To get annoyed when people try to avoid care costs

[paramedicswift]

People deserve good care in old care, potentially in their own home or in a care home.

While it is completely rational thing to do, people try avoid this cost by spending as much money as they can before they need this care or they give it away to family.

On one side, it is completely rational. I understand that people have paid taxes, national insurance and worked for their entire life. They have a desire to see this work to be passed onto their children for them to benefit from their hard work.

One the other side, it is incredibly entitled. To me, your care in old age is just another cost of life. It is like cost of food, cost of shelter. I wish I did not have to spend money on rent, food and travel to work. But I have to. This is just life.

It makes me even more angry when family inheritances come into it. It is just so greedy and horrible. I do not know why it is unacceptable to some people to apply for benefits and never work but completely acceptable to avoid paying for social care.

It is a bit of tragedy of commons because if everyone did it, then taxes would be wasted on caring for old people that COULD HAVE afforded the care themselves rather than important things such as education for children, public infrastructure projects and healthcare that benefit everyone.

To everyone according to their need. If someone cannot genuinely afford old age care and they did not deliberately avoid the costs, then I have no problems with state subsidised care.

Am I being unreasonable?

Actually inheritance tax threshold is £325,000.

JassyRadlett, thank you for your kind words. I agree. I would like to see this rolled into the NHS. It would definitely mean an increase in taxes but that's okay with the whole 'with tax I buy civilization'.

It does annoy me the people most capable are the most likely to shirk the responsibility.

Op, you're lucky to be able to save. But what for? Get out there and enjoy yourself, broaden your mind with some travel.
What if you don't need to go in a home? All that money invested for nothing!

But needing care is not inevitable OP, and it may feel quite unlikely if your family has a habit of dying young or suddenly without a long decline -none of my husband's grandparents made it to retirement age.

I now understand what you mean by people being able to spend their own money how they please.

That you cannot even buy Christmas presents for family is outrageous. It is almost like the do not trust the old people to spend wisely because the care home must get its money. That is very dark and horrible.

I do think the care home and care industry needs a better model. People (not just old people) need entertainment, socialization and activities. Not a boring and depressing existence.

I would like to see old people campuses. Huge campuses with dormitories and lots of things to do. Bars and stuff. Like university for old people without the education.

But not everyone needs care. And there is no way of telling if you are going to need them or not so its not a priority for most people until its too late to do anything about it. The majority of people don't have enough money or assets to save some 'just in case'.

If I had enough money to invest 70% of my income and travel everywhere courtesy of someone else (in your case work) then maybe I would feel a little more benevolent towards the system.

3littlefrogs, you partly described my life, for half or more of the time, though I am just about coping with no carers. It's not just the elderly that need care, the young do too.

Dormitories sound grim to me, not unlike the workhouse!

Fortunately most care homes do a least give someone their own room

nokidshere, can you explain what you mean by benevolence to the system?

ScOffasDyke, I fully accept I am lucky. I want to stop working ASAP and do 100% what I want full time. It is called early retirement and financial independence. It is a incredibly interesting topic and there are many blogs about it :-) If someone spends all your money, they will always be working like everyone else and will never have the opportunity to do what you want to do with your life. (Essentially, they will literally have spent 2 days out of every 7 actually 'living their life'.)

I like the sound of your university type place, I'd be happy to end up somewhere like that!

One of the problems is that it isn't inevitable that people will need care, so it's nothing like food. None of the oldest generation on either side of my family needed social or nursing care before they died.

Another problem is that self funding people don't get anything different to state funded people. Unless you are extremely wealthy, you won't be able to buy any extra luxury, it's more likely you will be subsidising other people and getting nothing you wouldn't have had anyway. That doesn't really give anyone the incentive to watch their children struggle to buy a home when they could help, or seem like an attractive reason to forgo a holiday.

My mum is in a care home and she is only 60. She's hasn't worked for 30 years due to disabilities so hasn't paid tax etc. my dad did though before he died and luckily left enough money to pay for mums care home for the next few years. Her care is £1400 a week. That's almost £73k a year.

Her care home is ok. She has a better life than being at home with us/carers coming in daily. She now has a social life. She has a lovely room which we can decorate as she wishes. But £73k a year??? To be safe and clean and medicated? Too much.

When her money runs out the state will pay for her to stay where she is hopefully. I don't know if the system is floored or not but the cost of care in my opinion is too high.

But how do you define "deliberately avoid the costs"?

Most people do that to avoid IHT. If they are rich enough.

In which case they and their families do not qualify for state subsidised care, and wouldn't use it anyway.

You get what you pay for.

Agree ptolemy

Also, inheritance is also helping rather a lot of people buy a house nowadays. I like to think that what I leave my family will help house my greatGC.

I actually am going to go against the grain here. As an accountant I actively encourage clients to set up their finances i such a way as to avoid care home fees. And if my mum starts to show signs of needing a care home she's going straight over the cliff. In my defence we have discussed it and my mum is fully aware of the situ.

