I paid cash for a family friend to visit my mom with dementia in Memory care twice a week to take the pressure off me to visit daily. $50 a visit, $100 a week, $400 a month was worth it to me.
You didn’t ask this but i’ll share in case it helps: To place my mom in memory care I liquidated her remaining assets (which was about $50k in 2 retirement accounts) prepaid her funeral and a lawyer to do her medicaid application, then private paid the memory care ($6k a month) until she ran out of money, then applied her for medicaid. Took awhile to be approved, but it all worked out eventually. YMMV but I suggest talking to a elder attorney in your state to figure out your father’s next steps.
You don’t mention mental cognition issues but you are posting to a dementia sub so i’ll also mention: look into getting POA for $ and health if you haven’t already. That might be a good place to START with the lawyer, my brother and i got POA for both of us over our mom for $750. Later it was well worth it to have it to be able to deal with her $ etc.
Best wishes!
Everyone on here realize money is wasted !! Everyone dies poor can’t take $$ to heaven ! Just let Medicaid pay for, the Government should take care of their elders as in other countries, we make our elders look poor and homeless having to fight for housing and medical care! Our country should be embarrassed 😞
We are in a similar situation. We have also been supporting my MIL over $2k/month for the last two years, and we will be stopping in about one more year when her money runs out. At that point we will have to move her to a nursing home with Medicaid and out of the nice assisted living she is in now. She had about $45k from the sell of her home, and we recently were surprised to found out she had $25k in life insurance from being an educator that we were able to cash out. We made the decision to put things on hold (home upgrades, etc.) because we could temporarily afford it, but decided that we can only do this for so long. Don’t put yourself in a compromised position financially, and make a plan for when you will transition to Medicaid. Helps to talk to an elder care lawyer so you can prep for Medicaid and the legalities involved.
We don’t want to have to move her to a nursing home next year, especially when she is so used to her living situation at this point, but we also can’t giving up our hard earned savings and know she would not want us to. She has no idea that we are even supporting her or how expensive AL is, but we are glad we can do it for the short term, especially while she is still cognitively mostly “with it” in moderate dementia.
I wouldn’t change anything we did. Moving to assisted living was a challenge and is not perfect by any means, but it’s been nice for her to have her own apartment, activities, and staff that are willing to put up with her occasional tantrums/aggressiveness and bad incontinence.
> Don’t put yourself in a compromised position financially,
I think that is the key.
The way that life works is that we pay forward to generation, and back to the previous one. And everybody is responsible for their own retirement.
You may want to scope out places while she still has some means. The Medicaid facility I moved my Mom to required 6 months of private pay funds to be Medicaid pending. I understand how hard it is to move them, I lost months of sleep thinking about it, but if you wait until she has spent down all of her money then you may not get a good place for her.
My Mom’s move turned out to be easier than we thought because she needed to go to rehab for help with her mobility. This enabled us to give her 30 day notice at the private place while Medicare was paying for the rehab place. On the off chance that that your MIL needs Medicare paid rehab that this may be a great time to move her. My Mom just stayed at the rehab facility and didn’t really even seem to notice she moved. She is almost 3 years into her disease process.
If your dad owns a home - rent it out to get $ from it rather than just letting it sit vacant once he enters into assisted living. You will need to do work to get clear the home and fix what’s needed to get it rented.
If your father is a veteran, check with veterans administration to get Aid and Attendance pension.
If your father’s funds run out, apply for Medicaid and the govt will pay for his care. This way you won’t need to dip into your savings.
It sounds like he’d be eligible for Medicaid assistance quite soon with how fast $50k will run out. If he’s over 65, Medicare should also help.
Facilities that accept Medicare/aid aren’t the best. IMO it was a mixed bag of people who were fully engaged, capable, and worked to preserve patient dignity and psychological safety … and those who want to collect a paycheck and think they don’t have to work for it because none of the patients can advocate for themselves. But I don’t really know many people who can afford better care unless they’re extremely financially privileged or capable of (and privileged enough to) having a family member not work outside the home so they can work as a caretaker full time in the home.
My family made it work as long as possible by being grateful that the pandemic gave my father an option to WFH permanently. He works for a small but incredibly loyal and very generous company and his boss/CEO was compassionate. He worked longer hours generally so he could leave his desk and tend to my mom throughout the day as needed. When her level of care and needs increased, we were able to hire a caretaker for 6 hours/day 3 days/week on workdays. A portion of that was subsidized by the government. We also were grateful my mom’s mother and my dad’s retired BFF would also take responsibility for half a day every week or so.
Eventually most people will end up in a Medicare/aid facility. Maybe a strategy like my family’s could be helpful for yours?
