Assisted Living from a different perspective 2

Another option that some follow, it is more expensive than a Holiday Inn is to book a Cruise. world! Mario Salcedo has spent the last 20 years aboard cruise ships. According to Traveler Magazine, Salcedo budgets around $60-70,000 per year for his travels, paying for the voyages by credit card so that the miles earned will cover any flights in between sailings.

Life aboard a cruise ship can be glamorous, exciting, and extremely luxurious — assuming anyone will ever feel safe enough after the pandemic to set sail.

Cruising can also be a lot cheaper than living at home — especially if you need help maintaining your property.

Yard work, house cleaning and preparing meals can be a struggle and hiring help are beyond the budget for most retirees.

So, why not sell or rent out the home and set sail for a life on the high seas?  Aboard a cruise ship, your meals and homemaking are all taken care of, you have a built-in social life and can see the world at the same time.

Cruise web lists 40 different benefits of living at sea compared to life in a retirement community or assisted living facility.

Senior Living at Sea vs Typical Land-based Retirement Options

Benefit or Feature	Senior Living at Sea*	Retirement Community*	Assisted Living Facility*
International Travel	YES	No	No
Full-time Travel Services	YES	Varies	No
Custom Travel Excursions	YES	No	No
Port-to-Port Transportation	YES	No	No
Interactive Community	YES	YES	Varies
Daily Social Events & Activities	YES	Varies	No
Regular Social Invitations	YES	Varies	Varies
World-renowned Speakers & Lectures	YES	No	No
Onsite Spa Services	YES	Varies	No
World-class Entertainment	YES	No	No
Live Music & Dancing Lounges	YES	No	No
Fulltime Entertainment Staff	YES	Varies	No
Onsite Movie Theater	YES	No	No
Onsite Computer Center	YES	Varies	Varies
Onsite Library	YES	Varies	No
Onsite Billiards / Casino	YES	No	No
Onsite Salon & Barber	YES	Varies	Varies
Onsite Boutique Shopping	YES	No	No
Fitness Center	YES	Varies	No
Swimming Pools	YES	Varies	No
Accommodations for Family	YES	Varies	No
Onsite Banking Services	Limited	Varies	Varies
Onsite Billing / Account Services	YES	YES	No
Maintenance-free Living	YES	YES	YES
Daily Housekeeping	YES	No	No
Self-service Laundry	YES	Varies	YES
Valet Laundry Service	YES	Varies	No
Meals Per Day	3+	Meal Plan Options	3+
Formal & Casual Dining Venues	YES	No	No
Top Name Chefs	YES	No	No
Complimentary 24-Hour Room Service	YES	No	No
Themed Dinner Parties	YES	Varies	No
Medication Administration	No	No	YES
Medication Consultation	Optional	Optional	YES
Medical Facility	YES	No	Varies
Licensed Medical Professionals Onsite	YES	No	Varies
Mobility Assistance	Limited	No	YES
Accept Wheelchairs	YES**	YES	YES
24-Hour Security	YES	Varies	No
Loyalty Program	YES	No	No

 

Naysayers point out that price comparisons between cruises and assisted living are flawed, if you need medical assistance and not just help with activities of daily living.

Assisted Living from a different perspective 1

Most of us are going to need some extra support as we age. Cooking, cleaning, running errands and more are called “activities of daily living” and it can be nice to get help with these tasks as you age. Some of us planned for this and invested in insurance that would provide help when we could not do things ourselves, but most of us did not take that opportunity. 

Most of us can’t afford to get help as we age. Whether we are looking at living in an assisted living facility or hoping to have help come into your home, these services are expensive. The annual cost of a private one-unit in an assisted living in BC (where I live) is $32,000. In the United States costs range from a high of $111,195 in the District of Colombia to a low of $34,128 in Missouri.  The national average is $48,000. Homemaker services for 44 hours per week for 52 weeks run at an average of $41,600 where I live.

Whether you are planning for your own life, or helping a loved one, if you are looking for ways to make assisted living more affordable, you may want to get creative.

The first one started as a joke, but the joke was taken seriously

1. Check into the Holiday Inn

In 2019, over 112,000 people shared Terry Robison’s wacky but perhaps brilliant idea to check into a Holiday Inn instead of a nursing home!

Robison wrote on his Facebook post: “I’ve already checked on reservations at the Holiday Inn. For a combined long-term stay discount and senior discount, it’s $59.23 per night (or $21,618.95 plus taxes a year). Breakfast is included, and some have happy hours in the afternoon.”

According to his calculations, nursing home care for he and his wife in his area costs $188 a day.  So, he figures that if he is staying at the Holiday Inn, he’ll have an extra $128.77 for lunch, dinner, and other living expenses. He thinks this is more than adequate and Robison cites the wide variety of perks that come with hotel living:

·       They provide a spa, swimming pool, a workout room, a lounge, and washer-dryer, etc.