YABU. I look at it like this;

Person A - worked all their life and put a considerable amount in savings for their DC and GDC - gets it taken off them to pay for care
Person B - worked all their life but rather than save spent their money on holidays, gifts and generally enjoying the money - NHS picks up their care tab
Person C - never worked, no savings - NHS picks up their care tab

How is that a fair system?

One of the problems is that it isn't inevitable that people will need care, so it's nothing like food. None of the oldest generation on either side of my family needed social or nursing care before they died.

This is such a good point. Of my grandparents, one spent around three years in a care home. The others were at home, in hospital after a short acute illness, and in a hospice after several weeks' palliative care.

It's so remarkably like health care: not everyone will need it, and not everyone who needs it will need the same amount. But we all pay for it so that if and when we do need it, it's there.

YANBU. But I think we need some kind of radical re- think about later years care and funding, as at the moment it is a mess that only benefits the feckless, poor and the rich

This thread has made me furious. My much loved dad worked all his life. My mum also worked all her life. Both in demanding manual jobs. My dad finished work and developed dementia within 6 months. My mum retired and became a full time carer. It nearly killed her. Eventually he went into an EMI home which cost every penny they had saved and all my available savings. Nhs didn't pay diddly squat as it was deemed non essential even though my dad was unable to feed dress or toilet himself. My mum has been left with nothing. They both paid nhs subs all their lives. Their dream of doing some travelling after retirement came to nothing. Eventually when my dad was so infirm and so poorly that he became too difficult to manage, he was transferred to a nursing home. They left him sat in a chair without moving him enough, he developed massive pressure sores down to the bone within ten days. His skin was intact when he entered the home. He died a fortnight after being placed there. It infuriates me that he paid for such shoddy treatment. It infuriates me that anyone pays for what should be essential care. Boot out the ingrown toenails and headaches and drunken passouts and make them pay for care! If I could avoid paying for a member of my family in the future I would! Whilst the nhs pays obscene amounts of money to consultants to teach them how to save money, well I won't lose any sleep over it.

I was going to say similar to worriedaboutwee
I suspect most people would be quite comfortable with the idea of paying reasonable costs for their accommodation, food, and care, but it is ludicrous how expensive many homes are. I think that comes into it too.

I also think that this is something that you can't really measure. I was talking to friends today who are just retiring. They are giving their dd a few thousand ££ to help as she buys her first home - they think it makes more sense to help her now, than to have it sitting there in their account. Would that be seen as avoiding paying for their care (currently perfectly fit and active and will hopefully have 20 yrs before they are "old") ? I think it could be argued that those few thousand £ isn't their care home expenses, but is what they saved for her over the last 10 years, rather than spoiling her more as she was growing up. Or, what they saved by always having a 2nd hand car rather than a new one. Or, what they saved by never going abroad on holiday. Or, what they saved as they have both worked all their lives rather than one being a SAHP. etc. etc. You could go on with the arguments.
At what point does helping your dc a bit, become 'avoiding care home fees' ?

linski I'm so sorry to hear about your dad.

Honestly, it's threads like this that make me wonder why I'm bothering to try and get on the property ladder why on earth should I if there's a good likelihood that after all that saving, and paying out and going without holidays and nice things that it'll all be taken off us anyway? Because odds are that either DH or I would need some kind of care, right?

Thanks wondering it's nice to hear that. It doesn't bare thinking about does it? Losing every penny you have worked for. I'm determined that I will do everything in my power to avoid care home fees. Absolutely everything.

Yanbu
Lots of people with huge equity in their homes and savings have been lucky and seen their houses go up in value through luck not hard work
Why should I work so hard for so little to further subsidise the baby boomer generation.

So sick of hearing "worked hard all my life" so do the rest of us.
Work in this area myself and fed up of hearing these entitled attitudes and seeing the efforts people make to avoid contributing. It is a very low paid area and vey galling to see how much this generation have and want to keep to pass on to their children while the current generation looking after them struggle and are expected to pay.

This generation had all the benefits of retiring early on generous pensions, booming house prices, secure employment. They had it all. So unfair to expect us to pay for their care that they can afford themselves.

I agree with you op BUT it is also massively unfair that people in their 60s and 70s who have assets have no way of knowing whether they are going to be one of the lucky ones who live in reasonable health until a short illness eventually carries them off, or are going to have a long and slow decline requiring residential care for many years. It's so unfair that I'm not surprised people try to avoid the risk. Personally I'd prefer to pool the risk so that everyone pays in much less than they would have to if they ended up self-funding care for years and that pooled money is used to pay for the ones who turn out to need it. Then the unlucky ones with higher care costs don't get to lose out massively.

But the most sensible way to administer such a system would be through inheritance tax and apparently that is WRONG and EVIL and A TAX ON DEATH.