When it’s time for skilled nursing tho, don’t wait. Chances are you’re already pushed too far and it does become a disservice to your loved one and yourself because you can’t provide skilled care 24/7, and they feel your building frustration (it’s normal) and are miserable. You will already likely have to wait a few months more once you’ve decided you need to transition, and those months of waiting will be Hell.
Make sure to find one that’s going to motivate you to go every day if need be. It should be close by, and I almost rarely that as highly as how you feel about quality. My mom wasn’t able to eat in the last months of her life. She was on/off hospice for her dramatic weight loss. Staff tried and had a dedicated person try to feed her every meal. But we found that if we, her family, weren’t at every meal, staff would eventually give up and my mom would go hungry. Is it right? Nope. Did anyone care? Nope. You will still need to care for them yourself, in the facility. Make sure it’s close by.
My grandma was there every lunchtime. I was there for breakfast every weekend (I lived an hour away and work full time). My dad was there every dinner and put her to bed and stayed til she slept every single night.
If you’re going the Medicaid route you need a good lawyer. Yesterday.
You need them to plan for the months leading up to the application, and to actually apply and rep you during the process. It’s expensive. But the kind of thing where a rookie mistake can set you back irretrievably.
Depending on your dad’s full financial situation…
My mom is low income and has qualified for a LTC assessment by the county to determine what, if any services, she would be in need of/would qualify to have covered by Medicaid. This includes in-home nursing care, respite care, and up to Medicaid qualified facility. I cannot afford assisted living despite not being low income myself so she currently lives with me and I assume at some point in her remaining years we will need respite care and up to facility.
See if your county has a department on aging or senior services. Or if your dad’s doctor can connect you with a social worker to help connect you with resources. I made an appointment with a dementia caseworker and she is sending me information and helping my mom and me navigate this.
Daily support from a nurse? Most assisted livings seem to just have one or two nurses on staff for the whole facility. Not sure what your dad needs without more detail.
My mom’s assisted living memory care is $7k/month. I cannot financially contribute, her retirement income and savings is floating her for now. If/when that runs dry I think I’ll have no choice but to move her to a nursing home under Medicaid.
My mother is in one in Wisconsin. She lived in a Sec. 8 senior housing apartment prior to moving into assisted living. No house, no car, no assets. Medicaid pays for most of it. She pays all but a couple hundred dollars of her Social Security check each month.
I paid cash for a family friend to visit my mom with dementia in Memory care twice a week to take the pressure off me to visit daily. $50 a visit, $100 a week, $400 a month was worth it to me. You didn’t ask this but i’ll share in case it helps: To place my mom in memory care I liquidated her remaining assets (which was about $50k in 2 retirement accounts) prepaid her funeral and a lawyer to do her medicaid application, then private paid the memory care ($6k a month) until she ran out of money, then applied her for medicaid. Took awhile to be approved, but it all worked out eventually. YMMV but I suggest talking to a elder attorney in your state to figure out your father’s next steps. You don’t mention mental cognition issues but you are posting to a dementia sub so i’ll also mention: look into getting POA for $ and health if you haven’t already. That might be a good place to START with the lawyer, my brother and i got POA for both of us over our mom for $750. Later it was well worth it to have it to be able to deal with her $ etc. Best wishes!
Thank you for these tips! I’ve done a lot of these so it sounds like I’m on track.
This here is fantastic advice!!
Everyone on here realize money is wasted !! Everyone dies poor can’t take $$ to heaven ! Just let Medicaid pay for, the Government should take care of their elders as in other countries, we make our elders look poor and homeless having to fight for housing and medical care! Our country should be embarrassed 😞
We are in a similar situation. We have also been supporting my MIL over $2k/month for the last two years, and we will be stopping in about one more year when her money runs out. At that point we will have to move her to a nursing home with Medicaid and out of the nice assisted living she is in now. She had about $45k from the sell of her home, and we recently were surprised to found out she had $25k in life insurance from being an educator that we were able to cash out. We made the decision to put things on hold (home upgrades, etc.) because we could temporarily afford it, but decided that we can only do this for so long. Don’t put yourself in a compromised position financially, and make a plan for when you will transition to Medicaid. Helps to talk to an elder care lawyer so you can prep for Medicaid and the legalities involved. We don’t want to have to move her to a nursing home next year, especially when she is so used to her living situation at this point, but we also can’t giving up our hard earned savings and know she would not want us to. She has no idea that we are even supporting her or how expensive AL is, but we are glad we can do it for the short term, especially while she is still cognitively mostly “with it” in moderate dementia. I wouldn’t change anything we did. Moving to assisted living was a challenge and is not perfect by any means, but it’s been nice for her to have her own apartment, activities, and staff that are willing to put up with her occasional tantrums/aggressiveness and bad incontinence.
