Caring for the Future

Last week I listened to two sales pitches for buying now to avoid paying for the uncertainty of tomorrow. I went to hear about long-term care insurance and a wellness membership program as an objective reporter and businesswoman to gather information for this column as well as my upcoming home care agency, BrightStar of Grosse Pointe / Southeast Macomb.

I left doing the math – for myself.

If my husband and I bought today (we’re both 55), we would pay about $3,500 a year for a long-term care insurance policy from Northwestern Mutual. That would buy each of us $6,000 worth of monthly care when we can no longer perform two of six normal activities of daily living or ADLs.  

A wellness membership program, such as LifeChoices by Evangelical Homes of Michigan, delivers a range of services throughout your lifetime as your needs change. If my 60-year-old neighbor signs up now, she’d pay a one-time life membership fee between $35,000 and $50,000 and $400 a month. Because she’s healthy and fit, she’d get personal trainer services and nutrition advice today. As she grows older and her health and fitness level changes, so would the type and level of services she’d receive. If she ever needs 24/7 care, she’d get that too. (LifeChoices: 734.222.7222 or evangelicalhomes.org)

The theme that ran through both of these presentations was independence.  It’s the thing we take for granted until we get to the point where we’ve become “a pain in the ass” to our children, as my dad used to say. “We’re really getting to be a pain in the ass, aren’t we?” he asked one morning a few years ago as I was helping him shuffle into the doctor’s office when I was supposed to be at work.

No one at 55 or 60 thinks they’ll ever not be able to feed, bathe, dress, go to the toilet, get up out of a chair, or control their bowel and bladder – without help. Unless, that is, they’re helping someone in their family do these things, the so-called ADLs. And many people vow that they’ll take care of their parents, when the time comes. Until, that is, the time comes.

My friend Richard was adamant: “They took care of me when I was a baby,” he said. “I can take care of them.”

“Richard, you were this big (I spread by hands about 18 inches apart) when they changed your diapers,” I said. “Imagine doing that for a 175-pound adult. We all think we can do it. We think we should do it.”

The experts say otherwise: “Are you prepared to ask your grandchildren to give you a bath or take you to the bathroom. You have to ask, what’s the emotional impact if you haven’t made a plan,” says gerontologist and author Ken Dychtwald.

My parents made no such plan. They may have worried about being a burden, but their plan – when it came right down to it – was to rely on us girls. But it wasn’t that easy. Even for four well-intentioned, in-town adult daughters, the needs of my elderly parents have been overwhelming. To keep them in their home, which is what they wanted, coordinate the schedules, the services and the finances – and to try to get along when we disagreed – we needed professional caregivers to help us out.

And we had to find a way to pay for it.

Dad received almost $2,000 a month in Aid and Attendance VA benefits for the four months before he died. Mom gets $300 monthly as a surviving spouse. She also reverse-mortgaged her home. We spent many hours and days finding the right experts to help us: Rick Lemanski at Simasko, Simasko and Simasko in Mount Clemens, 586.468.6793 or www.simaskolaw.com; Bert Bojesen at Senior Equity Income in Okemos, 877-626-2621 or seniorequityincome.com.

I tell myself that I’ll avoid this scenario by staying healthy and continuing my exercise. (Did I mention that Dad quit smoking in the early ‘70s and was religious about going to the spa right up until his final six months?)

So I do the math: $3,500 a year now for $6,000 a month of care later; $35,000 membership fee now for unlimited care, services, support later. Like so many other 55-year-olds, I wonder, what to do.

“We basically have five options when it comes to funding our future: Medicaid, Medicare, and that’s a big maybe. We can self-fund, we can buy long-term care insurance, or we can draw straws to see who’s going to take care of us,” says Chris Flynn, long-term care expert and Northwestern Mutual agent. (313-824-4264, www.nmfn.com/chrisjflynn)

Soon, I’ll have to stop wondering and take action.

Anne Marie Gattari, am.gattari@brightstarcare.com, a former Detroit journalist and Ford Motor Company public relations manager, will open BrightStar of Grosse Pointe / Southeast Macomb in August.