The Facts About Long-Term Care Insurance

We plan the best we can for our future by making sure we have safe-guards in place, such as savings, a retirement plan, health insurance and life insurance. It isn’t always pleasant to prepare for disaster and difficulty, but this planning makes hardships a little easier to bear. One additional scenario many Americans are planning for is the long-term care they may need as they age. The American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance reports that in 2012 over 8 million Americans were covered by long-term care insurance and over 264,000 people were taking advantage of long-term care benefits to pay for their care.

But long-term care insurance may not be for everyone. The monthly premiums can......

Steering Dad From The Car

Worried that your parents aren't safe behind the wheel but would be trapped at home if they quit driving? You are in good company.

One in two adult children are concerned about their older parents' driving abilities, according to a survey of 1,007 people ages 40 to 65 conducted for Liberty Mutual Insurance and released earlier this month. Those are valid fears, with 5,401 people age 65 and older killed in vehicle crashes in 2011 and another 185,000 suffering injuries, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But most of the adult children surveyed were afraid to talk to their parents about giving up driving, with 31% anticipating that their parents would say it is too hard to find......

There are nearly 40 million Americans that provide unpaid eldercare, with many spending as much as three hours per day providing care services, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  

From 2011-2012, there were 39.6 million eldercare providers in the nation, representing 16% of the U.S. civilian non institutional population age 15 and older, according to data from the BLS and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). 

Eldercare providers are defined as individuals who provide unpaid care to someone age 65 to older who needs help because of a condition related to aging.

Individuals ages 45-54 and 55-64 were the most likely to provide eldercare (23% and 22%, respectively), followed by those age 65 and older (16%).

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Here are six tips for moving a loved one into a senior care community:

1.    Downsize furniture to fit

Be aware that their current furniture may be in a grand scale and may not fit in the smaller, downsized rooms of retirement facilities. Draw up a floor plan to scale to ensure that the new furniture will actually fit into the new space. Think ahead: Leave ample space for seniors to maneuver their current or potential walkers or chairs, in order to make the physical transition easier.

2.    Consider wiring and remote-controlled devices

Creating ease of living is key when it comes to moving seniors. Rooms may not be electrically wired for your senior’s needs.  Consider wiring for cable, ......

Financial elder abuse is one of the greatest crimes of this century. When our aging parents begin to decline, they are usually not the first to notice the problem. These 10 warning signs can help you know when it’s time to take over the checkbook. You can protect your loved one from ruthless people who are bent on ripping them off.

1. The elder has forgotten to pay an important bill and you notice collection letters in the elder’s mail or bill collectors call on the phone when you visit.

2. The elder has neglected a part of daily life, which she or he has always attended to in the past. Forgetting housekeeping, neglecting personal grooming, not maintaining the yard, not putting gas in the car, or other forgetting can alert you.........

In a nutshell, dementia is a symptom, and AD is the cause of the symptom. When someone is told they have dementia, it means that they have significant memory problems as well as other cognitive difficulties, and that these problems are severe enough to get in the way of daily living.....

Too often, patients and their family members are told by their doctors that the patient has been diagnosed with “a little bit of dementia.” They leave the doctor’s visit with a feeling of relief that at least they don’t have Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

There is great confusion about the difference between “dementia” and “Alzheimer's disease.” The confusion is felt on the part of patients, family ...

 As long-term-care-insurance costs climb, families are turning to continuing-care retirement communities as an alternative.

 Long-term-care insurance generally pays for home care, assisted living or skilled nursing when a policyholder suffers from dementia or needs help with at least two "activities of daily living," such as bathing or dressing.

 But insurers have been battered by low interest rates and expensive claims, leading a few large firms to quit selling new policies in the past few years. Others have jacked up rates on existing policyholders.

That has led some families and financial advisers to look for other ways to hedge against the potential for late-life custodial care that can decimate decades of ......

Dementia is a health problem which particularly (but not exclusively) strikes the older adult population and, because of the “greying of America” that’s been going on, will only increase in prevalence over the coming years. Increasing age, of course, is a major risk factor for developing dementia.

The basic definition of dementia includes:

1) The development of multiple cognitive deficits manifested by both:

a) Memory impairment (impaired ability to learn new information or to recall previously learned information); and

b) One (or more) of the following cognitive disturbances:

i) Aphasia (language disturbance),

ii) Apraxia (impaired ability to carry out motor activities despite intact motor function),

iii) .........

Providing care for an aging or ill parent can bring out the best and the worst in sibling relationships. Ideally, the experience of caregiving is a time for siblings to come together and provide mutual support to one another. As a stressful transition, however, the pressure can also lead to strained connections and painful conflict.

One major source of sibling friction is the legacy of family dynamics. Invariably, the demands of caregiving bring out old patterns and unresolved tensions. Past wounds are reopened, and childhood rivalries reemerge. It is not unusual for adult children to find themselves replaying their historical roles in the family, re-creating old dynamics of competition and resentment as they vie for Mom’s attention .........

We Celebrate Baby Boomers -- Why Not 90-Year-Olds?

All the news these days is about Baby Boomers and about how they're changing the face of aging with an in-your-face attitude.  And since we’re Boomers, we love to hear about all the changes we're making.

But it seems to me that all this Boomer hype is seriously detracting from another group of women and men; those over 90 years old, a population that is expected to more than quadruple over the next four decades. Living to be over 90 is an accomplishment not recognizedmuch outside of family and friends of the older person celebrating her longevity. Living to be over 100 does get some recognition, a letter from the president for example, but there's ...