·       Most have free toothpaste and razors, and all have free shampoo and soap.

·       $5-worth of tips a day and you’ll have the entire staff scrambling to help you.

·       They treat you like a customer, not a patient.

·       There’s a city bus stop out front and seniors ride free.

·       The handicapped bus will also pick you up (if you fake a decent limp).

·       To meet other nice people, call a church bus on Sundays.

·       For a change of scenery, take the airport shuttle bus and eat at one of the nice restaurants there.

·       While you’re at the airport, fly somewhere. Otherwise, the cash keeps building up.

·       It takes months to get into decent nursing homes. Holiday Inn will take your reservation today.

·       And you’re not stuck in one place forever — you can move from Inn to Inn, or even from city to city.

·       Want to see Hawaii? They have Holiday Inn there too.

·       TV broken? Light bulbs need changing? Need a mattress replaced? No problem. They fix everything and apologize for the inconvenience.

·       The Inn has a night security person and daily room service.

·       The maid checks to see if you are ok. If not, they’ll call an ambulance . . . Or the undertaker.

·       And no worries about visits from family. They will always be glad to find you, and probably check-in for a few days mini-vacation.

·       The grandkids can use the pool.

Part-Time Work in Retirement and planning

It used to be that when most people retired, they assumed they’d never work another day in their lives, and, if they did, they would consider themselves a failure in retirement. Most of the people I know started working part-time once they retired. Some did it to reduce the financial strain of retirement, but most did it because they wanted to do something.  I did I retired and worked for another eight years, because I wanted to, and I enjoyed my time working part-time. However, once I started to tire of the idea of working, I quit and started to do more volunteer activities, and became more involved in my community. I should have done it sooner, but retirement is a journey, not a destination.

One regret I had that kept me working was that I retired too early. I was wrong, as part of the journey of discovery in retirement I needed to explore other opportunities, which working part-time provided. When you think of regrets in retirement, you might only consider the regret of retiring too early and running out of money, but that’s not the only outcome you should fear. You could regret retiring too late.

I have friends who, before they retired looked at all the scenarios and all the models to make sure they would be able to retire. If you do this, you may find that you have waited far too long to retire.  Here are some things that I have seen people plan for

·       Getting cancer.

·       Having Alzheimer’s.

·       Getting into a car accident and become disabled.

·       Experience three or four stock market crashes

·       Lose your pension.

One or two of these may happen but the odds are against them happening to you. That does not mean they will not happen to someone. The point of modelling or building scenarios is to protect yourself against likely fears, not everyone. Wait too long to retire, and you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. Sure, your kids might enjoy the millions that you’ll never be able to spend, but I bet they’d much rather have your time instead.

 

 

 

Want to retire sooner? Just up your savings rate!

 In Canada and the United States, the average age of retirement was heading down in the ’90s but the recession of 2008 and 2009 reversed that trend. The recession hurt a lot of people who were thinking of retirement and they realized that even if financial independence could be achieved it had to be combined with reducing lifestyle ambitions.

In Canada and the U. S. most of us retire by 63. We struggle and worry about being able to retire because according to the financial experts we are expected to have hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) of dollars in our retirement accounts, get additional money from Social Security, and get some government assistance with healthcare insurance. The reality is that most of us retire with far less. So, we adjust our lifestyle expectations in retirement. According to some research, I have read the average person will spend over $2,000 a month on home, car, and food.

In retirement or if you are thinking of retiring early, you need to spend less on these three items. If you do so before you retire you may save more money and you will not have to make a big adjustment when you retire.

When do you want to retire? According to Mr. Money Mustache (MMM), who retired when he was only 30, the math is supposedly simple, MMM made it even simpler by putting together a target savings rate table which you can find here.

There is no formula that is going to work for everyone. However, if you want a simple formula here it is. So, when do you want to retire? In 5, 15, 25 years? If you currently have zero and want to retire in:

5 years, you’ll need to save 80% of your income.

15 years save 55% of your income.

25 years put away 35% of your income.

The most important thing to note is that cutting your spending rate is much more powerful than increasing your income. The reason is that every permanent drop in your spending has a double effect:

·  it increases the amount of money you have leftover to save each month.

·  and it permanently decreases the amount you’ll need every month for the rest of your life.

So. your lifetime passive income goes up due to having a larger investment nest egg, and it more easily meets your needs, because you’ve developed more skill at living efficiently and thus you need less.

Most of you have already been working for a few decades, so these numbers might not mean as much as it does for those that are just starting out (especially if you haven’t been putting 80% of your income away all your life). So, what numbers are relevant for you?

If you have consistently put away:

10% of your income, you’ll likely have to work for 51 years before you retire.

15% of your income, your time in the workforce is 43 years.

20% of your income, you’ll probably have enough money to retire after 37 years in the workforce.

Want to retire sooner? Just up your savings rate!