What is your Long Term Care Plan? (pension, separate, vacation)
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For people who are planning to check themselves out when they are no longer able to live independently, understand that you may not be in physical shape to make that happen.
My husband told me that he wanted to commit suicide the last time I brought him home from the hospital. He didn't want to live life in a hospital bed, even in our home with me changing his diapers.
Although he had walked into that hospital, he was unable to walk out. He couldn't kill himself, however, without my help. I loved him and didn't want this for him, either, but there was no way that I was going to jail for what would be viewed basically as murder or, best case scenario, manslaughter. I said no, and he suffered for 3 more weeks before he passed in his sleep.
Don't put your loved one in this position. Have a backup plan or at least accept that checking yourself out may not happen.
I myself would simply stop eating or drinking anything. You can only live 3 or 4 days without water.
We joke that I am my DH's LTC plan. I have LTC on myself that I purchased 20 years ago before we were married. My plan has gone up in cost a couple times, but is still quite affordable. Now there is a class action lawsuit regarding the new proposed increases and there are plans afoot to possibly have the plan bought out by another insurance company. They sent me a long confusing letter, and I was asked to make a choice as to whether I wanted to accept an increase and continue coverage, wait for a new provider and accept the transfer if and when one can be found, or get some amount of refund of premiums and cancel the policy. One last option was to see what the new provider offers, and then make a choice. I took that last option. If I am the last one standing, I could pay for IL or AL out of pocket from monthly cash flow, and NH would be paid "mostly" that way, and could always recover the balance from my estate if necessary.
We have had 2 sets of neighbors recently opt for a CCRC. Neither couple was really in a state of needing it yet, so they went to the IL section of the facilities. I think both couples were premature in their moves, but who am I to say? If it makes them feel safer and better able to face their future, fine. I know the couple nearest to us was influenced by watching what is happening with two other couples on our street. Both husbands are caring for their wives who are deteriorating rapidly. One wife has been fighting cancer for at least 4 years. The other wife seems to have had dementia really sneak up on her, and then she went downhill very rapidly. Her hubby is so sweet and takes her for walks every day but she doesn't even know where she is, and never speaks anymore. At his age, I don't know how long he will be able to keep this up. We've noticed the occasional appearance of women we assume are caregivers lately, so he is getting help, and they can afford it.
For me, I think going into a CCRC would make me "old before my time". We will stay on our own until their are actual challenges on a regular basis before we would make that move. I doubt we will go CCRC anyway, we would probably just go with an IL place, then AL as needed.
Yes it's my #1 fear and the motivator to stay poor. Poor people get in-home care if needed. Insurance companies like to toss you guys into those horrific nursing homes where people sit there and die of loneliness. Or infection. Those places stink
If the insurance companies change to allow in-home care, then I will work 10 hrs more per week and take my SS later on.
The in-home care programs I am aware of are just temporary until they slide you into hospice. Another evil organization who pumps you so full of drugs your heart wants to pop out of your chest under the guise of "compassion care". Sure some drugs are good but they wanted my FIL to take powerful drugs due to a tear in his skin. they only want you living in their program less than 1 year, you are not allowed to get better.
Okay, here's my plan, but I'm not suggesting it's good for everyone. I just think it suits me because I've been studying health and nutrition for a long time.
I've been practicing a healthy lifestyle for many decades and it has been improving tremendously in the last two decades as more and more discoveries have been made regarding foods that promote healthy aging.
Essentially, my plan is to stay healthy until I die, and it has been done many times so it's nothing new. I met a man at his 100th birthday, he was healthy and stayed healthy until he died at 109 years old. He never took drugs and never needed a cane or walker. He drove himself around until he was 104 years old. That's just one of many.
If you want good health in your old age, you have to earn it by living a healthy lifestyle.
Okay, here's my plan, but I'm not suggesting it's good for everyone. I just think it suits me because I've been studying health and nutrition for a long time.
...
If you want good health in your old age, you have to earn it by living a healthy lifestyle.
And be sure to select the right parents with good genes in addition to a healthy lifestyle.
