My Mom was a teacher and had a decent pension. My Dad worked for the post office and had both health insurance AND a good pension.
My mom had dementia and we had to sell her home—which had been in the family for 147 years. She was in long term nursing care for more than three years.
She passed the week I completed her Medicare application. She died with $1,000 in her accounts. It cost nearly half a million dollars to care for her last years.
We are fortunate that she had the money. But selling her home on a beautiful piece of Vermont lake front broke my heart.
My Mom lived in an Assistant Living facility, in Massachusetts, for 10 years.
After taking fall ,they refused to take her back until she was mobile. She wasn’t mobile before the fall. At that point I decided it was time for her to move to a nursing home as her saving were quickly dwindling. The Assisted Living facility was up to $13,000 a month.
At the nursing home we started the process of applying for Medicaid and the woman helping me through the process said that she would probably die as soon as she began Medicaid. She died the day before the application was approved. She was one month past her 100th birthday.
Assisted Living is a ripoff as far as I’m concerned. She got much better care in the nursing home.