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skimomma

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  1. We have Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is insurance that most, if not all, Americans over a certain age are eligible to use. Medicare does cover nursing home facilities for a limited time (90 days, I believe) for people who have an unexpected accident or illness. Medicaid is a safety net that only people who are out of significant assets and under a certain monthly income level are eligible to use. You have to be pretty poor to qualify, hence the "spend down" situation in which one must use up their assets to become eligible. It is not meant to be used by everyone nor is it funded in a way in which it could be. People of means who want to protect their assets to hand down as generational wealth have the option of purchasing their own insurance to cover end-of-life care (as well as co-insurance to supplement Medicare) without depleting their assets.
  2. The fact of the matter is that if most Americans needed to spend some of their end-of-life time in a facility of some sort and it was 100% covered by Medicaid, we'd go broke immediately. That care can top 6 figures within 8 months. And most Americans are not paying 6+ figures in taxes over the years.
  3. I agree with you in non end-of-life situations, that insurance should be a way in protect one against financial ruin due to an accident or random illness. Even in the case of end-of-life situations, one can take out *insurance* to cover assisted living or nursing home care while still preserving assets. Medicaid coverage of a nursing home for end-of-life care is not insurance. It is a last ditch safety net for those who have no way to pay for their care at that stage. One that most people hope to never have to use.....which is why people save for retirement and may opt to purchase long term care insurance. Once assets and/or insurance limits are exhausted, Medicaid steps in. I just don't see why that should "step in" if a person can still pay for their own care. It is especially distressing to me because it can be another way for the haves to win over the have nots. Why should someone be allowed to hand down generational wealth while also drawing on tax-payer Medicaid? That is why there are spend down rules. I am not saying the system does not have problems and is especially difficult for people that are not at the end-of-life stage or having complications like a living spouse and/or other dependents. But my basic opinion is that yes, you should indeed use up your assets for end-of-life care before asking tax payers to pay for it.
  4. I understand the sentiment but also don't understand why someone should not use their assets to cover their end-of-life care. Why should tax payers be footing the bill for a nursing home if someone has the means to pay for it? I say that as someone who is in the soup right now, being the POA for someone in spend down. I would be the recipient of any assets left at the time of this person's death, but I still believe they should pay for their care until they are no longer able to. I am super uncomfortable with a number of situations I know of first hand where family members are "taking care" of someone they have neither the desire or skill to so safely, all in the name of "preserving assets" that the elder will not live to benefit from (or even worse, to get the SSA check each month). That is obviously not what the OP is referring to but it all ties together. I would not be comfortable doing something legally-sketchy in order to try to preserve someone else's assets for myself. (I realize that my opinions above do not work as well when there is still a living spouse or a person who may recover and need those assets.....)
  5. I've only been through this once and bungled enough of it that I should not be giving advice. But I would talk to your tax preparer before deciding how and when you will use any 529 funds. We had very little in our 529 and thought it would be easiest to use it all up in one year so as to not have to deal with that mode of payment again (it can be a PITA to get 529 payments to the school within the correct deadlines). That small amount was enough to just barely push us over the threshold to qualify for the AOTC. Had we split it into two calendar years, that would not have been the case. We basically "lost" the entire 529 money because the AOTC would have returned more to our pockets than had been in the 529 to begin with. In fact, I thought we HAD split it over two years because we used it for fall and spring semesters, crossing January 1. But because the tuition payment for spring was due BEFORE 1/1, it counted as all being used in the prior calendar year. I think, but might be wrong, that this is especially true for students living at home because they have lessened "qualifying expenses" without room and board.
  6. We have/had three Subarus as a family. One older Outback (2009) was a total lemon (electrical gremlins) but we didn't let that sour us on Subarus in general as we did not know anything about its history and it was very high miles. We replaced it with a 2015, that still has higher miles (110K) and have been happy with it. I find the seats uncomfortable but it is my 20yo dd's so I don't have to deal with that. If you live in a snowy climate, be aware that almost all Subarus that are older than 2020 have an issue with the gas tank door release pull ceasing to work in deep winter. That is true of dd's as well and we see them all over town with their gas doors always left popped open. I know several people that have attempted to get this fixed and if they do get fixed, they don't last. It has something to do with how the release cable travels through the car, snow build up, and corrosive salts. But I see that as very minor and with the easy workaround of leaving the door popped and/or carrying a junk credit card you can use to wedge it open if needed. We also have a 2021 Crosstrek that dh loves. No issues with that one yet.
  7. My 20yo kitty has chronic kidney disease. We elected to skip the prescription food and kept her on her raw food diet with a kidney supplement that our vet prescribed (which I later found for half the price on Amazon....). My kitty will not eat canned wet food at all. She LOVES dry food but a bout with urinary crystals 15 years ago put an end to that forever. I use commercial raw food (Darwin's) and for whatever reason, my cats don't equate it with canned wet food and eat it just fine. 20yo kitty does go through phases of having very low appetite. When that happens, a little Churu on top of her food does the trick. It does not take much.
