I didn't realize (until this happened to my sister-in-law) that you can sometimes get LTC to pay for assisted living even after you have cancelled the policy! This is how it happened - my SIL was a very, very healthy (never smoked, never drank, ideal weight, good amount of exercise) 69yo who had a hemorrhagic stroke while at home alone (never married). Was able to get to a phone and call 911 and then spent most of the next year moving from stroke ICU to normal ICU to hospital to assisted living while she worked hard to recover as much ability as possible. Many years ago (maybe 15 or so), she had purchased a Genworth LTC policy, but after paying about $12,000 in premiums, decided it was costing too much and cancelled. She called Genworth to see if she could get any reimbursement. Genworth investigated her claim and refused. She read the refusal, thought that they had misunderstood (because she now no longer needed assisted living - she had returned to her condo). She refiled the claim, and they paid her the $12,000 in premiums she had paid all those years ago. A very pleasant and unexpected outcome - current LTC policies probably don't have this provision.
I once read (perhaps on HD) that our lives can be split into three phases: wanting things, then a period of acquiring things, and then a period of getting rid of things. My life has certainly followed that pattern. I'm now at the stage when I find great satisfaction in getting rid of possessions, at the exact time that I can finally afford them! I used to love shopping, although this mostly involved looking at things with great longing, imagining how they would look in my house, etc. I no longer love shopping, but when I am in stores I find they are now somewhat like museums to me. I sometimes enjoy looking at the stuff, but I certainly don't envision taking any of it home!
From a different type of work environment - I was production editor for medical journals at a Philadelphia publisher in the late 90s. (A bit of trivia - at that time the world center of medical and legal publishing was Philadelphia, although most publishers were owned by Dutch companies. I don't know if that is still true.) At any rate, editors who had worked there a bit longer than I recalled fondly earlier years when the custom was to devote Fridays to citation checking - editing lists of credits at the end of each article. It is tedious work. To make the work more palatable, the publisher would bring in kegs of beer. Editors began drinking at lunchtime and continued until the end of the workday, when many of them went together to local bars to continue drinking. One restriction was that all citation-checking for anesthesiology journals had to be completed during morning hours, before drinking began. Those journals were notoriously tougher to edit than others, although it may just have been that their editors-in-chief were stricter than others. I don't think I could edit a medical citation list after a couple of beers, but it seems the older editors were made of much sterner stuff!
Thank you - enjoyed the article and the accumulated wisdom of generations of wise money management. Also, I was happy to see a mention of YNAB. This simple budgeting tool enabled my husband and myself to get out of debt in the nineties. We gifted a subscription to my son, who used it to accumulate enough $$ to pay off his student loans and then to buy a home mortgage-free in another country, where he and his wife now live. We are big fans of YNAB - I'm sure there are plenty of equally useful budgeting tools, but that is the one we know and love.
Three years in and still loving retirement. I worked full time until the age of 71, though, so I have waited a long time for this. Two of the things that are keeping me busy:
Teaching English conversation to immigrants one day a week, with an organization called Welcoming the Stranger.
I knew that I wanted to do more learning in retirement. Checked out things such as OLLI and The Great Courses, which look wonderful. However, I ended up trying something on my own. I never really knew much about classical music, though I probably know more than I should about classic rock. Decided to remedy this defect by reading biographies of composers and listening to their music in the order it was composed. Almost everything you could ask to hear is on YouTube, for free. I started with Beethoven (this took more than a year - I was in no hurry), then moved on to Rachmaninoff. Currently doing a side excursion on the life and music of Cole Porter. Very content to be doing a little reading and a little listening every day - no rush, no schedule, and no tests or quizzes. A bonus is learning not only about the composers and their music but about the history of their eras as well.
The funny thing is, as light a commitment as teaching one class 1.5 hours one day a week is, I still look forward to and appreciate my holiday and summer breaks! Just like when I was in school or working full time!
Looking at this from the other side, I enjoy clicking the up arrow on posts or comments I find helpful, insightful, or funny. To me it seems like a free way to "leave a tip" for good service. I always hope that an up arrow might provide just the tiniest bit of encouragement to someone. And I suppose you can't have up arrows without down arrows.