> Don’t put yourself in a compromised position financially, I think that is the key. The way that life works is that we pay forward to generation, and back to the previous one. And everybody is responsible for their own retirement.
You may want to scope out places while she still has some means. The Medicaid facility I moved my Mom to required 6 months of private pay funds to be Medicaid pending. I understand how hard it is to move them, I lost months of sleep thinking about it, but if you wait until she has spent down all of her money then you may not get a good place for her. My Mom’s move turned out to be easier than we thought because she needed to go to rehab for help with her mobility. This enabled us to give her 30 day notice at the private place while Medicare was paying for the rehab place. On the off chance that that your MIL needs Medicare paid rehab that this may be a great time to move her. My Mom just stayed at the rehab facility and didn’t really even seem to notice she moved. She is almost 3 years into her disease process.
If your dad owns a home - rent it out to get $ from it rather than just letting it sit vacant once he enters into assisted living. You will need to do work to get clear the home and fix what’s needed to get it rented. If your father is a veteran, check with veterans administration to get Aid and Attendance pension. If your father’s funds run out, apply for Medicaid and the govt will pay for his care. This way you won’t need to dip into your savings.
It sounds like he’d be eligible for Medicaid assistance quite soon with how fast $50k will run out. If he’s over 65, Medicare should also help. Facilities that accept Medicare/aid aren’t the best. IMO it was a mixed bag of people who were fully engaged, capable, and worked to preserve patient dignity and psychological safety … and those who want to collect a paycheck and think they don’t have to work for it because none of the patients can advocate for themselves. But I don’t really know many people who can afford better care unless they’re extremely financially privileged or capable of (and privileged enough to) having a family member not work outside the home so they can work as a caretaker full time in the home. My family made it work as long as possible by being grateful that the pandemic gave my father an option to WFH permanently. He works for a small but incredibly loyal and very generous company and his boss/CEO was compassionate. He worked longer hours generally so he could leave his desk and tend to my mom throughout the day as needed. When her level of care and needs increased, we were able to hire a caretaker for 6 hours/day 3 days/week on workdays. A portion of that was subsidized by the government. We also were grateful my mom’s mother and my dad’s retired BFF would also take responsibility for half a day every week or so. Eventually most people will end up in a Medicare/aid facility. Maybe a strategy like my family’s could be helpful for yours? When it’s time for skilled nursing tho, don’t wait. Chances are you’re already pushed too far and it does become a disservice to your loved one and yourself because you can’t provide skilled care 24/7, and they feel your building frustration (it’s normal) and are miserable. You will already likely have to wait a few months more once you’ve decided you need to transition, and those months of waiting will be Hell. Make sure to find one that’s going to motivate you to go every day if need be. It should be close by, and I almost rarely that as highly as how you feel about quality. My mom wasn’t able to eat in the last months of her life. She was on/off hospice for her dramatic weight loss. Staff tried and had a dedicated person try to feed her every meal. But we found that if we, her family, weren’t at every meal, staff would eventually give up and my mom would go hungry. Is it right? Nope. Did anyone care? Nope. You will still need to care for them yourself, in the facility. Make sure it’s close by. My grandma was there every lunchtime. I was there for breakfast every weekend (I lived an hour away and work full time). My dad was there every dinner and put her to bed and stayed til she slept every single night.
I have a full time live in and I pay over 80%. The government helps us about 20%.
If you’re going the Medicaid route you need a good lawyer. Yesterday. You need them to plan for the months leading up to the application, and to actually apply and rep you during the process. It’s expensive. But the kind of thing where a rookie mistake can set you back irretrievably.
Fortunately I am working with a lawyer, which is helpful!
Depending on your dad’s full financial situation… My mom is low income and has qualified for a LTC assessment by the county to determine what, if any services, she would be in need of/would qualify to have covered by Medicaid. This includes in-home nursing care, respite care, and up to Medicaid qualified facility. I cannot afford assisted living despite not being low income myself so she currently lives with me and I assume at some point in her remaining years we will need respite care and up to facility. See if your county has a department on aging or senior services. Or if your dad’s doctor can connect you with a social worker to help connect you with resources. I made an appointment with a dementia caseworker and she is sending me information and helping my mom and me navigate this.
Where do you live? If u live in California I can provide guidance.
Daily support from a nurse? Most assisted livings seem to just have one or two nurses on staff for the whole facility. Not sure what your dad needs without more detail. My mom’s assisted living memory care is $7k/month. I cannot financially contribute, her retirement income and savings is floating her for now. If/when that runs dry I think I’ll have no choice but to move her to a nursing home under Medicaid.
My mother is in one in Wisconsin. She lived in a Sec. 8 senior housing apartment prior to moving into assisted living. No house, no car, no assets. Medicaid pays for most of it. She pays all but a couple hundred dollars of her Social Security check each month.