Retired in late 50s due to mental health issues…did the trick as mental health issue now resolved. I live on my own now having divorced at age 57 after 30 years of marriage.
i have DB pension I live off with interest from savings . I do worry about my saving pot as had to spend a lot on my house when I moved in that wasn’t expecting, and there’s still significant work that is needed. But house is adaptable to live downstairs if needed. I probably don’t spend enough in truth, the worry holds me back . I’m not travelling much as I travelled a LOT with work and frankly vowed I’d never got on a plane again unless I had to ! But I’ve not had the courage to plan holidays as a singleton in uk and fear about spending my savings on this. Yet I know when I reach 67 I will be a lot better off, and therefore should be using more of my savings now.
so this is interesting thread about front end loading….like many others my mum and maternal GM both died in late 50s so I have a strong sense of my own morbidity
many people have said about care costs, and seem quite breezy and upbeat about their plans. But what I’ve learnt about care over las 12 months made me bin any such breezy plans. I now regard it as a bit like birth plans - a sop sold to you by NCT etc to make you feel in control but at end of day a lot of the time your plan is merely a best case wish list and can leave you feeling like a failure or disappointed.
My DF is now 87, he was absolutely fine until Covid. He started to get hallucination but this was put down to Charles Bonnet syndrome due to him loosing vision. Then late in 2022, Within a very short space of time his cognitive function declined and we’ve had an awful 18 months with him being moved from pillar to post to diagnose, and then manage his condition. He’s been in nhs facilities for around 7 of those 12 months which he obviously didn’t pay for as they pissed around saying it was a mix of Charles bonnet and delirium - he stayed in the most god awful mental health wards in hospitals. He was finally sectioned, diagnosed properly with LBD and is therefore under a 117 which means he gets nursing funding in part when in private care. But he’s been evicted in effect from the private homes he was discharged to, twice, due to them not being willing to manage his needs as they’ve worsened. He is disturbed, agressive and agitated (not an ounce of aggression on him till this developed) . We’ve now been told he’s on “end of life” palliative care, and he is fading slowly. Whilst he is paying (or his LPOA is) a lot for his care needs,despite the nursing element being covered by nhs funding, he is unlikely to even spend the average amount calculated by government stats. And much of the costs he pays come out of his pension anyway and not his assets. In practice he’ll probably not even spend £50k of his actual savings at this rate.
so my 3 learnings from dealing with this grotesque illness (I use the word deliberately in his case) are these:
- decline may happen so fast that you won’t have time to make your way yourself to dignitas or even a uk equivalent if that became an option with a law change at some point. Dad has never had the cognitive abitly to know he had this illness- by time it was diagnosed as dementia he was beyond understanding. I’d always thought that’d be my plan- I’ve seen in practice I may not have awareness or time to do that and so it’s not a plan to defer to. Yep, it is an option for people with physical terminal illnesses …but in case of cognitive decline it is much more difficult to determine at a point when you could do something about it.
- you may well kit yourself out with home, adapations etc to avoid having to go into care home, or like me say to my kids “dont put me in a home” but for some people the dementia and other cognitive illnesses are so unmanageable and grotesque that a spouse or live in carer is not an option. Many people with dementias need a DOL (or new equivalent) and that’s not possible by staying in their own home. It is way better to accept this may have to happen, and plan for your wishes in these situations through your LPOA or expression of wishes/advances directive attached to that.
- whilst care home fees are at £1500-£2000 a week, it does not mean you’ll be spending all that for 10-15 years languishing in a care home. As these diseases progress often nursing needs come into play, or 117 funding in extreme cases and that’ll reduce costs. “Only” 15% of over 75 year olds will need care home at all. Of those the average stay is 400 nights, with a long tail to 800 nights at the end. This is how the government and parliament worked out the care fee cap at £85k some years ago - it was based on an average so that those who suffered longest were not financially penalised. That would be higher now, but in region of £100k. The cap was pushed out again in terms of implementation but is still in the statute so may be introduced. So, based on average uk home cost, care will not, in almost all cases, completely frazzle away all your life savings including your home. home might need to be sold, but unlikely statistically to have to frazzle its entire cost away. Yep, it’s a hefty amount, but if you don’t have that money in first place you can’t use it!
- care home choice is only a choice for some people early in decline, or where dementia is not a factor. When someone is in my dads condition it is literally “beggars can’t be choosers” becuase private care/nursing homes don’t want to pay for care assistance or nurses at ratio he needs to keep him and them and other patients safe. He has been evicted from 2 homes. He was bed blocking in last nhs admission as his home refused to have him back. He was literally, at that time , homeless. Social services found 1 faciltly in the whole of the large local authority which could and would take him with the nursing needs he has. He and we had no choice. So, saying you want to save money so you have a choice of a “nicer” home than a standard basic model is not how it works in a lot of cases. You’ll go where you can, and pay whatever that costs minus what support you get through nursing needs.
I know this is a bit off tangent, but it has made me completely rethink about covering “care costs” ….at the end of the day it’ll be out of my hands and into my LPOA/beneficieries (post death) and in either case I’ll not care. So, I’m focusing on rewriting out what my care preferences would be in my newly realised understanding of how shit it is. And ditching any thoughts about how will I pay for it. Frankly, it won’t be my problem by then.
my focus is on spending money on house to deal with physical decline like immobility. And then on my social life. I’ve put a lot of effort into that to ensure I build a strong network of friends and social activities. I’m an introvert so it didn’t come naturally . But I also know that a big indicator to mental decline and mental illness in the elderly is social isolation. I’m investing a lot of time in joint group activities geared to retirees that ensure those networks will stay until I’m no longer cognitively functioning! Most of groups I go to range from late 50s to 90s so even the older members who are sadly loosing friends, are benefitting from the younger influx coming in and not becoming totally isolated (U3A).