[DaddyD]

For anyone interested, below are links to related articles and similar discussions in other forums:

Why I Hope to Die at 75 - The Atlantic

Solo Ager: who would you trust with your financial POA? - Bogleheads.org

Are you a "solo ager?" - Bogleheads.org

Single People and Retirement Question - Bogleheads.org

Costs, Pros, & Cons of CCRC - Continuing Care Retirement Communities - Aging in Place. Pitfalls? - Page 2 - Bogleheads.org

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=397804

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=418880

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=391680

https://www.bestguide-retirementcomm...vehousing.html

https://www.nextavenue.org/solo-ager..._f_UPnubeY3qEM

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/15/75147...d-keep-the-old

[CarlR33]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

It's a rental with no lease. Why would you buy furniture for an apartment, pay $6,000 per month, and not even get a 6 or 12 month lease?

Because at this point how long will you live on? Like in your younger years, you will not have the luxery of knowing and giving advance notice for lease termination, LOL

[Boomer]

DaddyD, thank you for starting this valuable thread, and thank you for all those links you posted.

I saw in one of your posts that you are still in your 50s. We bought a long term care policy just before we turned 60. May I suggest that you start looking into buying one.

For a long time the premiums did not go up, but now they are accelerating fast. It is aggravating and the company keeps offering us options to lower the amount and timing of the coverage to somewhat lower the premium. But, for now, when the bill comes, we hold our noses and just pay it. It is like they are playing chicken with us…….

Even so, I look at the amount we have paid in for so many years and compare it to what one year in a good facility would cost and our pay-in is not even close, so we will keep on. We also consider it asset protection for each other if one needs extra care. It covers in-home care and assisted living, in addition to skilled care. Including memory care.

I hope you will look carefully at your options for a LTC policy.

I understand exactly what you are saying about the financial part of things. We do not use a financial advisor but I am thinking of turning over part of the responsibility soon just to test the waters and to make things easier. I am trying to prepare for what happens if we cannot do it ourselves anymore.

LTC policies and financial plans are easy compared to the very real concern about who is going to pay the bills. A POA is an incredibly powerful document and should never be taken lightly……

What is really needed in so many situations is to be able to hire someone to take care of paying the regular bills when help is needed. That is where there is a big hole in what we can attempt to do to keep ourselves covered as we age…..

Seems like elder care attorneys could have someone under their umbrella to simply pay regular bills for those who want to hire them without turning over the POA……

What older people need sometimes is simply help with regular bill-paying. Seems like an account could be set up with enough money to cover monthly bills without giving the POA to the hired person who is paying the bills……

The name of the bill-payer on the account would do that, but where is such a trusted person to be found to hire? ‘Hire’ is the operative word there. Even for someone who has a relative or friend to do that, it would sometimes be easier to just hire somebody….

I am surprised there are not more small businesses, perhaps through accountants, to do that. It basically boils down to needing an honest bookkeeper. (I know an accountant who does this for a few people, but she is ready to retire and is long past retirement age herself.)

Anyway, enough from me this morning. (I am avoiding working on getting tax stuff together, so I end up hanging out on TOTV.)

Please carry on. This is an excellent thread.

Boomer

[Velvet]

I agree that this is a very important topic given how many seniors we have who are really alone. Even if they have family. One of the problems I have seen with managing an incapacitated person’s finances is the conflict of interest in having a person benefit in your Will and giving the same person power of attorney both over your health and your finances. If they spend the money on you for any reason, it lessens their inheritance. You can be worth more dead than alive. The sooner the better.

One thought I had was having two people responsible for POA one gets compensated and does the work, the other one gets reported to say once a month. One of the people can be perhaps a social worker. The other a family member. Possible problem family member fires social worker.

We are still left with who will be your hospital advocate? The problem I see is the need for good will from family, from friends etc - I can’t see a person easily paying for that when they no longer have the ability because they are incapacitated. I suppose it is left to shopping (like at Amazon or for medical services). You need a geriatric management group which has great reviews by past families in order to trust them. Because isn’t that what it comes down to? Who can you trust when you are helpless and most vulnerable?

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by Velvet

I agree that this is a very important topic given how many seniors we have who are really alone. Even if they have family. One of the problems I have seen with managing an incapacitated person’s finances is the conflict of interest in having a person benefit in your Will and giving the same person power of attorney both over your health and your finances. If they spend the money on you for any reason, it lessens their inheritance. You can be worth more dead than alive. The sooner the better.

