No one wants to think about the time in life when you will not be able to take care of yourself at home. However, it is something that has to be considered and to save money it has to be planned for long before you would ever need the care.

I am not talking about Government Medicare. I am talking about long term home care for you when you need someone to help you shower, get dressed or clean your home. I am also talking about the time when you can't live at home anymore and need to stay at a nursing home or rest home. Medicare will not pay for any home care or long term nursing home care. If you don't have an extra insurance plan for long term home or nursing home care, you will be stripped of all your savings in two years or less.

At this time nursing homes are costing about $150 a day depending on where you live in the country. Home health care costs about $150 a week for five visits. This does not mean the people stay with you all day. They will be there for perhaps an hour or two. L.V.N.'s (Licensed Vocational Nurses) get about $15 an hour so you can figure the cost if you need someone who can give you medical care. A home health care worker normally gets $8 to $10 per hour.

So how can you protect yourself when you are too elderly to care for your needs and Medicare will not? You have to plan ahead and get a long-term care insurance policy. These policies are less expensive when you get them in your 50's rather than waiting to get one while you are in your mid 60's . At today's rates a plan that pays $150 a day for care will cost a person in their mid 50's about $200 a month. If you wait until you are over 65, the monthly cost for the same policy could be as high as $2,000 a month.

My broker said why give $200 a month to an insurance company for, maybe, 20 years before it's needed when you can invest the money every month yourself. He said that's what the insurance company is going to do. Then when you need the money it has grown and all belongs to you. The only negatives in that plan is that if you need the care in just 10 years, and for life, you would be better off with the insurance plan. If you live for 20 years plus, you would probably have been better off to have invested the money yourself. It's a gamble! Also remember, when you take money out of your investment you will have to pay IRS taxes on it. However, there are no income taxes on insurance payments.

You ask, what are they going to do if I simply don't have the money when I am 70 years old and need the home care? Will they put me out on the street? I know some street people in L.A. that believe that is exactly what happened to them. There are times that Medicare will give you home health care visits two times a week. (But many times you have to stand on your head and beg like a dog to get just two visits.) Don't plan on it.

I know of homeless people who have Medicare and Social Security and still have to live in boxes on the streets in downtown L.A. (By the way, refrigerator boxes are in great demand on the streets. The reason is that you can sleep stretched out in them.) There is nothing magical about being old and sick without income. Social Security is not enough income anymore and by the time people now in their 30's and 40's get to be 67 they will be lucky to get anything. You say, "I thought you get Social Security at 65 years of age." Sorry, they have already moved the age up to 67 if you are in your early 40's; and by the time someone who is 25 or 30 reaches retirement age, it will probably be 70 years of age.

Remember, when it was set at 65 the average life span was 65 years of age. The Social Security officials didn't think most people would live past 65 or 66. Well, now the average age is 72 for men and 74 for women. So your government is raising the age for retirement higher and higher in hopes that most people will not live that long. The government says this is the only way they can afford Social Security. Now you understand why so many people are investing in IRA's and other funds and stocks. Take a look at my investment section for more information on IRA's and other investment possibilities.

When one senior citizen of a couple goes into a nursing home and they don't have a long term care policy, it will normally eat up the couple's savings in a year. Now you have two senior citizens without funds. To keep this from happening I have seen loving husbands and wives get divorced so that the wife will not lose everything when her husband goes to the nursing home. These homes can cost $150 to $300 a day. When you are officially divorced then the person who has to go into the nursing home can only lose half of their savings. I covered this type of sad situation in Houston, Texas.

I think the laws should be changed so that senior citizens do not have to divorce their loving mate who is extremely ill, so that he or she can get nursing home care. You can explain over and over again to seniors that this is just a divorce for legal and economical reasons and it has nothing to do with the couple's love for each other, but many times it is what will kill the spirit to live in a loving senior citizen. When you tell an 85 year old sick woman that she must be divorced from her husband for any reason, it's like putting a knife into her heart. Her life mate is all she has left, and when you divorce her from that feeling you are killing her spirit to live. Can you believe we do this to our senior couples by law? It makes you wonder who the dummies are that make these laws.

More and more seniors are living at home with families. Couples are finding that it costs much less to put on an extra room for Mom or Dad than pay $100's of dollars a week for a nursing home. That's what we did in our family. It's a much better life style for the senior. If you want more information on nursing homes click on our Consumer Tips page for How to find the right Nursing Home.

Remember if you are in your late 20's and you put $2,000 a year in an IRA, by the time you retire you will be a millionaire. Good luck.