Planning for care needed in later life

jamesd

smjxm09 wrote: »

There are two types of people who live in a care home. Those with next to nothing and have spent what they had when they could and who have their fees paid by the council and those with money who maybe should have spent more when they could but didn't.

The hourly pay in the UK of personal care assistants is about £7.50 an hour so even without nursing care or holiday pay that's £65,700 a year. That's quite a bit. [STRIKE]a bill of £460k a year plus the cost of employee benefits. Few of us will accumulate enough to pay £1.5-2+ million in our final years of life. Even luxury care homes are cheap by comparison.[/STRIKE]

Care home need can be caused by relatively unplanned things like strokes leading to mental or other impairment as well as injuries and Alzheimer's. A stroke or serious skiing or other can scupper the plans even of those who were spending to try to end up dependent on the state when infirm but of normal mental capacity in their final decade or so of life.

jcaow

Thanks all for the responses. There's quite a wide variety and perhaps there's no consensus on this as I think it's still a relatively new problem. I work in the field so know I want the choices money gives you. I insure myself for other risks and I think it's a reasonable risk I'll need some sort of help later on (increased life expectancy giving more time for multiple health issues). I don't mind selling the house to pay for it but it would be nice not to be forced to esp as my (younger) husband might like to still live there.

I shall give some thought to the idea of planning care home fees into a later life contingency fund.

System

If you start off at age 41 intending to plan for the worst that could conceivably happen then you might live a long time in a care home and find it exhausts any savings you have made.

So what do you do - plan your whole life around saving enough so that you can provide a nice earner for a care home owner?
Do nothing, knowing that whatever happens someone will rescue you so that you won't actually die senile and abandoned under a railway arch?
Cultivate good family relations, make reasonable provision for pension etc, but have a good life and trust your loved ones to do the best when/if it happens?

Apodemus

jamesd wrote: »

The hourly pay in the UK of personal care assistants is about £7.50 an hour so even without nursing care that's a bill of £460k a year plus the cost of employee benefits..

What? £7.50 an hour would be £65,700 a year. You could hire a team of seven, round the clock, for £460k (which makes me wonder if you have multiplied by weeks as well as days and 365 in your calculation!).

Keep_pedalling

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

If you start off at age 41 intending to plan for the worst that could conceivably happen then you might live a long time in a care home and find it exhausts any savings you have made.

So what do you do - plan your whole life around saving enough so that you can provide a nice earner for a care home owner?
Do nothing, knowing that whatever happens someone will rescue you so that you won't actually die senile and abandoned under a railway arch?
Cultivate good family relations, make reasonable provision for pension etc, but have a good life and trust your loved ones to do the best when/if it happens?

If you are that worried about keeping your money out of the hands of care home owners, there are plenty of not for profit care facilities available.

Doing nothing, is certainly not wise choice if you want any choice in what happens to you, and there is no way on earth I am going to burden my children with that sort of responsibility.

Luckily as boomers we bought property in the seventies so are sitting an asset that should any care needs that may arise in the future.

atush

too thought the maths were out.

And you dont really start out needing 24/7 care. one assistant 8 hours a day could do, one one for 4 hours in the morning and one for 4 hours in the evening. Adding hours or overnight assistance later.

System

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

If you are that worried about keeping your money out of the hands of care home owners, there are plenty of not for profit care facilities available.

.

But they are not free. Somebody will be benefitting, and you will have spent your life saving up for their benefit.

Or you will have scrimped all your life just in case you need 10 years of care, and then die not needing any of it.

Linton

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

But they are not free. Somebody will be benefitting, and you will have spent your life saving up for their benefit.

err isnt it for your benefit?

Or you will have scrimped all your life just in case you need 10 years of care, and then die not needing any of it.

But you'll be dead and never know.

Having the money for your final years is far far better than not having the money for your final years. Council provision for home care is very limited which will make it more likely that you will end up in a care home. Paying foryour self is likely to enable you to live longer in your own house and most likely enable you to stay there until your final days.

jamesd

Apodemus wrote: »

What? £7.50 an hour would be £65,700 a year. You could hire a team of seven, round the clock, for £460k (which makes me wonder if you have multiplied by weeks as well as days and 365 in your calculation!).

Thanks, you're right about numbers and cause. Though I didn't include things like holiday pay, employer NI and benefits or the higher rates for nursing care and costs of managing it if you're unable to yourself.

atush wrote: »

And you dont really start out needing 24/7 care. one assistant 8 hours a day could do, one one for 4 hours in the morning and one for 4 hours in the evening. Adding hours or overnight assistance later.

Yes, you may well not start out needing 24/7 care. Or in case of a stroke it might turn out that you do.

Keep_pedalling

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

But they are not free. Somebody will be benefitting, and you will have spent your life saving up for their benefit.

Or you will have scrimped all your life just in case you need 10 years of care, and then die not needing any of it.

Yes other people will be benefiting, mainly from doing a worthwhile job for low pay. But I will also benefit by being looked after in my most vunerable years, and very few people will need 10 years care.

You can't take your money with you, and if the equity of our home ends up being spent on obtaining high quality care then so be it, because I am not prepaired to except the basic care package that LA funded care would provide.

If we end up spending £400k at least it would be subsidised by a £120k reduction in IHT for our estate, so there is always a bright side to these thing.