To think it's unfair to sell your home to fund care when older while others pay nothing.

[SonnyHoney]

I provide healthcare services to older people, which means I regularly visit care homes. It’s something I find quite upsetting at times. I see individuals who have worked hard all their lives, paid off their mortgages, and are now facing care home fees of around £2,000 a week.

Meanwhile, others are living in the same care homes with their costs largely covered, aside from a contribution from their pension.

I say this as someone from a working-class background and daughter of an immigrant (El salvador) who has had to work incredibly hard to get to where I am financially. I’m also very aware that one day my own parents may have to sell their home to fund their care.
My mum, for example, has run a cleaning business for years, she’s up early every morning and has worked long, physically demanding hours. She hopes to pass something on, but realistically, I feel it will likely be used to cover care costs .

Before anyone says “Why don’t you just care for her yourself and keep the house?” And of course, if I’m in a position to do that, I will. But the reality is that with older age, there can come a point where needs become too complex, and care at home is no longer possible.

Obviously, those who don't have houses to sell need care and have to go to a care home, but my point is it just feels unfair, really.

We are not living longer at all!!!

Life expectancy has actually reduced. On another thread, people are talking about our observations and experiences that people are taking up smoking again.

Theres a lot of myths on this thread being trotted out despite being shut down on other threads over the years

EU home ownership is much much lower than the UK
People with dementia are coherent and articulate enough to tell strangers of their financial affairs
Huge amounts of people go into care homes
We are living longer
State funders were all unemployed for decades

Any more Ive missed?

Just in case you need a reminder

I think it’s important to remember that only 2.5% of people aged 65 or older are in residential care (2021 numbers, but the numbers are in declining). And of those who do need care, the average stay is around 2 years. So for the vast majority of people, care will not completely deplete their savings. I think it’s much fairer that they spend some of their savings on the care they need, than ask taxpayers to subsidise an unearned inheritance, often for people who are already reasonably well off.

I think it’s you. That needs the reminder.
”My point about what we did in the 90s was that we had two jobs
My boyfriend and I had day jobs and then we worked in bars to cover the house savings for the deposit.
By 98 house prices were doubling when I entered the market.
If people have had children before securing their accommodation, of course their lives are gonna be more difficult
But my child could buy the first property that I purchased - saw one come up in the same road - on their own.
My other child will be buying a house with her boyfriend that it took us 10 years to save for and she’ll be buying it two years out of uni
It’s not more difficult unless you’ve got four albatrosses around your neck but then you access support that my children wouldn’t receive. So swings and roundabouts.”

That everyone in a care home has a dementia diagnosis.

I am not sure that is a good idea as the tenants would be homeless again when the owner died. So quite cruel really to allow people to rent a decent home on the understanding that the rug will be pulled from under them weeks/months/years later.

Plus a lot of older people's properties often need a lot of work.

the family can rent the house privately if they want though I agree would be better if it could be rented out by the local authority

the law just says if you have assets over a certain amount you have to pay not that you have to sell your house. In practice of course, selling is the easiest way

Do we have to do this again? Affordability is much worse now than it was in the 80s.

Research by Leeds building society (three years old but still valid):
https://www.leedsbuildingsociety.co.uk/_resources/pdfs/press-pdfs/press-releases/housing-is-now-at-its-least-affordable.pdf

This is why I dont want a compulsory scheme to pay for this, we have around an 80% chance of not needing any sort of care (Im including home care too)

That is a good point, fair enough.

We get that, but there’s still no excuse for not having any assets even on minimum wage
On universal credits they can keep £6000 for themselves
And it only starts to affect their benefits when it gets up to £16,000 so given that care isn’t affected until £23,000 has been ringing fenced
Even the poorest of society can cobble together some sort of contribution to their care plan.
If they don’t spend it all

Yes this!! It's very frustrating that the only discussion around social care is around the small numbers of older people who need care in care homes and how to protect the 'family home' (even though in reality it may not be the family home - my parents and most of my friends parents no longer live in the houses we grew up in as children) v much higher numbers of older people who receive care at home

Did your mum pay high enough wages to those she employed in her cleaning business so they could afford their own home to then be sold to pay for care fees should they need it @SonnyHoney ?