One thought I had was having two people responsible for POA one gets compensated and does the work, the other one gets reported to say once a month. One of the people can be perhaps a social worker. The other a family member. Possible problem family member fires social worker.

We are still left with who will be your hospital advocate? The problem I see is the need for good will from family, from friends etc - I can’t see a person easily paying for that when they no longer have the ability because they are incapacitated. I suppose it is left to shopping (like at Amazon or for medical services). You need a geriatric management group which has great reviews by past families in order to trust them. Because isn’t that what it comes down to? Who can you trust when you are helpless and most vulnerable?

There is no way that I would ever allow a social worker to have my power of attorney.

[Decadeofdave]

Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

[Boomer]

And now I am going to add something else to worry about. I know 3 people who have been scammed.

One was a lot older but still seemed on top of things to everyone who knew her. But she had been sending money to a scammer to the tune of over 30,000 bucks. The bank caught it and got her to involve her daughter who had no idea. She thought her mom was doing fine.

The other two did not lose as much, but both of them are highly intelligent people, very involved with family and friends, and yet the scammers got them. Neither of them can believe they actually let it happen. I am glad they talked about it though because even though embarrassed, they gave the rest of us a good warning.

For one, a spouse caught it, and the other one caught herself. That one happened when she got aggravated trying to communicate with a robot online to solve a problem with an order or subscription or billing or whatever…..

She then stopped the pointless conversation with the robot and looked for a phone number, finally finding one online that looked perfectly legitimate. (insert the theme song from Dragnet here)

Anyway, the professional sounding scammer answering the bogus number played his helpful role quite well and got account numbers. It was a mess but she got it straightened out…..

Who knew that there were evil characters out there with bogus phone numbers and websites just waiting for us to call them.

I saw a speaker once who worked on fraud cases, and he said that highly intelligent people make up a surprising percentage of people who have been scammed. (One was a doctor who scammers got for over a hundred-thousand dollars.)

So there’s that.

Boomer

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by CarlR33

Because at this point how long will you live on? Like in your younger years, you will not have the luxery of knowing and giving advance notice for lease termination, LOL

They should at least furnish the apartment. Who is going to buy furniture and hire a mover when they can raise the rent or evict you within 30 days?

[CarlR33]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

They should at least furnish the apartment. Who is going to buy furniture and hire a mover when they can raise the rent or evict you within 30 days?

You do not have much furniture left when you get to the one or possibly two room care home and since the places are very small your down to a couple recliners, end tables and beds at that point (and those hospital beds probable belong to the home). Most of this furniture your heirs will not want so it goes to the trash. Ask me how I know, LOL

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by CarlR33

You do not have much furniture left when you get to the one or possibly two room care home and since the places are very small your down to a couple recliners, end tables and beds at that point (and those hospital beds probable belong to the home). Most of this furniture your heirs will not want so it goes to the trash. Ask me how I know, LOL

It sounds like you are referring to assisted living. A month-to-month rental is typical for that type of facility. But, the independent living facilities, which do not offer any health care, at Sumter Senior Living and Watercrest, require that you furnish your own apartment and provide no lease agreement. The monthly rent is about $6,000 per month plus an entrance fee, with no guaranteed rental fee for the second month and beyond.

[LuvNH]

I am surprised there are not more small businesses, perhaps through accountants, to do that. It basically boils down to needing an honest bookkeeper. (I know an accountant who does this for a few people, but she is ready to retire and is long past retirement age herself.)

One para stood out to me Boomer. This one above. I believe our litigious society would inhibit almost anyone from taking on that responsibility. A law suit of this nature could wipe you out.

[margaretmattson]

Originally Posted by DaddyD

As MightyDog wrote above, there are only a handful of options available for solo agers in their latter years, and we all know what they are.

If you don't have much money, you'll age in place until you can't any longer, and then at some point some governmental agency will get involved and you'll likely be moved (possibly against your will) to some kind of care facility. If you don't have assets you'll be sent to a facility which accepts medicaid, and the care / quality of life there will likely leave a lot to be desired.

If you've got substantial assets (this probably applies to the majority of Villagers) then you've got options:

You can hire an agency or individual(s) to come to your home and take care of you so you can "age (and die....) in place"

If you've got a long term care policy (good ones are increasingly difficult to find, definitely read the fine print!) or can self-pay, then you can go the CCRC route (CCRC = Continuing Care Retirement Facility), where you start off in an Independent or Assisted Living facility, and the move to a memory facility and/or nursing home as your needs change.

