How to Prepare For Retirement and Long-Term Care

<div class="block">Kia McCallister, director at America Saves, joined Cheddar News to talk about how families and individuals can prepare for retirement, and more specifically, for their long-term care needs. According to the <a href="https://filecache.mediaroom.com/mr5mr_nwmutual/178840/2022%20Planning%20and%20Progress%20Study%20Work%20and%20Retirement.pdf">2022 Planning and Progress Study by Northwestern Mutual</a>, Americans, on average, need at least $1 million to retire comfortably. McCallister talked about a number of affordable and accessible options that are currently available for aging seniors.</div>

Closing Bell

Time. Now for stretching your dollar where we give you tangible tips to help you make the most of your money. Well, as we face the realities of aging and changing health care needs, many of us are met with looming concerns over the financial implications attached to long term care costs, which can be quite the burden for many people, especially as their loved ones. Get closer to retirement. According to the 2022 planning and progress study, the average person will need over $1 million to retire comfortably. But that's just the start in 2022. The average cost for daily nursing home care in the US went from a low of $180 a day in parts of Texas and Louisiana to well over $1000 a day in parts of Alaska for private payers. Having daily costs like that would make retirement and your savings run out pretty quickly to cover care like this certainly can be overwhelming. But there are ways to manage expenses, plan ahead and get what you need. So joining me now is an expert to show us how to prepare for this Kia mcallister, Young Director of America Saves joins me now, Kia, it's good to see you what different types of long term care are available. Lots. The list is pretty long. So you have nursing homes, you have home health care, um, personal care, adult day care assisted living facilities and even respite care. So lots of different options with different price tags attached to them, walk us through the price tags from most affordable to least affordable. Yeah. Um, so adult day care and respite care, those types of care are on almost like an hourly basis or a daily basis. So they tend to be um, more affordable when you get into um, assisted living and home care or personal care. So personal care is really those like daily adult, daily living activities. Um, home health care adds in the nursing medical aspect to it and that's when it gets a little more pricier. You're talking anywhere from five to up to $9000 per month. Wow, that is pretty expensive. How can people prepare for this? Yeah, so um there's long term disability sometimes that's offered with your employer. Um, but if you don't have that you, there are some private options. Um, sometimes your life insurance may have a long term care writer. Um, and if you are a veteran, then you may have veteran benefits that can help cover some of those costs too. So there are some, some options in addition to you know your own personal savings, your own retirement accounts and things like that is negotiation an option in any of these cases. Kia, yeah, especially when it gets to like assisted living communities. Now they all have different um fees that are attached. Some of them are negotiable, some of them are not. Um But you wanna have some type of positioning power going into these um conversations, especially if you're doing it on behalf of a loved one. So knowing the occupancy rate of the community that you're looking at um is really helpful. If under 90% occupancy, then usually there's some negotiation that you can do because they want to be, you know, um uh have a higher Ocu occupancy rate. Um but they have room and board and that's harder to negotiate. The big one that most people can negotiate are um like an entrance fee or a community fee or they might even call it a move in fee. Um And they're a little bit more flexible. They usually range anywhere between five and 15,000 and it just has to do with getting you set up or getting your loved ones set up into the community. So that fee in particular is usually the most negotiable, especially if they're under that 90% occupancy rate. Kia I wish we could talk more such an important topic. Uh But we got to leave it there due to timing. That's Kia mcallister, Young Director of America saves.