Older adults in the U.S. are sounding the alarm on their concerns about the healthcare system. The John A. Hartford Foundation reports that 56% of older adults say it is difficult and stressful to navigate the health care system, and 62% believe health insurance plans come with too many confusing choices (1). Moreover, misinformation about health care coverage abounds.
Consider this scenario: You've witnessed the start of a decline in your mother's cognitive health and ability to care for her own needs, but neither you nor your family are able to care for her around the clock.
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Your first inclination might be that Medicare will help cover the costs, and you wouldn't be alone. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 55% of U.S. adults believe Medicare will cover a long-term stay in a nursing home, which is not the case (2).
Despite this lack of coverage, most older adults will require this kind of care. A 2019 study from the government Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation found that 70% of adults who live to age 65 will need some Long-Term Services and Supports (LTSS) before they die (3). Older adults with fewer financial resources are more likely to need this kind of care.
More recent, non-government research backs this up, too. Northwestern Mutual's most recent Planning and Progress Study found that 61% of American adults expect to need long-term care (4). What's more, 74% would prefer to receive that care at home, not a nursing facility.
In your situation, there isn't a choice: It's time to move mom into an assisted living facility, but she has no retirement savings that you know of, and currently gets by on a small Social Security check.
How can you best keep your mom comfortable for the final years of her life?
While her finances may ultimately dictate what kind of facility she moves into, it's worth making an effort to respect her wishes by seeing whether she can afford a nicer place.
Consider a thorough search for long-forgotten assets. Even if you're mostly certain that your mom doesn't have substantial savings, it's worth trying to find out if she has any inactive financial accounts. According to a 2023 report by financial firm Capitalize, nearly 30 million 401(k) accounts worth $1.65 trillion were left behind by American workers who may have forgotten about them during job moves (5).
You can search for these types of accounts using the U.S. Department of Labor's Lost and Found Database (6). If she suffers from cognitive impairment, accessing these funds could be tricky and require you to obtain legal authority, such as through guardianship.
If a lavish facility is off the table after searching for lost funds, the focus should become your mother's safety and ensuring her daily needs are met.
Medicaid generally does not cover room and board costs at an assisted living facility. However, many assisted and independent living facilities accept Medicaid Home and Community-Based Service Waivers that can cover some costs (7). Nonprofit or church-affiliated facilities may offer support as well.
You might also decide to bite the bullet and chip in to pay for a private facility. The median cost of an assisted living facility is nearly $6,100 a month, according to SeniorLiving.org. Prices can vary based on location, level of care, and length of stay (8).
This is where long-term care insurance , like from Goldencare, could come in handy. This type of insurance often offers coverage for the costs of in-home assistance, nursing homes or assisted living facilities.
GoldenCare offers different long-term care insurance based on your loved one's needs, including hybrid life, annuity with long-term care benefits, short-term care, extended care, home health care, assisted living and traditional long-term care insurance.
Moving parents out of their home and into a facility will always be challenging, but these are conversations families can have ahead of time to make the transition a bit easier.
If your parents are late in their careers or at retirement age, and they have some retirement assets, it's worth asking if they've considered future care costs.
You may find one day you need access to your parents' retirement accounts. Discuss getting power of attorney (POA) while your parent is still capable of granting it. They can't sign a POA if they are incapacitated or a judge rules them mentally unfit, which could force you to pursue guardianship or conservatorship through the courts to gain authority over their financial affairs, including retirement accounts.
However, there's one more scenario that could play out here: your mother refuses to move.
In a situation like this, aging in place — at least for a while — might be inevitable. Depending on your situation, this could be a tough place to be. One silver lining, however, is if your mother's home has substantial equity.
This opens the door to a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC), which acts similarly to a credit card and leverages the equity in your home as collateral. HELOCs can be good for both repair work and upgrading an existing home to be more senior friendly.
AmeriSave offers a flexible HELOC that lets homeowners borrow against their equity as needed during a draw period, making it useful for renovations or debt consolidation. The application is mostly online and available in most states.
It's a good fit for borrowers who want convenience and flexibility rather than a large lump-sum loan up-front. You can draw funds only when you need them, so it's useful for ongoing or unpredictable costs. Interest is charged only on what you use, and you repay the balance over time. It's essentially a flexible credit line secured by your home, delivered through a mostly online application process.
Just make sure you understand the repayment terms before committing.
As for you, the caregiver, you can do your best to be equipped for your own retirement and health care costs down the line. One option is to start investing as soon as possible to build long-term wealth and cushion your financial future.
In other words, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure — and this starts with saving now.
If you're struggling to get going, platforms like Acorns, can help you invest a little bit with every dollar you spend.
How it works is easy: every purchase on your debit or credit card is automatically rounded up to the nearest dollar, with the excess placed into a smart investment portfolio. This way, even the most essential spending translates to money saved for the future by investing in low-cost ETFs.
The best part? You can get a $20 bonus investment when signing up with a recurring monthly contribution. Over the course of a lifetime this can add up to a sizeable nest egg thanks to the power of compounding interest.
Another avenue is to make sure you have an emergency fund built out — not just savings. Many investment advisors recommend having between three to six months in a highly liquid checking account.
A high-yield account like a Wealthfront Cash Account can be a great place to grow your uninvested cash, offering both competitive interest rates and easy access to your money when you need it.
A Wealthfront Cash Account currently offers a base APY of 3.30% through program banks, and new clients can get an extra 0.75% boost during their first three months on up to $150,000 for a total variable APY of 4.05%.
That's 10 times the national deposit savings rate, according to the FDIC's June report.
Wealthfront is also offering new clients who enable direct deposit ($1,000/mo minimum) to their Cash Account and open and fund a new investment account an additional 0.25% APY increase with no expiration date or balance limit, meaning your APY could be as high as 4.30%.
Then, once you have your funds established, it's time to start playing defensively. After all, losing all your savings in the market could very well turn your golden years bleak.
One popular way to do so is by hedging some of your portfolio with specific alternative assets. These investments tend to move differently from the market, meaning if one is down the other might be up — or stable.
One option is a gold IRA for building up your retirement fund with an inflation-hedging asset.
Priority Gold is an industry leader in precious metals, offering physical delivery of gold and silver. Plus, they have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and a 5-star rating from Trust Link.
Gold IRAs allow investors to hold physical gold or gold-related assets within a retirement account, which combines the tax advantages of an IRA with the protective benefits of investing in gold, making it an attractive option for those looking to potentially hedge their retirement funds against economic uncertainty.
But if you want to learn more about how Priority Gold can help you reduce inflation's impact on your nest egg, you could instead download their free 2026 gold investor bundle to make sure it's the right decision for you and your portfolio.
John A. Hartford Foundation (1); Kaiser Family Foundation (2); Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (3); Northwestern Mutual (4); Capitalize (5); Department of Labor (6); Medicaid (7); SeniorLiving.org (8)
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.