1 in 20 Families Spent Over $100,000 Out of Pocket on Care | Ali Katz

This week, the Washington Post published something that likely landed much like a punch in the gut would for many American kitchen tables and living rooms, and it needs to because we all really need to wake up to it.

The Washington Post analyzed the finances of thousands of Americans, real people, followed from their early 50s all the way until death, with their money tracked every two years.

And they added up what those families actually spent out of pocket on care in the last decade of life.

And here's what they found.

The share of people who ended up with nothing left to pass on, nothing.

after paying for elder care has nearly doubled.

One in 20 spent more than $100,000 out of their own pocket, out of their life savings.

And the researchers were clear that even those numbers are too low because they don't fully capture room and board at assisted living, which is oftentimes the biggest bill of all.

A man in Ohio said it best.

His 96-year-old mother has dementia.

She's been in assisted living for seven years at $15,000 a month.

Her savings are gone.

His family took a loan against her life insurance.

They may have to sell part of their farm in Kentucky that's been in the family since the 1960s.

It just eradicates any generational wealth unless you're very, very well off.

But the truth is, is that it's designed that way.

and it's up to us to do something about it because we do not need our parents and if you are a parent you do not need to be spending your entire life savings on end-of-life care unless you don't plan for it in advance and one researcher quoted in this piece put the whole great wealth transfer story on its head she said the idea of a massive transfer of wealth is misleading because it's going to be the folks at the very top who pass anything on and the rest of us will spend our assets on care.

I read that and I could see why many people aren't taking the great wealth transfer seriously and thinking it applies to us because of the research in this article.

And every number in it is real.

And I'm so glad that they published it.

But there's something that's missing.

And the thing that's missing is the part that could have saved that Kentucky farm.

Not one of those families was described as having done any planning in advance.

Every story in that article is a story about what happens when a family meets the cost of care with no structure and no advanced planning in place.

And that means that your savings or your parents' savings are sitting in their name.