My thinking on this may not be correct, but it has always seemed to me extremely risky to make all reliance for income for an entire family based upon the income of only one person. If that person becomes disabled, how do the others manage? I realize that disability insurance covers some of the need, but does this insurance have a COLA? What if the one and only breadwinner is disabled for 10-30 years? In addition to inflation eating away at the disability benefits, wouldn't that person's social security benefits also be frozen at the moment of disability, and therefore quite low? Perhaps there is something here that I am not seeing. But I would always opt for both parents having enough experience in the workforce to bring in a decent income unless it is absolutely not possible.
My mother was widowed at the age of 47 with two young children (my brother and me) to raise and no work experience except as a farm wife. Fortunately, she had Social Security survivor benefits. She also took in laundry and cleaned houses. I remember the three of us sitting at the kitchen table on hot summer evenings sorting and rolling pennies. We sorted by year and mint (San Francisco, Philadelphia, Denver), and my mother marked each completed roll with that information plus our names. The goal was to acquire a roll of each type of penny for each of us. Her thought was that in the future, when she was gone, we would each have a complete collection of 50 pennies from every year from every mint, and this would become quite valuable. We never did complete this collection, of course. I have eight rolls of coins in faded pink wrappers. Although they have not increased in monetary value, every year the increase in memory value is quite dramatic.
Whenever someone mentions frugality I always remember an article I read many years ago on raising children as frugally as possible. One of the tips was to stick used popsicle sticks into the ice cube tray and then offer your children "clear popsicles" on a hot summer day - just as refreshing as the ones you pay for! I don't imagine that one fooled very many kids. :)
Comments
I didn't realize (until this happened to my sister-in-law) that you can sometimes get LTC to pay for assisted living even after you have cancelled the policy! This is how it happened - my SIL was a very, very healthy (never smoked, never drank, ideal weight, good amount of exercise) 69yo who had a hemorrhagic stroke while at home alone (never married). Was able to get to a phone and call 911 and then spent most of the next year moving from stroke ICU to normal ICU to hospital to assisted living while she worked hard to recover as much ability as possible. Many years ago (maybe 15 or so), she had purchased a Genworth LTC policy, but after paying about $12,000 in premiums, decided it was costing too much and cancelled. She called Genworth to see if she could get any reimbursement. Genworth investigated her claim and refused. She read the refusal, thought that they had misunderstood (because she now no longer needed assisted living - she had returned to her condo). She refiled the claim, and they paid her the $12,000 in premiums she had paid all those years ago. A very pleasant and unexpected outcome - current LTC policies probably don't have this provision.
Post: How do you prepare for the long term care cost as retiree?
Link to comment from June 22, 2026
Thanks, Mark! The three stages idea is not original with me, but it certainly resonated with my experience.
Post: The Curious Case of Finally Being Able to Afford the Thing You No Longer Want
Link to comment from October 25, 2025
I once read (perhaps on HD) that our lives can be split into three phases: wanting things, then a period of acquiring things, and then a period of getting rid of things. My life has certainly followed that pattern. I'm now at the stage when I find great satisfaction in getting rid of possessions, at the exact time that I can finally afford them! I used to love shopping, although this mostly involved looking at things with great longing, imagining how they would look in my house, etc. I no longer love shopping, but when I am in stores I find they are now somewhat like museums to me. I sometimes enjoy looking at the stuff, but I certainly don't envision taking any of it home!
Post: The Curious Case of Finally Being Able to Afford the Thing You No Longer Want
Link to comment from October 25, 2025
From a different type of work environment - I was production editor for medical journals at a Philadelphia publisher in the late 90s. (A bit of trivia - at that time the world center of medical and legal publishing was Philadelphia, although most publishers were owned by Dutch companies. I don't know if that is still true.) At any rate, editors who had worked there a bit longer than I recalled fondly earlier years when the custom was to devote Fridays to citation checking - editing lists of credits at the end of each article. It is tedious work. To make the work more palatable, the publisher would bring in kegs of beer. Editors began drinking at lunchtime and continued until the end of the workday, when many of them went together to local bars to continue drinking. One restriction was that all citation-checking for anesthesiology journals had to be completed during morning hours, before drinking began. Those journals were notoriously tougher to edit than others, although it may just have been that their editors-in-chief were stricter than others. I don't think I could edit a medical citation list after a couple of beers, but it seems the older editors were made of much sterner stuff!
