Paying for care home

[RidingMyBike]

Got an elderly relative (80s) who needs to move into a care home - self-funded as she wouldn’t be eligible for any help from council. She has no children etc so we’re trying to assist (mum and me).. There will be approx £650,000 once her house is sold and all of that can be spent on care but obviously need to make sure the money doesn’t all run out. Last time this happened with different elderly relative my mum spent hours trotting round different banks and organising premium bonds and different accounts with good interest rates to cover care home fees. I can’t really imagine the logistics of juggling goodness knows how many accounts and think this is unnecessarily complicated. That relative was in the same town as her, this one is 3 hours from her and I’m over 4 hours away from both of them.

Surely the answer should be some kind of investment product with a drawdown option each month/year to cover the fees. And surely some kind of financial adviser specialising in this stuff? What about the £85000 savings limit at individual banks?

Anybody else had to deal with something like this?

I'm a financial adviser with a licence to advise on later life matters (not all do). Would it be ok if I PM you?

Sure!

We ended up arranging a live in carer for a relative in a similar situation. It avoided a home much to their delight and worked out cheaper (costs about £750 a week).

I am sure Sunseed will have lots of good ideas. From my experience, there are products you can buy that will guarantee to cover future care costs so you can be sure the costs are covered (but they are not cheap).

And (sorry if this is difficult) the average length of stay in a home is about 30 months, so even if your relative is relatively fit and tough £650,000 is likely to be enough to keep her in a lovely home for the rest of her life.

I assume someone has POA already?

I'm sorry you're having to go through this, sounds like a nightmare- how much are care homes and how long potentially will they be there? Will £650,000 not cover it?

It's crap isn't it, there's a part of me that feels care homes should be free (though financially I know that wouldn't work!) and a part of me that just wishes people would save up for stuff like this so they have extra money or have health insurance that covers residential stays (if that even exists!) What if someone doesn't have a house to sell? How do they pay then?

Thank you for the responses. I don't think elderly rellie would tolerate a live in carer. They've looked round a few homes and found a really nice one which basically has mini apartment type things with increasing amounts of support and all meals provided which you can eat in your rooms or with others. But it is expensive.

I'd have said the same thing about likely life expectancy but all but one of elderly relative's siblings lasted into their mid-90s so she's got good genes! And nothing actually wrong with her other than increasing frailty. She's very bright and interested in things still, just gets very tired quickly.
I'll wait to hear from @Sunseed too

The cost would be around £3-4000 a month, depending on level of care. So she'd probably be ok for about a decade (depending on how much the costs increase), but what we'd hate to see happen is she gets into her 90s and is even frailer and is then forced to move somewhere cheaper which wouldn't meet her (very!!) high standards.

POAs are set up but not yet activated(?). They have been done thru solicitor. Mum and I both have them.