To think we have to accept that we need to use savings to fund care in old age

[LastDuchessFerrara]

My parents died before reaching old age but I'm now watching family and friends caring - in one form or another - for older relatives.

Many seem to be in denial about the fact that savings, pensions and, in some cases equity in their home, needs to be used to enable their relatives to continue to stay in their homes or go into care.

"But they've worked all their lives!" they cry in protest. Well, yes - and now that money needs to be used in their old age.

It's really focussed my mind on how any money I accumulate might not be spent on amazing holidays but paying for cleaners and carers.

I'd be interested in views but please can this not be a "boomer" bashing thread. I know plenty of impoverished old people and plenty of entitled non-boomers.

We can all have all sorts of ideas for what may be improvements but people become very protective and, sometimes, even greedy when it comes to what they think of as unfair. It is always this way with any kind of state funded schemes and is why in the UK we don't have the same provisions as some other countries whose citizens are happy to pay for a society with excellent education, roads, healthcare, etc while we refuse on the grounds of "why should we pay for wasters, drug addicts, spendthrifts, etc"
You have only to look at some posters on here saying they will spend it all or give away rather than have to pay what they perceive as more.

I was just discussing that with my husband. His mum had an stroke and needs almost 24 hour care now. There is no money issue but none of her children live locally but need to take turns during the home carer breaks. They are all exhausted of the travelling made harder with Covid. The entire situation is very stressful. I don't want my children to have that worry. I was thinking that I would go into some sort of assisted living / retirement home quite happily and sell anything I own to pay for that.
So you are not unresonable. I hope my kids can earn a living without need my inheritance.

Lots of the boomers bought family homes in the 60s for less than £5k and could afford their mortgage on the salary of 1 worker in a fairly standard job

For the very first time, we disagree! The oldest boomer was 15 in 1960. I was 17 in 1970. It was the boomer generation’s parents who were the first beneficiaries of house price inflation. Mine bought their first house for £3.5k, I sold their final property for £250k. They did live frugally, no doubt about it but my (boomer) generation doesn’t on the whole.

I’ve watched my friends inherit, usually with their mortgages paid off. You wouldn’t believe the number of new kitchens, cars and luxury holidays those inheritances have paid for. Hardly any of them are saving because if they need care the house will pay for it.

Can I just point out, all this talk of children inheriting, the average age to inherit in the UK is 61. Really, they should have sorted themselves out by then.

Vinyl, not sure we are disagreeing. Perhaps it's in the definition of boomer generation?

I'm thinking of people now in their later 70s and 80s - they tended to buy in the 60s. At that time they could get a house for under £5k or in that sort of region. They typically married quite young in their early 20s and bought then or within a couple of years of marriage. Often only the man was working as the woman was at home with children. Mortgages were readily accessible and if they'd saved for a couple of years, they could afford a family home with a mortgage. Many of those houses in the south east are now worth between £600k and well over £1m, or the houses they moved to as a second property a couple of years later are. But few people in their 20s can afford those same houses today, even if they have high paying professional jobs.

If the oldest boomer was 15 in 1960, they were 25 by the end of the decade and exactly in the group who had been buying over the last couple of years...maybe later 60s rather than early 60s. And I guess for those with slightly older parents (late 80s and 90s) they will have bought earlier still when prices were often as little as £2 or £3k.

The point is simply that average people could buy houses that average people can't afford today.

Not sure we are disagreeing really. Perhaps I misunderstood what you said.

Take two families both earning the same. One family are spendthrifts, foreign holidays, new car every year, all the latest gadgets, expensive clothes, etc etc living off credit cards as spending more than they earn live in rented accommodation/ still owe money on mortgage. Other family live within their means and have some savings and by using money wisely own their home. First family will get care paid for by the government ie you, second family have to use savings/property to pay for their care. Why would anyone bother to save! The rules encourage people to spend, spend ,spend and expect someone else to sort it out

Good point! Free care for spending all your assets (or not accumulating any) is a disincentive to save.

I suspect many people, who have saved all their lives and paid tax into the system, may spend their money, or downsize, make gifts to family and friends, rather than wait until they need care and let the government snatch away their savings to ‘re-distribute’ it ‘fairly’ across society.

Because the families this will hit the hardest are those who have carefully saved up, lived within their means, paid off their mortgage, in the hope of giving their children a better future. A step up on the housing ladder that so many young people desperately need.

It won’t effect the very wealthy, who can afford to pay for private care on top of keeping their property, and still give their children a good inheritance.

