KitchenPoet

Comments:

• Long before a beloved elder is no longer able to perform one or more of the standard "Activities of Daily Living" or becomes legally incompetent, there will be a period of time in which they need help. Even if you delegate some or all of that work to a paid provider, oversight and vigilance are still required. Our society is hostile to the vulnerabilities that come with aging, and even predatory. It's tempting to move the discussion away from those realities into abstract debates about insurance products and personal finance. But I believe we need better conversations - both public and private - about how we care for one another. It turns out that money can't buy you love.

  Post: Long Term Care? Who has it?

  Link to comment from September 7, 2024

• As life reaches its end the need for care increases. Exponentially. There are only two ways to meet that need: Time and labor gifted by those who love you, or time and labor purchased privately. Those who love you will do their best, and may even set aside their own lives or careers to do the work - if you are lucky and it doesn't bother you to impose on them. Those who offer services for hire, whether in your home or in a facility, will only provide for you as long as you can pay. Concocting some combination of the two strategies may be an option, but I know now that it takes an unnatural amount of effort to secure a natural death for someone you love. My personal conclusion is that no "bucket list" of exotic travel or other indulgence is worth putting myself in the position of being without the resources I need to live out my last hours in compassionate, skilled, care and perhaps even with a loved one standing beside me. Not alone, abandoned in an institutional wasteland, between shifts.

  Post: Long Odds

  Link to comment from August 27, 2024

• Like fish don't know they live in water, most us don't know we live our lives by driving. Going where you want, whenever you want, for any want or need or reason is such a fundamental assumption that its impossible to imagine what happens when you can't drive. And in any given scenario or situation, the question of whether maybe you shouldn't be driving always takes second place to that want or need or very important reason for grabbing your keys and heading out. The simplest, (dare I say, humblest) way to lay down groundwork for when that day comes that you can't drive is to start now. Try using the bus. Try asking for a ride, or offering one. Try walking. Try Lyft. Practice what it feels like and how much time it takes. Practice how to plan without feeling deprived, or constrained. Practice trying on the frustration when you'd rather run over to the drive-through for supper but choose peanut butter on toast instead. Put down your car keys and practice, for your own sake and for the sake of those you love.

  Post: Life After Cars

  Link to comment from August 10, 2024

• Taking distributions from a decedent's IRA as a designated beneficiary can be daunting if your goal is to take that distribution in the form of an inherited IRA rather than in cash. The paperwork and the process is almost overwhelming, especially if you want to move the IRA to a different custodial firm. An example would be a beneficiary entitled to 1/2 their parent's IRA at Templeton Franklin who wants to take that value as an inherited IRA - but wants to put that inherited IRA in an account at Vanguard. Be careful when you make calls: The vocabulary for this process is different than for a "rollover." That's the common term. But because the rules for inherited IRAs are different, you need to be sure the service rep you talk to does not default to assuming you are doing a rollover - when what you are actually wanting is a transfer to create an "inherited IRA" that will meet IRS requirements.

  Post: New Inherited IRA RMD final rules

  Link to comment from August 10, 2024