Has caregiving cost you a bundle personally?
I have read so many heartbreaking stories on here about various caregiving situations. My mom helped caregive for both of my grandparents but while they did not pay her, they did have insurance and savings for medications, supplies and of course their health care coverage paid their medical bills. My dad worked and mom was a stay at home mom, so she did not quit an outside job.
I hear about so many people who quit their jobs, take out loans and exhaust savings paying for medicines and treatments and supplies for their parents and many have their own children/families. Are the majority of these situations like my parents where one spouse works an outside job and one stays at home caregiving? Are adult children moving in with their parents into their home and using their parents pension to live?
I just don't see how the caregivers make it financially. I am thinking about things such as if you quit your job, you are not paying into any social security or a pension (depending on your job) for yourself. If you take on loans for medical treatments, how do you pay them off?
Also, many of the parents I see mentioned are in their late 70's at youngest with many in their 80's and many have nothing. No savings, some with no home and many with no insurance. How? Do insurance companies drop patients at a certain age or is insurance not afforadble? I just know my relatives always kept insurance even if it meant giving something else up.
I also have known people to quit jobs to caregive with young children and there seems to be no thought into college accounts and sometimes even basic needs for their children.
If you are in this position, how do you make it work financially without going into bankruptcy?
May God Bless the caregivers.
Jave, I think all we can do is have faith. I don't know how any of it will turn out... will we be able to continuing caring for her at home... or how about when my mother is gone, and I will have to find work again, older than I am now... and when it's my time, will anyone care for me (I have two sons, no daughters)... I keep hoping the cloud will clear and I will be able to find a way to earn money from home..
Personally I was ill first and on disability and my parents sold my home and moved my child and I into their house. When they became ill I felt like I owed it to them to care for them since they were there for me when I needed it. Since I was on disability and home, my siblings just let me handle everything as they both worked.
I do look at the situation now and think about how many years I have lost out financially and paid nothing more into Social Security and wonder how I am going to live out my old age with no pension and Social Security so low I could not even rent an apartment on it. It is depressing and horribly frightening that I have given my life to caring for them and yet I do not know how I will live my last years out.
What is worse is that the President and Congress are trying to change the way people receive increases in their Social Security. If they pass their plan of "Chained CPI" everyone will lose money each and every year and you lose more the older you get.....when you will need it most! For those people like my mother who receive $1,100 a month that is a crushing blow. Her little increase of maybe $20 a month would be cut each and every year, while her expenses have risen about 200% over the past several years.
We love our parents and want to provide the best care we can until they die but it is taking an extreme toll on us all.
Up until today since last August, I had a very helpful boyfriend, but his problem turned out to be "thinking" he wanted a relationship with me when he actually doesn't. Long story, but he, and his solutions to my dilemmas are now no longer in the picture. I am so not surprised.
This task is mammoth and totally without reward. Yeah, maybe on some spiritual level that will be hard to realize when you are on the street with a sign and a tin cup. What needs to happen is for our pathetic government to get a clue that this is the wave for our baby boomer generation. We who serve our parents to the complete sacrifice of any and everything we may stand to have in terms of a life to ourselves need far more support than getting a pat on the back from all the other people doing the same.
I haven't had a job since 2008, and have no health insurance for myself. I can't leave Mom alone for more than a couple of hours to shop for her or whatever because she totally flips out when no one is with her. No amount of discussion with her helps since she no longer remembers much of anything. The situation is such that I have no life of my own, and what might have been is no longer possible because this prison makes any semblance of autonomy impossible. Once her income is gone, I am stuck trying to dispose of her massive amount of stuff on my own with no income to survive while i do it.
If you ask me, it is high time the government recognized us and stepped in ton help us. I think they are oblivious to us, but if anyone deserved a hand, it is we who do this. I would like to form a coalition of caregivers and do something for us. I think I might be able to form an activist site if I get enough people interested. Trying to do that would at least alleviate the mind-numbing boredom I experience doing what I am doing. Anyone care to come on board this scheme?
If you have the time and inclination to begin the coalition of caregivers then I think you should go for it. Those of us in the throws of the condition and care taking know that we need help. Not everyone will immediately understand or agree until they find themselves in our shoes. Go for it!
I think former Senator Kennedy had a provision in the new health care law to form a long term care provision or encourage a public run policy. However, it never made it into the final bill that was passed. It might have given more elderly long term care insurance for caregiving fees.
Just like they want to reduce social security's CPI, they apparently don't want to develop a plan for caregiving. It could be done, but we seem to want to do everything on the cheap when it comes to caring for the elderly or disabled people in this country.
We like to see ourselves as #1 in this or that, I long for the day when we are #1 on how we treat the elderly and their caregivers.