Are the carers in the homes you visit paid enough to do it?

Because part of the problem as I see it is that people in traditionally low paid roles are hard pushed to survive, never mind buy their own homes so they can fund care they might need, while others who are celebrated for being successful ( because they have assets to pay for their care) are in part successful due to the work done by the people they employ - and don't pay them enough to have those assets - and then bitch and whine about them not being able to pay for their own care when the time comes, while they have to.

To me the system of paying for your care if you have assets is no more or less fair than people working full time for a wage that doesn't lend itself to gaining assets, while doing jobs that are wanted and needed. We want and need these services, we want and need people to work in them, as users of the services and employers (like cleaning companies for instance) but when it comes to the predictable outcome of paying wages that aren't enough to collect assets for the future, suddenly it's all not fair and those people are lazy grifters.

But that’s why an insurance scheme would be good, it could pay out if you don’t need it, or to the family if you die. If it were funded via NI and there would have to be some way the person would get a lump some or grant, so as not to miss out on money paid in.

“minimum wage can work 80 hours a week to get where they need to get to which is what we did in the 90s”

If that isn’t explicitly saying you worked 80
hours a week in the 90s, i don’t know what would be.

linking me to an entirely different quote where you said something else, doesn’t mean you didn’t later say this.

Two years would eat up a very large chunk, if not all of their savings, some of these homes charge approximately £6K a month!

Or
an alternative thought based on low uptake means everyones premiums would be lower
No point in getting money back when your dead. Just pay less in your lifetime

I dont want it in my estate when I die, thats the point, I would be spending money now on something Im unlikely to need

It could pay out if I dont need it? How does that work given I dont know when Im going to die and dont know if tomorrow I might get hit by a bus and need care for the rest of my life

So I get to 80, or 85, or 90, or 95, when do I get to claim the money back and have it pay out? when Im 92? And then when Im 93 sods law I get dementia and need care?

Again editing the posts to try and capture out of context.
The facts remain has has been pointed out many many times on this thread by many many posters
People had different paths that they chose in life. Some people were responsible and some people weren’t.
Them both ending up in the same place is inherently unfair
And what the super rich would love us to do would be for all of us to go well there’s no point in trying any more so we all give up and own nothing, spend your money on tat
The gap then widens

I don't think the tax payer should fork out for care when people have the means to pay for it. Although I do understand why people feel salty about it, because generational wealth is literally the thing that keeps the rich rich and its relatively new for the middle and lower classes to actually have anything to pass on themselves.

It's all solved by taxing the rich but as most of the current political parties are against a wealth tax, people will just have to pay their own way individually instead.

If you’re aiming the EU home ownership one at me, that’s not actually what I said, is it.

I said renting is far more prevalent in many EU countries, which it is.

If 3% of the elderly need care for an average of 2years ( 3% allows for an uptick )

Cost @£1000 /week for 2years minus £200/week of a persons state pension gives us a total cost of
£83,200

Divide that by 33people ( on the 3% usage basis )
= £2,521 / per person payable as an insurance premium in a persons lifetime

Seems very reasonable to me and that’s not even factoring in the money being invested which makes more money which could reduce premiums further

£2521/ 40 years ( for example ) is £63 a year
or £5.25 a month

A policy such as this allows for the future with less home ownership

My mother didn't often employ people, as we lived in a RAF village and people would come and go, but often they would ask her for a few hours' work here and there. She mostly worked solo and would still be out of the house at 7, 8,o'clock in the evening cleaning cookers getting ready to return the houses back to the Ministry of Defence for new tenants to move in. She wasn't creaming it financially; she just worked really hard and long hours. She actually once even broke her arm, and she still went to work. That's how she managed to afford to buy her house.

My mother in law for instance always had little part-time jobs and a smoking habit and lived in a council house since she was 19. Never really worked hard as the welfare state was always there to back her up. She passed away before she retired, but if she had lived to be in a care home, it would have been funded by the taxpayer. That's why I think its unfair.