Even with adequate retirement savings, individuals may find it difficult to pay for assisted living costs and seek solutions from the government. To help you understand your options, we’ll explain the role of medicaid and medicare when paying for assisted living. Plus, get other helpful information on covering these costs.
Medicaid is a government program that provides healthcare benefits and financial assistance for low-income individuals including children, parents, seniors, and people with disabilities. The program
If someone you love has just received a terminal diagnosis, you are likely in shock and not sure what to do next. One productive place to focus your energy is on learning more about the diagnosis, to prepare for protecting your loved one’s quality of life and ensuring his or her final wishes are honored.
Debt is one of those problems that gets worse when you ignore it. Commit now to the first step of creating a budget — it’s easy and free. Then, let the numbers guide you to your next move. Your options include aggressive monthly payments, consolidation to lower-rate debt, full payoff via a life settlement or home sale, or bankruptcy.
Assuming you have no health insurance, you could easily spend six figures chemotherapy, surgical procedures, prescription medications, and doctors visits. Some sources estimate a cancer treatment plan involving chemotherapy can range from $100,000 to $300,000. Specific to breast cancer, a mastectomy or lumpectomy alone — often required before chemotherapy begins — can cost $15,000 to $50,000. In terms of average cancer treatment costs, AARP estimates that patients spend about $150,000 in total. Where your costs fall relative to that average depends on the type of cancer you have and your treatment needs.
Understanding your eligibility for VA medical benefits can be challenging. To start, there’s a complex qualification system that considers service-related factors as well as your income. And, not all eligible veterans receive the same set of benefits. Your benefits package, for example, may range from limited healthcare services with full copayments to a broader set of medical and related services with no copayments at all.
The news that a spouse, parent, sibling, or child has been diagnosed with chronic illness stirs up a range of feelings, from guilt to grief. And then, before you’ve processed those feelings, you have to start addressing the practicalities of the situation. Who’s going to care for your chronically ill family member and how will your household adjust to this new reality, both emotionally and financially?
Whether you need full-time care, part-time care, or occasional respite care, choosing someone to look after your elderly loved one is a stressful process. You’re looking for a senior caregiver who can manage the details of the job — like cooking, cleaning, keeping medications organized. But caregiving is so much more than a list of household and helping tasks. It’s also an interpersonal role that demands compassion, patience, and excellent communication skills.
One of the great unknowns for today’s senior is the cost of healthcare. Fidelity estimates that a recently retired senior couple will spend nearly $300,000 on out-of-pocket healthcare expenses — not including the costs of long-term care. That’s an alarming exclusion, given that long-term care is among the priciest and most commonly needed forms of senior healthcare. Statistically speaking, seven of 10 people will require some level of long-term care in their lifetime.
The end-of-life plan is your time to establish your legacy and shoulder the burden of difficult decisions — so your loved ones won’t have to. Those decisions involve your health care, your financial assets and liabilities, your funeral arrangements, and, the culmination of these, your overall estate plan. This checklist walks you through end-of-life discussion points on all four topics and summarizes the key end-of-life planning documents you may need.
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