Instead it penalises the people in the middle, many from poor backgrounds who worked hard and saved wisely, thinking their children would have a better start than they did.

And it doesn’t affect people who spend their entire life taking from the system rather than contributing (by choice, not through disability or lack of opportunities). Sadly there are many many people who have no motivation to earn a living or provide for their children or pay their rent and bills because they get it heavily subsidised or free, then free care in their old age as well.

@hammeringinmyhead

YANBU. My in-laws have a real bee in their bonnet about inheritance tax and I just think... I wouldn't worry too much about calculating it now; odds are at least one of your BTLs is going to have to fund care for one or both of you!

This just isn’t true.

There seems to be a misconception that basically everyone ends up in a nursing home at some point, but actually the numbers are quite small.

“ Approximately 418,000 people live in care homes (Laing and Buisson survey 2016). This is 4% of the total population aged 65 years and over, rising to 15% of those aged 85 or more.”

You’re right Wombat, it was the definition of boomer I disagreed with - and your characterisation of my generation as frugal - my friends are anything but!

Do people do everything in their lives for their children @HikeForward? Most people I know support their children until they’re old enough to be independent then get on with their lives. I don’t know anyone whose sole motivation for progressing their career, making sound financial decisions and buying a house is to leave money to their kids.

As has been pointed out, most people don’t inherit until they’re approaching pension age although, with people starting their families later now, that might change.

Too many fucking commas in that last sentence!

@GhostCurry I didn't mention care homes. I said "care". 3 of my 4 grandparents required paid care in their own homes, rather than going into residential, and we live 200 miles away from both my parents and DH's in different directions so won't be able to do it.

You're right VinylDetective, the people I see inheriting are mostly in their 50s and 60s. We are the same age, but currently have three parents still with us. One is very frail and now self-funding residential care, a decision forced on us by the pandemic when SIL fell out with her carers and couldn't find a stable replacement team. The others are not in need of care, yet.

They were children during WW2, but all bought their houses relatively recently and late in life (except the one with whom we're NC) so while they've benefited a lot from house price inflation, it's more like someone who bought a house in the 1990s. SIL is relying more than is healthy on her hypothetical inheritance to be able to buy a small house outright for her own retirement, after a life of low paid insecure work. I feel for her plight.

Do people do everything in their lives for their children @HikeForward? Most people I know support their children until they’re old enough to be independent then get on with their lives. I don’t know anyone whose sole motivation for progressing their career, making sound financial decisions and buying a house is to leave money to their kids.
As has been pointed out, most people don’t inherit until they’re approaching pension age although, with people starting their families later now, that might change.

My career, housing and financial decisions haven't been in pursuit of leaving an inheritance for my kids, BUT given the challenges facing young people now I will do what little I can to support them in young adulthood, rather than waiting for me to die.

Anything I can pass on, I will. If I downsize on retirement I will look at giving the capital freed up to my Dc. Not to avoid paying for my care, but because it will be of more use to them then and because they face bigger problems than I did. Student Loans, Housing costs, job shortages, tiny interest on any savings they make and the need to put more into a pension, and sooner etc.

Or if I inherit anything from my parents (currently paying for carers in their own home, so who knows) I might pass that straight to Dc.

If I get a stage where I don’t have a clue what planet I’m on, id rather someone put a pillow over my face than pay thousands on a grotty nursing home
I have told the DC that if I am lucid enough to know I am getting dementia I will drive my car off a cliff rather than be a vegetable watching daytime tv and having my nappy changed, and failing that, if there is a way for them to discreetly end me without them being incriminated -bring it on!
Utterly pointless to ‘exist’ as a burden.

There’s a great difference between actively ending someone’s life, and not actively prolonging it when quality of life is poor.

People with quite advanced dementia are often given daily medication to keep them ‘healthy’ - for what?? They may be in and out of hospital, on drips - hospital is in any case a terrible place for anyone with dementia, when they can’t understand what is going on, or why.

And then there’s so often the badgering and pestering someone to eat and drink when they no longer want to - I have witnessed this more than once and I know it was done with the best of intentions, but it was distressing to see the person crying and whimpering and repeatedly turning their head away.

I was very clear with staff at my mother’s care home, once she was beyond a certain stage (when she no longer knew any of her family, had no clue about anything, could no longer hold any sort of conversation, and had zero quality of life) that unless it was unavoidable (e.g. in the case of another broken hip) there should be no hospital, no ‘striving to keep alive’ and if she no longer wanted to eat or drink, so be it.