Post: Drinking on the Job
Link to comment from October 19, 2025
Thank you - enjoyed the article and the accumulated wisdom of generations of wise money management. Also, I was happy to see a mention of YNAB. This simple budgeting tool enabled my husband and myself to get out of debt in the nineties. We gifted a subscription to my son, who used it to accumulate enough $$ to pay off his student loans and then to buy a home mortgage-free in another country, where he and his wife now live. We are big fans of YNAB - I'm sure there are plenty of equally useful budgeting tools, but that is the one we know and love.
Post: Perspective from a grateful recipient of outpatient economic care
Link to comment from October 17, 2025
Three years in and still loving retirement. I worked full time until the age of 71, though, so I have waited a long time for this. Two of the things that are keeping me busy:
- Teaching English conversation to immigrants one day a week, with an organization called Welcoming the Stranger.
- I knew that I wanted to do more learning in retirement. Checked out things such as OLLI and The Great Courses, which look wonderful. However, I ended up trying something on my own. I never really knew much about classical music, though I probably know more than I should about classic rock. Decided to remedy this defect by reading biographies of composers and listening to their music in the order it was composed. Almost everything you could ask to hear is on YouTube, for free. I started with Beethoven (this took more than a year - I was in no hurry), then moved on to Rachmaninoff. Currently doing a side excursion on the life and music of Cole Porter. Very content to be doing a little reading and a little listening every day - no rush, no schedule, and no tests or quizzes. A bonus is learning not only about the composers and their music but about the history of their eras as well.
The funny thing is, as light a commitment as teaching one class 1.5 hours one day a week is, I still look forward to and appreciate my holiday and summer breaks! Just like when I was in school or working full time!Post: Wade Pfau has put me in a funk. Are you dealing with the stages of retirement?
Link to comment from October 11, 2025
Looking at this from the other side, I enjoy clicking the up arrow on posts or comments I find helpful, insightful, or funny. To me it seems like a free way to "leave a tip" for good service. I always hope that an up arrow might provide just the tiniest bit of encouragement to someone. And I suppose you can't have up arrows without down arrows.
Post: re RDQ’s “down arrows” —> My 1 cent :
Link to comment from August 30, 2025
My thinking on this may not be correct, but it has always seemed to me extremely risky to make all reliance for income for an entire family based upon the income of only one person. If that person becomes disabled, how do the others manage? I realize that disability insurance covers some of the need, but does this insurance have a COLA? What if the one and only breadwinner is disabled for 10-30 years? In addition to inflation eating away at the disability benefits, wouldn't that person's social security benefits also be frozen at the moment of disability, and therefore quite low? Perhaps there is something here that I am not seeing. But I would always opt for both parents having enough experience in the workforce to bring in a decent income unless it is absolutely not possible.
Post: In retirement a pension is a advantage. Are two family incomes during working years an advantage as well?
Link to comment from August 7, 2025
My mother was widowed at the age of 47 with two young children (my brother and me) to raise and no work experience except as a farm wife. Fortunately, she had Social Security survivor benefits. She also took in laundry and cleaned houses. I remember the three of us sitting at the kitchen table on hot summer evenings sorting and rolling pennies. We sorted by year and mint (San Francisco, Philadelphia, Denver), and my mother marked each completed roll with that information plus our names. The goal was to acquire a roll of each type of penny for each of us. Her thought was that in the future, when she was gone, we would each have a complete collection of 50 pennies from every year from every mint, and this would become quite valuable. We never did complete this collection, of course. I have eight rolls of coins in faded pink wrappers. Although they have not increased in monetary value, every year the increase in memory value is quite dramatic.
Post: My Money Memories
Link to comment from August 7, 2025
Whenever someone mentions frugality I always remember an article I read many years ago on raising children as frugally as possible. One of the tips was to stick used popsicle sticks into the ice cube tray and then offer your children "clear popsicles" on a hot summer day - just as refreshing as the ones you pay for! I don't imagine that one fooled very many kids. :)
Post: Extreme Frugality: It Better be Fun
Link to comment from June 25, 2025