  8. Interesting that you ask this because this is another thing we begged her to get addressed. However, she is of a generation that "does not believe in mental illness" so we never got anywhere. But it's a moot point now. She has dementia and lives in assisted living now.
  9. I get it. It is not "a problem" from a safety standpoint, but it does sound like it could be a problem in that people are uncomfortable spending time there due to the ickiness which impacts relationships over time. My own mother was a terrible housekeeper and a hoarder. It got so bad that her adult children could no longer stay with her when visiting. We all stayed in hotels (which was well outside of our budget at that time). She could not understand why, which was flabbergasting to me seeing as she literally did not have cleared spaces for people to sleep. The last time I spent the night at her house, over 25 years ago, I had to shovel a path to a guest bed, shovel the crap off the bed, snorkel into a different room to find bedding, WASH the bedding because it all reeked like cat urine, then made the bed only to spend the night listening to the mice that I apparently disturbed with all of my activity. Never again. She did not seem to think there was any reason for me to be uncomfortable with this situation. She was upset and hurt when we stopped staying there. And then stopped eating there after I witnessed my mom handing my dd a cookie with hands dripping in raw chicken juice (and the cookie in question was from an open box that had been expired for years). There are other relationship problems, but this certainly did not help. I vividly remember a moment during this time when I was sitting at the kitchen table, chatting with my mom. The salt and pepper shakers were right in my line of vision and I realized the exteriors of the shakers were caked in grime. Like so much grime that they had not been cleaned in years, if not decades. SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS SHOULD NOT HAVE GRIME ON THEM! Ever. That is such a little thing but I remember it so vividly because it made me physically gag and I spent the rest of that evening on the verge of throwing up, just from focussing on those grimy shakers for one moment. Shortly before she moved into assisted living, we were driving to the nearest gas station to use the bathroom when visiting. The bathrooms were so disgusting that a gas station bathroom was preferred. She would get irate if I tried to clean anything. I did not risk offering to hire a cleaning service. "You girls are just too picky" was always my mom's answer when I was "caught" trying to clean anything. Obviously, that is more extreme than the OP's situation, but I just wanted to point out that there is an actual problem when things escalate too far aside from just basic sanitation and safety.
  10. I am the very definition of a gym rat and spend hours each week weight training (as well as endurance cardio and mobility exercises). I can climb the rope up to 10 unbroken times. I can box jump (24") until the cows come home (even though they STILL scare the crap out of me!). I can dead hang for well over 2 minutes. I can plank forever. I can do 100 sit-ups and more. But. I can only do maybe 5 regular unbroken push-ups. When I need to do higher volume, I modify to an inclined push-up, which several here have already stated as to why they are better than knee push-ups when it comes to core strength and moving toward "real" push-up proficiency. And looking around at my gym, is not uncommon at all, for women OR men. We also do not call them "girl" or "lady" push-ups in our gym. However, many exercises in my gym do have different targets for men versus women, which is appropriate considering the difference in muscular builds. I probably will never be able to do 100 push-ups. Or even 10, to be honest. And I'm ok with that. One of my coaches is a nationally ranked Crossfit athlete and he cannot do 100 strict pull-ups without breaks. No one in our gym can.
  11. My family camps a lot. We camp in everything from super-busy ranger-manned state parks down to state forest campgrounds that are never manned. I took three months for the check I left in the tube at our last campground to even be cashed and we for sure never saw a ranger or camp host or actually ANYONE the entire time we were there, if that gives you an idea of how desolate that one was..... We do a combo of everything mentioned so far. We are almost always leaving at the end of a weekend or even into the next week. Even the busiest campgrounds do not have many incoming campers on those day so there is wiggle room. For busy state parks, we do leave on time or reserve for an extra day so we can chill out while packing up. The rangers will chase us out if we overstay. For any other campground, we take our time and don't worry about it. If we see people trolling for sites, I go up to the car and let them know we are leaving if they are interested in our site. And if they take it, we hightail it out and park somewhere else to hang out if we choose. We do make sure to be pretty much 99% packed up by check out so we can mobilize quickly if needed. During less-busy times, we have also just asked the ranger on duty (if there is one) if it is OK to linger a bit. So far, we have not been denied.
  12. We still use paper. My dh travels a LOT for business and is about as tech-savvy as they come, but if he has time, he will still print paper from a kiosk. Grabbing a paper pass out of a pocket is way easier than juggling a phone app, that has to be opened and on the correct screen, while shuffling through the various checkpoints is just so much easier. We still use the apps for gate changes and delays and even as passes if we arrive at the airport too late to print a pass.
  13. This is how I would approach it. As others report, dd ended up with an additional scholarships that were added later. In fact, a substantial departmental one just appeared for her junior year. She did not apply nor was she even notified. It just showed up on her billing statement. She had to go to the department office and ask about it.
  14. That is good to know. I think it is very location-specific. Like, driving around in Iceland was a piece of cake. Cancun not so much. And, well, Amsterdam....... So, I think if we go somewhere with easy driving, we probably for sure would do so.
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