I had no trouble getting staff to agree, and in the end it wasn’t necessary, since she went downhill suddenly and very fast, and it was all over within 36 hours.

But there are many families where relatives do want absolutely everything done to keep someone going, no matter how pitiful the state they’re in, and become very angry and upset if anyone suggests that it might be kinder to let Nature take its course.

There’s a very high chance of my getting dementia, it’s rife in my mum’s family. While I’d much rather swallow the reds than go into residential care, I’m a realist and know that’s probably where I’ll end up. As a homeowner with savings, it’s up to me to pay for it. It would be truly shocking to use taxpayers’ money so our kids can inherit money they don’t need

It’s literally incomprehensible to me that people can’t see this

Oh i see it, i just totally disagree.
We have a social welfare system in this country, its being eroded, eye and dental care, now elderly care.

Its absolutely not about leaving money to children etc, its about paying in over a life time and then being cared for.

I asked earlier if you thought people with MH problems, needing residential care (but with assets) should have to pay too?
Maybe someone in an accident that puts them in a wheelchair, should also have to pay up front?

There is no limit to this, accidents in dangerous sports? accidents whilst drunk? your fault, pay for your treatment.

Sadly, life expectancy has increased faster than healthy life expectancy

I know it was from yesterday, but for me the key lies in this ... and as a PP just said, a major aspect of it is the families who insist their aged loved one must be saved no matter what. We even had a nurse posting last week who told of people frequently screaming that she was "a murderer", because despite all efforts there was nothing left to do for a relative who was clearly at the end of life

On a practical level it makes absolutely no sense to deny our mortality like this, and we urgently need a rebalancing of expectations - including for seniors themselves, who've sometimes said "kill me off!!" when younger but take a very different view once their turn comes

I would say the main motivation behind myself and DH is earning money to give to/help our children.
From PP:" I don’t know anyone whose sole motivation for progressing their career, making sound financial decisions and buying a house is to leave money to their kids."

@yoyo1234

I would say the main motivation behind myself and DH is earning money to give to/help our children. From PP:" I don’t know anyone whose sole motivation for progressing their career, making sound financial decisions and buying a house is to leave money to their kids."

Ours too.

In fact, I'd be hard pushed to think of anyone to help go that wasn't their main motivation in life.

*to think of anyone

There is no limit to this, accidents in dangerous sports? accidents whilst drunk? your fault, pay for your treatment

But there is a limit. There’s a very clear line. And we’re not talking about treatment, we’re talking about living in a communal setting with 24/7 care. The only way for anyone in a care home is down.

What you’re suggesting is that someone with dementia is given a free roof over their head, no bills, food provided, personal care - all at the taxpayers’ expense. I don’t want young people and families with children footing the bill for that. It’s grossly unfair.

What you’re suggesting is that someone with dementia is given a free roof over their head, no bills, food provided, personal care - all at the taxpayers’ expense. I don’t want young people and families with children footing the bill for that. It’s grossly unfair.

What about younger people who need care as a result illness or accident, perhaps while their own DC are still young? Same rules apply.

But there is a limit. There’s a very clear line. And we’re not talking about treatment, we’re talking about living in a communal setting with 24/7 care. The only way for anyone in a care home is down

Severe MH issues, requiring years in a unit? only to be readmitted, maybe ongoing for decades.

What you’re suggesting is that someone with dementia is given a free roof over their head, no bills, food provided, personal care - all at the taxpayers’ expense. I don’t want young people and families with children footing the bill for that. It’s grossly unfair

One day, they might need care, its the whole concept of a wider welfare society.

VinylDetective

There is no limit to this, accidents in dangerous sports? accidents whilst drunk? your fault, pay for your treatment”

I think so, yes. People who enjoy dangerous sports should take out specialist insurance. People who regularly go out on the lash and end up in A&E, yes, they should be charged too.
I know that will be an unpopular opinion.
I’ll get my coat

People who regularly go out on the lash and end up in A&E, yes, they should be charged too

Fair enough, what about those who drink wine/gin every night and end up with liver disease?

Not cheap, sell the house!

I do think care should be free and universal.

The reason is that we are creating a 2 tier system. Lots of people on here saying oh the local authority places are horrible grotty wouldn’t want to go there. Well someone is, someone’s parent, why should they get a horrible place because they’ve not been able to accumulate financial assets?

Good quality provision for all and realistic conversations about how we fund that as a collective country.