This is why I haven’t stressed about saving. My mom did, then got diagnosed with MS, had to move into a full term care facility, and it was all gone. Had to get rid of all assets for medicaid to pay for it. Or you can private pay and the money is gone quickly anyway.
Exactly! My grandpa scrimped and saved. He became a self made millionaire but only to get dementia, be forced into a nursing home because all the grandchildren couldn’t agree on his care, and the nursing home basically took it all in the end! System sucks!
Weird way to look at it. Here's another way: if he hadn't saved all that money that ended up paying for his care, what would have happened to him? That's the whole point of saving, to have money to survive on at the end of your life, the money went towards exactly what he saved it for
Do y'all just fundamentally not understand savings?
Well he lived to be 106 years old!! I took care of him for 20 YEARS, until my husband’s job forced him to relocate because of a plant closing! My grandfather wanted to move with us but the three other grandchildren wouldn’t agree (two of which are lawyers and they put up a fuss BUT also didn’t have the time to take care of him!)
I gave up ALOT of my life to be my grandfather’s caregiver. He wanted to leave me a nice inheritance in exchange for the years that I gave him of my life and time. A life changing amount of inheritance! That ended up going to a nursing home that took care of him for SIX YEARS!
I think the take-home here is that caregivers are worth something and need income and it ought not to be taboo to make that known and addressed upfront. 20 years of caregiving could have resulted in some sort of a payment plan instead of expecting an inheritance. I understand family dynamics weigh heavily in this but lots of older adults need to have this conversation with their kids if they expect to age at home.
America has a real identity crisis. Millions upon millions of Americans still believe that hard work and diligent saving will pay off.
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IS BROKEN!(been broke)
Citizens obey laws and pay taxes; the state provides defense, infrastructure, legal systems, and public safety.
We are still roughly obeying laws and paying tax. The state has been privately captured in probably every sector. This means that the corporate entities will continue to hollow out the farce that is the American government and we can continue to be blissfully unware that a foreign, hostile, entity will not help us when the time comes.
It does pay off for millions and millions. You must have a bad job or bad saving/investing practices. Because financial independence over time is absolutely achievable here. It is easier to just whine on the internet about how unfair it is, though.
System sucks??? Our parents and grandparents took care of many of the elderly much longer. We certainly can put the cost on the government but that takes hiring a lot of people at fairly high costs and ultimately we pay for it anyhow. Likely more as the costs are higher when someone else does it.
I understand the difficulties when the family does it but to say the system sucks is not really accurate.
They did it at one time. Multiple family member. But yes that is always a problem and the solutions are not easy. But you cannot blame the system unless you want to fund it more. But that funding come from other services or we raise taxes. And before we blame the wealthy (and wealth inequality is an issue), there simply are not enough of them to pay for any one of these issues. And there are lots.
Being we are living longer and expecting others to care for our family members, the main way to fund fund meaning ensure resources (human and materials) are available is if we work longer into retirement. Working till 70 will likely be the new norm.
No sympathy for the grandkids in this case. Definitely sympathize with the granddad tho. If the brats can't figure out how to take care of the grandpa, they shouldn't get any inheritance at the expense or tax payer. Social safety net should exist for the responsible old man tho - he did the right things if he saved up. As a taxpayer, I shouldn't have to care more about the old man than the grandkids themselves. Wth?
I took care of him for 20 years! He lived to be 106 years old. I was forced to relocate to another state for my husband’s career. The plan was to bring grandpa with us! The three other grandchildren…two lawyers and one a physician’s assistant- that grandpa paid their college tuition for…would not agree because they #1-didn’t know they were already written out of his will for many years! #2-didn’t even know a will existed already and they went for a money grab and had him demeaned mentally incompetent to try and gain inheritance through state law instead of will at the exact time I was moving three states away! Little did they know the will had existed for 12 YEARS AND THEY WERE EXCLUDED FROM IT IN WRITING ✍️ IN THE WILL. As soon as they found out, they abandoned him in a nursing home that I had to travel to three states away to continue seeing him!
What they did was SHAMEFUL!! And embarrassing while it was hashed out in probate prior to his death. The court was very sympathetic towards me, given how they tried to attack my integrity and all the years that I was this man’s everything! They NEVER came around. I am also 20yrs younger than these grandchildren….our mothers (grandpa’s daughters) were born twenty years apart. He was 100yrs old, I was being forced to move, and they thought they had it all figured out.
His $1.3 million that he scrimped and saved his whole life went to a nursing home for the last six years of his life. I was devastated that he was essentially taken out of my life because of money. That man was my everything, he raised me, I took care of him in his old age! We were inseparable. And the other grandkids envied it but also were too busy to give him any of their time.
And that’s why I think the system sucks!
I am sorry to hear about your loss. You sound like a very good granddaughter. Something definitely failed, but I would say its your cousins/siblings upbringing that failed the most, if they cared for the money more than him. And you got caught in the middle.
Just curious how did the nursing home take all the money? Nursing homes cost $100-120k a year which is a lot but if you have 1 million in assets generating 5-7% a year you can sustain this for decades. 2 million in s&p 500 can sustain these expenses indefinitely
Yeah, there’s a chance that can happen, but think it’s worse to do nothing because someone on reddit scared you in to thinking you might lose it all and then find yourself as a healthy 85 year old broke as shit trying to work menial jobs
Yeah, i'd rather save my whole life and die at 60 of cancer, than surviving until 85 (which is likely in my country) in poverty, having to work to survive.
THIS. It’s a worry of mine daily. Why save and invest if I won’t be able to enjoy it? BUT then what if I live a healthy life until 85 and I wasted all the money. I chose to find a balance. Enjoy my life but also put away as much as I can. Even if it’s $50 one month, it’s something g
I didn’t save enough when I was younger, I had other priorities and a pretty modest income. In my 30s I job hopped around to cash in on my experience and that allowed me to play catch up on retirement savings. Faced with that exact conundrum, how do I live today while also saving for tomorrow, I prioritized spending money on experiences instead of “stuff.” A few hundred dollars could be a weekend road trip to the mountains that we will remember forever, or it could be a small kitchen appliance we would throw away after a few years. I could die in 20 minutes or 50 years and either way my kids will have stories to tell about me.
Exactly! This is what I have started doing. I’m hesitant to buy small things that add up and don’t get used, but a trip to another state?! Definitely worth the money. Completely agree with you on that one.
Check out the Freakaconomics podcast, called The Power of Poop. There’s a gastroenterologist on there who helped put someone’s MS symptoms into remission by studying his gut biome and a FMT procedure. I hope this helps!
I appreciate the sentiment. My mom was diagnosed over 30 years ago and is in hospice care now. But back in her day she was up for everything like that! Bee sting therapy, you name it. Hopefully they find a cure some day.
.0001% chance I could die tomorrow, more than likely that I live to 80+. May as well not stress about savings, would be a real waste if I died tomorrow.
Sorry to hear that, but..... so when the more likely outcome of you not being diagnosed with a terminal disease happens, you're just going to be happy having to work till you drop dead?
80
u/amigos_amigos_amigos 5d ago
This is why I haven’t stressed about saving. My mom did, then got diagnosed with MS, had to move into a full term care facility, and it was all gone. Had to get rid of all assets for medicaid to pay for it. Or you can private pay and the money is gone quickly anyway.