But there is a very important missing element in both options above, namely that you really REALLY need to have someone you trust who is both WILLING and ABLE to help manage your health care & finances.

Paying bills & managing finances is not something that the staff or management at any continuing care facility should, can, or will do for you. And even in the best of facilities, you still need to have someone "watching those" who are watching over you and to help manage your care.

I'm aware that this is a stressful topic for some (myself included!) and that there are no "perfect" solutions. But having a plan is vastly better than "no plan at all"...which really is a plan as well...just not a very good one.

I very well may feel differently 20-30 years from now, but at present I have no desire to live out my last years in a traditional assisted living facility or nursing home. As I wrote in a post above, a small part of me does think that robotic help may be a very real possibility in the not-too-distant future.

Other ideas I have:

I've traveled quite extensively, and other countries & cultures treat the elderly very differently than we do here in the United States & most westernized cultures. The elderly are practically revered in Asian cultures, and generally treated very well in latino/hispanic countries as well. If I do decide to go the Assisted Living / Nursing Home route, since I don't have children or close relatives I can rely one, I may choose to relocate overseas. I would be surprised if one couldn't get a MUCH higher level of care for significantly less money in countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico, Panama, etc..

I'm "quantity sufficient" in terms of money & own some valuable real estate; assuming I still have considerable assets left whenever it is that I need help, perhaps I can find a local family to "adopt a Grandfather" in exchange for putting them in my will and leaving them my assets when I die?

Join a kibbutz or commune?

Death with dignity? Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but personally I have no problem with someone terminally ill or who is in the last few years of life who decides to end their life on their own terms.

I am very aware that all the plans I've described above real risks. But if a person doesn't have younger friends or family members who they a) TRUST, b) who are WILLING , and c) ABLE to help you, there is no perfect plan--you have to come up with the best "imperfect" plan you can.

Since I don't have children, all I can do is come up with the best plan I can and "hope for the best". But I'm certain that having no plan is the worst plan of all.

My motivation in making this post was hoping that others older than myself who are currently living out this reality would chime in with their thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

Before looking "overseas", look at programs each STATE offers for seniors. We plan to move to Pennsylvania because it provides seniors with everything we would want. Florida is one of the WORST states to age.

[AMB444]

Originally Posted by margaretmattson

Before looking "overseas", look at programs each STATE offers for seniors. We plan to move to Pennsylvania because it provides seniors with everything we would want. Florida is one of the WORST states to age.

Thanks for your comment. Can you give links/ideas on how to research this? I'm very new to some of this information.

Thank you!

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by LuvNH

I am surprised there are not more small businesses, perhaps through accountants, to do that. It basically boils down to needing an honest bookkeeper. (I know an accountant who does this for a few people, but she is ready to retire and is long past retirement age herself.)

One para stood out to me Boomer. This one above. I believe our litigious society would inhibit almost anyone from taking on that responsibility. A law suit of this nature could wipe you out.

That is what my estate attorney, who prepared my will, told me. She had zero recommendations for someone to manage finances and bill paying for an elderly person. The potential liability was so much of a risk that no reputable professional would do it. Of course, you could probably find a scammer to do it.

[MightyDog]

Originally Posted by LuvNH

I am surprised there are not more small businesses, perhaps through accountants, to do that. It basically boils down to needing an honest bookkeeper. (I know an accountant who does this for a few people, but she is ready to retire and is long past retirement age herself.)

One para stood out to me Boomer. This one above. I believe our litigious society would inhibit almost anyone from taking on that responsibility. A law suit of this nature could wipe you out.

No, no...it's totally doable.
1) The first line for preventing any problems or discrepancies is to conduct the affairs legitimately of the people who are paying you to handle things for them. If so, then, what lawsuit? What's there to sue about?
2) Set yourself up in a LLC (Limited Liability Company), if permitted in the state where services would be rendered for that kind of work.
3) You create a contract with the people you're working for that defines the parameters and limitations of the scope of work being performed. Add an oversight aspect to it....like a family member or attorney who has to get a monthly accounting and description of work performed, etc.

I could do that kind of work and , likely, be pretty good at it. But, I'm already quite busy and probably wouldn't have the patience. That's my Achilles heel.