How much are you budgeting for long term or elder care?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just here to say we just put my mom age 76 in a LTC facility that costs 8k a month. She can afford it for 20 years due to her pension and annuity, but if she needs a higher level of care she will run out of money in 10. She’s saved all her life. She is physically strong but has vascular dementia and needs to be where she is. I don’t know how most people afford this stuff.

I'm sorry to hear about your mom. My stepmother has dementia and has needed care for several years and she's physically very healthy. She could live another 5 years or more. She recently ran out of all of her savings and is going on Medicaid. I'm still mad at the "financial advisor" who told her she had enough to "self-insure". She did have enough to self-insure for "an average stay", but not everybody is "average".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I’d have $250k a person earmarked per person. Chances are great that only one person will need it.

Why not take 1% of what you earn on that $500K and buy a long-term care policy that you and your spouse can share?

Who offers that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry to be blunt, but I am not obsessed about it. I really don't care much what happens to me if I am brain dead and can't remember anything or feel. If I have as stroke and my brain is gone, or I get severe dementia, I'd rather be euthanized. If I am mentally sharp but my body isn't working, I'd try to use my assets wisely to get minimum adequate care. I'd prefer to live at home and have a visiting (or live-in) housekeeper to cook and clean or a low wage type of caretaker. I hope I won't need a nurse or a medical professional. If I do.. this means I am severely disabled and my QOL is zero and I might as well get euthanized, although that would be a harder decision.. than being brain dead.

If I fail to accumulate enough or something bad happens and I lose most of what I saved from decades of hard work, then I would work on eliminating assets and being poor. This way you get government assistance and extra medical coverage. I will have to research which state/city pays the most and establish residency there before I become frail.

Most long-term care insurance claims start and/or end at home (not in a facility).
Why not just buy a long-term care insurance policy?
Particularly, long-term care partnership [i]policies can protect assets from Medicaid even if the policy runs out of benefits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Most people spend 2 years max in a LTC facility.

Most people who need long-term care are NOT in facilities. They live at home. Only 13% of the people who need long-term care are in facilities.

Anonymous wrote:

Elderly people would be living in the streets en masses if everyone needed 2 million minimum.

Not true. Medicaid pays for their care after they've exhausted their assets. They don't get thrown to the streets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep a box of ammo in the safe.

This. No way I am budgeting for skilled nursing or memory care. I will leave this world before that happens. Why do people think we were ever meant to live that way? Science makes our bodies live longer than they were meant to and left the brain behind.

Having watched it happen a few times, the vast majority of people don’t do this even if they think they will. You still feel like yourself while you’re declining so it doesn’t feel like “time” and then it’s too late.

This is true.
No one knows when it's "time".
And, do you really want to do that to your loved ones?
What kind of trauma do you think they'll experience when they find your brains on your bedroom wall?
I'm speaking from personal experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What everybody else does. Sell the house to cover nursing home and LTC.

80% of the people who need long-term care receive their care at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you move into a continuing care retirement community and can pay the monthly rates, then you are effectively taken care of, no? The one near me is quite nice as such communities go and a 1-bedroom starts at, I believe, $6k a month for a single occupant after you've bought into it, and as long I or my estate can keep paying the 6k plus whatever normal annual increases, the community has to take care of me regardless of what happens? Even if I move in completely healthy and five years later develop alzheimers? That's my understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong!

That's correct.
What if you need care before you move in?
They won't allow you in once you have developed a cognitive impairment or some other kind of chronic, debilitating disease.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:make sure you know exactly what your LTC policy covers. Most of them will leave in a crappy nursing center with little to no real care.

My MIL's long-term care insurance policy allowed us to choose the facility. They didn't tell her where to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I hope I won't need a nurse or a medical professional. If I do.. this means I am severely disabled and my QOL is zero and I might as well get euthanized, although that would be a harder decision.. than being brain dead.

Lemme tell ya, we are in exactly that position now. It is easy to glibly state you just wouldn't want to live, if your body stops working and you need care.... but imagine that you have kids, and a spouse, and you want to live to see your kids grow up and get married and have jobs and their own kids... it's funny how it turns out you DO want to live, after all.

Bravo.
So true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My plan is hopefully to exit while I still have the power to do so.

Have you really thought about it? Where will you draw the line, between a life worth living, and a life not worth living?

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I plan to simply go on a hunger strike and stop drinking fluids. I know this can be done - you can make a choice to stop hydrating and can die peacefully.

Yes, you can do that.
That's not the point.
The point is, will you really want to do that at some nebulous point in the future?
How do you determine when you are done with your life?

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just get a decent long-term care insurance policy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I’d have $250k a person earmarked per person. Chances are great that only one person will need it.

Why not take 1% of what you earn on that $500K and buy a long-term care policy that you and your spouse can share?

Who offers that?

alphabetically:
Bankers Life & Casualty
Genworth Life Ins. Co.
Mutual of Omaha
National Guardian Life Ins. Co.
Thrivent Financial
and others

[Anonymous]

The assisted living facilities are very expensive, and many of them will find a "medical reason" why they can't keep you free of charge once you run out of money. They'll take everything you have then tell you they're not equipped to provide the advanced level of care that you need once you run out of money. It's foolish to think that these corporations are in it for anything other than the money.

My mom is in her late 80's. She paid into LTC for years, then they recently raised the costs so much that it didn't make sense to keep it. So she paid a fortune into it and won't get anything from it.

We're saving for retirement, but I'm not planning on buying LTC insurance or going into an expensive assisted living facility unless it's clear that I'm at the very end. I wonder if the people who go into these places as active 70 year olds truly have the funds to keep living there for 15-20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep a box of ammo in the safe.

This. No way I am budgeting for skilled nursing or memory care. I will leave this world before that happens. Why do people think we were ever meant to live that way? Science makes our bodies live longer than they were meant to and left the brain behind.

You might not have the mental capacity at that time to pull the trigger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep a box of ammo in the safe.

This. No way I am budgeting for skilled nursing or memory care. I will leave this world before that happens. Why do people think we were ever meant to live that way? Science makes our bodies live longer than they were meant to and left the brain behind.

You might not have the mental capacity at that time to pull the trigger.

Ever had to make the decision to put down a beloved pet? There's a saying among vets, "better a week too early than a day too late."

Works for yourself too.