Quote:
Originally Posted by nu2M
Some are healthy until they pass away and most are bed ridden/immobile until the final exit. Trust me, you won’t need much $$ at that point.
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Clearly you've never priced Long Term Care or Skilled Nursing. We did in-home care (which was incredibly taxing on both of us) for my father-in-law until what turned out to be the end, but I had been pricing other options, and decent skilled nursing facilities started at around $17k/month. Not covered by insurance.
You do a little better at a CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Community), where you gradually transition from Independent Living to Assisted Living, then finally to Skilled Nursing or Memory Care. But you have to be healthy to get in, there are usually multi-year waiting lists for the better facilities, and there is a substantial buy-in. By us it's around $450k for a 2br condo (about what we paid for our 5br/3.5ba house), plus about $9k/mo. I just started looking around for my parents, who are still mostly healthy but starting to decline. Found a beautiful place in San Diego, right off the ocean that I know they'd love. But buy-ins
start at $710k.
We are absolutely determined that our son will NOT have to deal with such issues for us, so a substantial portion of our "retirement planning" involves making sure we have enough for end-of-life care when the time comes.
But clearly I'm here, and you can see the G80 in my sig, so it's not like we deny ourselves everything in pursuit of a single goal. As others have said, it's about balance. You can do both, preparing for later and enjoying today. What tends to lead to less-desirable outcomes is when you tip the scale WAY over to one side of the other--either blowing all your money as it comes in (or before); or saving every penny and never spending on anything non-essential.