tax-and-spend community (myself included!) with good public services and transport, including services and transport focused particularly on the needs of the elderly/disabled (it is also near major, and good, medical care facilities). I've developed a plan (but not, yet, the budget) to remodel our home in a way that will increase its footprint somewhat but also create a separate apartment that could be occupied by a caregiver, or conversely, me.
I'm interested in LTCI but my sense is that the market is sufficiently ill-defined and/or ill-equipped that it's far from obvious that those of us who are, hopefully, decades from needing to use LTC should purchase policies.
There are new policies called longevity policies that are basically deferred fixed annuities, that one might buy at say age 65 and have kick in at say age 85 (regardless of your health/abilities at that point) that may offer a reasonable alternative to LTCI, but I don't know enough to know one way or the other.
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This is a great post. My father is turning 79 tomorrow and I can see us heading in this direction in a year or two.
He took a reverse mortgage out a few years ago (don't ask, he didn't need the money, but he did it anyway). I suspect that his long-term care will depete all of his assets.
That's fine by me, but I don't want to do the same thing to MY kids...I hope to stay healthy longer than my dad, who didn't take care of himself, but still,it is something to consider.
I don't want to be a burden to my children, that is for sure.