Elizabeth
So here I am with no job/income, no adequate retirement for when that time comes, no health insurance, and no family or community support system in place for down the road. I recently learned that hospice has an advocacy arm, and I am going to look into what that organization is doing to bring the issues of caregivers to the attention of Congress. I don't think Obamacare really contributes much help to this, but who really knows at this point what it will cover and what hoops one will have to jump through or what loopholes various insurance companies will use to do the least for the most profit. I will have to do a fair amount of research to scope out the situation properly, and anyone wanting to help me is welcome to pitch in with information.
If you can, there are therapists that you can see for little to no money and they do help with alleviating your stress, some will even come to your home verses you having to leave the house if you cannot get out. Take advantage of it....I do and it helps!
You might want to look into groups which do advocate for the uninsured and to address the elderly issues. Sometimes good groups are out there and we don't know of their efforts because they lack the funding to advertise their work.
I think long term care insurance in the absence of a national policy to care for middle class elderly, while expensive, is a needed expenditure. Normally the elderly need in home or nursing home care from 1 to 3.5 yrs at the end of their life. If family does all the care and can afford not to work, then obviously they may not need the insurance coverage. However, as a single person, I lack the family support and do not wish to end my life in a nursing home having to spend down my very last dime and hop on Medicaid (our nation's unofficial long term care policy) to pay for my nursing home once I am broke. Since my parent lived into his 90's I can't count on a short retirement, so I will plan for a long retirement which will need home health aides at the end. It is my nursing avoidance program and I pray it works.:)
Elizabeth
I asked my mom the other day if she would reflect on when she was a caregiver. She was a stay at home mom who took care of my grandmother off and on for 15 years and also my grandfather for a period of time. I asked her if she was not a stay at home mom already and if she was working a job and it took her income and dad's to make it financially or lose everything to caregive if she would do it? Her response, "no. If I relied on my income to make house payments or pay into a retirement and I would lose it and everything we worked for, my parents would have had to find another means of help."
When I read about the financial hardships, the college funds for their own children gone, the bankruptcy, the lack of social security/pensions paid into, I have to ask: what is the straw that breaks the camel's back? Will it literally take people being put out on the street to realize the situation is a sinking ship?
I also don't understand how all these seniors can be poor (I read about ones who took trips to vegas or had shopping addictions), how they can have no money saved, little to no insurance, retirement and none can afford help, nursing homes but evidentally they also don't qualify for medicaid. It just makes no financial sense to me.
I think it comes down to advice that our parents give to us (if they were thinking) when you get married, "you can't live on love." Yes, I know it has to take love to give up everything and caregive but the harsh reality is -- you can't live on it.
I only learned recently that there are changes coming where hospice is concerened when your family member is in a nursing home. To my understanding patients are receiving nursing home care and hospice -- almost like double dipping and it is draining money.
Our family has not had hospice service but we had hosparus service for a short amount of time and while I understand our situation was not the norm, upon researching I found we were not alone in feeling there was some major waste of time, money and resources going on.
I have been with 3 people who died after long, long illnesses and hospice or hosparus was never in the picture. But to my understanding, this summer there will be more nursing homes that do not accept the service.
I also think seniors are going to be more encouraged to give a hard look at their spending habits, their savings and retirement age.
It would be awesome if caregivers should be paid -- but there are those who would question if that should fall on the government or on the parent to provide a wage to their child. It would save the government money by not having so many seniors on medicaid but there are also parents who willingly pay home health care attendants or private sitters but would never consider paying their adult child.
I am a court ordered caretaker
they say I volunteered, who said?
I never had a voice in court proceedings or otherwise,
Who wouldn't want to take care of somebody better than assisted living, daycare. or a nursing home? Our 86 year old lost weight(went down to 95 lbs) had the flu and grew unresponsive in the the assisted living. She was used to one on one care , why shouldn't we be allowed to take care of our loved ones and get pafd for it? When I was in college, I would get these mass emails that congress was voting and wanted our senators to know how we wanted to vote, fill out a form aqnd click, click our representative knew how we felt. am going to find out how to get one of those, may be we can do 1,000,000 email march on washington.
I am wondering if congress will look at caregiving for seniors the same way they look at moms who choose to stay home and not work. Just like you don't receive income for mommy duty, they may make the same argument. Moms are told all the time that there are options of daycare, a family member or private baby sitter. When they say it costs money, the response is: "well it was your choice to have the child." Same with adult caregiving, there are adult daycares, home sitters and nursing homes. When adult children say that it costs money, the response will be that the senior adult should have financially planned more or the adult child should pay it (the finial laws -- sorry if I misspelled it).
I am wondering if the one shot is to say how much money it would save the government if they paid people to stay home vs. so many going on medicaid. If it benefits them...that may make them listen.