It seems everyone says they don't want to ever move to a care home, I wonder what percentage of those who eventually do make the decision themselves versus by children or caregivers.
I know, it's amusing. NOBODY ever says, "Well, gee, I hope to end my life drooling and having my diaper changed by poorly-paid strangers."
Then you have the self-righteous doofuses who chime in with their imperious declarations that families should always take care of their elderly just like people from <insert foreign country or obscure culture> do.
Here's a newsflash. Life doesn't always work out the way you plan it. Imagine that.
My mother had to put her mother in a nursing home when she was 92. Why? Because my mother was already 71 herself and had a husband who'd become disabled in WWII and needed additional care as HE got older and his body began to break down. Her siblings were a deceased sister who'd had cerebral palsy herself and a brother who was suffering with the same kidney disease as she and her mother had, only his was far more advanced. That left my mother and the youngest brother, who late in life became the born-againest Christian ever to walk the earth and who knew Jesus better than anyone else who ever lived, and he was way too busy telling everyone how simple it was to understand that you need to be saved to take care of HIS MOTHER and had more money than anyone else in the family besides, but it had to go to help missionaries, you see, not his mother's care.
The nursing home she was in is well-regarded and always gets high scores for its care. It's owned by a church denomination, so you sign over your assets and hope you get your money's worth before the angels come. She lived there for two years, mostly sleeping.
Two years ago Mom herself took a fall and began to deteriorate rapidly over six months. We feared that the time was coming when we would have to do the same because here's the thing--when you make it to 91, your own kids area already old people themselves and cannot lift you and probably have health issues of their own. She died in her own bed in her sleep before the decision had to be made. (By the way, her Biggest Christian Ever brother, ten years younger, died in a hospital two months before she did after getting bit by some weird tick that passed a microbe into his body, destroying his liver.)
I just spent the last five days changing the diapers of a 70 year old family member who six months ago was hale and hearty until he suddenly one day started experiencing double vision and now cannot walk, speak clearly, control his hands or fingers, feed or dress himself and now cannot control his elimination abilities, and nobody can figure out why. He never wanted to go into a nursing home, either, but his children may have to make that decision very soon.
All of which is making me seriously think about how much angst I want to pass to my own only child when I start to crap myself or forget where I live. I will be looking at LTC insurance options.
My friend's Mom had LTC insurance. It worked out well. She lived in a regular senior residence, not a medical facility, but started to show signs of dementia. Then she fell, and when she gave the family and the nurses three different versions of how she fell, they realized it was time for assisted living. She went into an ALF and was eventually moved to their Memory Care unit, where she died at 92, twelve days before her LTC insurance ran out.
Okay, here's my plan, but I'm not suggesting it's good for everyone. I just think it suits me because I've been studying health and nutrition for a long time.
I've been practicing a healthy lifestyle for many decades and it has been improving tremendously in the last two decades as more and more discoveries have been made regarding foods that promote healthy aging.
Essentially, my plan is to stay healthy until I die, and it has been done many times so it's nothing new. I met a man at his 100th birthday, he was healthy and stayed healthy until he died at 109 years old. He never took drugs and never needed a cane or walker. He drove himself around until he was 104 years old. That's just one of many.
If you want good health in your old age, you have to earn it by living a healthy lifestyle.
Except we all know those people who ate right, exercised, never drank or smoked, and keeled over iin their 50s one day from a heart attack or were found to have a vicious cancer that took them out in a few short months. It's good to keep yourself healthy, but it's not a guarantee.
Then we have people like my friend who had a heart attack at 47. She still smoked until 64, when they diagnosed her with emphysema, then she gained so much weight that she developed diabetes. She's 81 now, knocks back a bottle of red wine every night, and just earned $3,000 working nine straight days at the early election polls.
Home care aides through a home care agency can be hired to do some cleaning and cooking and other home tasks. ~
and the same home care aides (or same type) can be hired to care for the aged person in their own home, apartment, or condo....for as many hours per day as wanted.
It is very common.
I have seen it used repeatedly.
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