Budgeting for the latter stages of your life involves making intelligent long-term projections. If you want to be prepared for all contingencies you should be pragmatic and conservative with regard to your estimates. With this in mind, you would do well to consider the possibility of incurring long-term care expenses at some point in time.
If you are fortunate enough to live into your senior years it becomes likely that you will need living assistance before all is said and done. There are those who mistakenly believe that Medicare would pick up the tab if they were to need long-term care, but in fact you are on your own because Medicare is not set up to handle these expenses.
According to the MetLife Mature Market Institute the average annual cost for a private room in a nursing home in the United States in 2011 was over $87,000. If you were to spend the year residing in an assisted living community the average cost was around $41,700.
Clearly, this is a lot of money. If you can’t see yourself easily handling these costs out-of-pocket, it could be possible to qualify for Medicaid. This government program will pay for long-term care, and though it is theoretically intended for people with serious financial need it is possible to obtain eligibility while retaining a significant store of assets if you plan ahead intelligently.
With the proper advice you should be able to position yourself in a manner that enables you to absorb long-term care costs one way or another. The best way to devise a plan is with the assistance of a licensed and experienced Indianapolis elder law attorney.
Paul A. Kraft, Estate Planning Attorney
Mr. Kraft assists clients primarily in the areas of estate planning and administration, Medicaid planning, federal and state taxation, real estate and corporate law, bringing the added perspective of an accounting background to his work.
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