Good Financial Reads: Elder Care Considerations

If you have aging parents, you may need to take care of them – or help arrange for their care in the future. Helping prepare your parents to age well and providing caregiving support can have benefits. It can keep them healthier and more active. It can also provide sustainable, long-term health and care benefits.

Different stages of life bring new challenges and needs.  Today more than ever, there are a wealth of professionals and service providers who are dedicated to helping seniors, their caregivers and families navigate the aging process. 

How does planning for long term care rank on your list of priorities and to dos? If it is a high priority item, how much planning have you done around it? Maybe you are one of the few who is all set, but for most of us, the reality is that having a discussion or doing some planning about long term care is one of the hardest things to get started. Long term care is not medical care, but rather assistance with the basic personal tasks of everyday life. As is the case for disability insurance, most of us are in denial and think we won’t need long term care. Even accepting that it may be a fact of life at some point, it isn’t a topic we are very comfortable contemplating. So many people find out the hard way that they need a LTC plan, either because they are affected directly or a loved one is.

The majority of people want to discuss their own end-of-life care with loved ones, but only a few actually have these conversations. As the saying goes, there is no time like the present.  Conversations with adult children, family and close friends about health, financial, legal and end-of-life issues are hard topics to broach, but imperative to have.  Open conversations provide the opportunity to inform and set realistic expectations, and ultimately, your wishes are more likely to be followed.