On the other hand, if you’re suffering from dementia, how would you know whether you’re receiving high quality care, versus being ignored to lie in your bed? What can you do about it?
The best thing I guess would be to find a reputable care facility in a developing nation that was affordable and had high ratings from family members of people who were patients there.
I’m hoping by the time I’m old enough to develop dementia, that we will have affordable robots so I could get dementia care in home.
We’re in danger of going down a potential hijack here - on which I have very strong opinions.
Is that an issue if you’re leaving them money in your will?
You can be quite far advanced in dementia and still know whether you’re in pain, or hungry or thirsty or only being offered food you don’t like, or tied down and don’t want to be. You can also very easily be far enough into dementia that you need to be in a facility because you need to be watched 24 hours to make sure you don’t set the place on fire or wander off and get lost, but still also be quite aware enough at least most of the time to know not only that first list of things but also whether you’ve got familiar things around you, whether you’ve got needed materials and space for hobbies, whether you’ve got music you like or are having to listen to noise you can’t stand, whether you can see trees or just a blank wall – I could go on for some time.
(Hopefully not too much of a hijack…)
Is there a way to easily do that in the US now, or do you still have to fly out to the Netherlands or such? It’s how I would like to go, too.
I mean, without a shotgun…
the lethal dosage of fentanyl is 2mg, and if you inject it you won’t have to worry about vomiting it up.
I guess if you take it orally, you could take 8mg zofran before taking the pills.
If you can somehow obtain a large amount of barbiturates (not benzos), you can use those too along with zofran.
Obviously, you don’t care about the tax deductibility of the donation but the fact that the organization obtained charitable status from the IRS indicates perhaps that it’s been vetted somewhat by the US government. So less likely to be a scam?
My short list
Moderating:
This is getting pretty far off-topic. Please drop the discussion of how to commit suicide. Thanks.
Re: deductible donations
The estate still needs to pay income tax on any income collected in the year of death, so deductions might be useful.
Eh, yep, sorry, should’ve seen that coming. 
I meant more about the legality, but even that’s pretty off topic. Consider it dropped.
I donate to small local charities, but there are two reasons I question making a big donation to them some unknown number of years in the future. First, it’s hard to tell if they were still be operational years from now, and hard to tell if I’ll be up to monitoring them to see. Second, small local charities may not be equipped to handle a sudden influx of that much money in one shot, and if they use it to suddenly grow it wouldn’t be sustainable.
Are there community foundations near you that act as grantmakers themselves? The ones I’ve seen work with donors to define goals, priorities, etc. that the donor wants them to focus on. Then, using their judgment and your instructions, they will divide that money up between one or more local or regional charities, scholarships, etc. (not necessarily all at once, but over the years & decades). If you give them a million, maybe they figure out how to spend $500k as soon as you die, let the remaining grow, and occasionally give out smaller grants of $10k each or whatever.
So they would basically administer your gift as best as they can, according to your wishes, as long as that foundation itself survives.
It’s a compromise between giving to a huge multinational charity and your local 1-person passion project.
Here’s one locator to find a community foundation near you: Community Foundation Locator | Council on Foundations and you can choose to look only for accredited ones.
This is uncomfortably close to providing instructions with specific dosages on how to kill yourself, several different ways, including all the tips about Zofran.
Not appropriate even if it is strictly legal.
My hope would be to have cultivated relationships with smart and wise individuals who will leverage the funds more smartly, and more wisely than some dumb charity, who at best, is as smart and wise as the average membership.
This has already been moderated. Please drop the discussion about suicide.
Fwiw, my vet, most of whose cliental are beloved cats owned by wealthy people, also does work for local shelters. While I’m sure the shelters never opt for chemotherapy for cats dying of cancer, I’m pretty sure that the only difference in how he treats tame shelter cats and pet cats is that he gives the shelters a modest discount. The cats who are treated for ear mites, respiratory bugs, who get spayed and neutered, get exactly the same care as my pets. (He also spays and neuters feral cats for a trap/neuter/release program, run by the same shelters. Those cats have to be handled a little differently, as they can be dangerous.)
I volunteer at a couple of local shelters, and all their veterinary care is purchased from ordinary local vets who mostly treat people’s pets.
That’s really interesting. I wonder if this is a shelter-by-shelter variation, or perhaps a regionalism…? Any thoughts?
It doesn’t match up with my partner’s experience (where a lot of the shelter medicine seems to be done assembly-line style by technicians rather than veterinarians), or the typical shelter medicine video you see on YouTube.
The way my partner describes it (though this is just secondhand knowledge), high-end vet medicine is a trickle-down from human medicine (usually a few years or decades behind), which then trickles down to your average family vet, which then eventually trickles down somewhat to the shelters, but they can only afford the cheapest bulk operations.
The average high-end vet bill here without insurances starts in the thousands of dollars and can bleed into the tens of thousands of dollars. It’s hard to imagine any shelter being able to pay for that for numerous animals, even at a significant discount. Even if the vet were offering their services at cost, there’s a lot of subcontracted work and equipment (imaging, lab work, etc.) that get farmed out to other providers who probably wouldn’t be able to offer the same discounts, so right off the bat, you’re limited to a much smaller menu of available procedures.
Less-wealthy pet owners often have to take on significant debt to treat their animals, or else have to surrender them (in the hopes that one of the techs will adopt it, and then the hospital will take up a collection to perform the operation at cost). Her particular clinic also has its own fund, run by a separate but connected nonprofit, to help low-income owners pay for procedures they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. I can’t imagine the shelters have that much income and liquidity…
Maybe the ones you’re familiar with operate under a different financial model? I’m genuinely curious now.
Personally, I’d set up a trust to provide scholarships and financial support for students. I’d select a degree program or profession (e.g., fine arts, or maybe medical students wanting to specialize in oncology) and provide each of X students some reasonable financial support. The selection process would have to be determined, as well as whether they would be funded by interest or principal, but that can be worked out. The main criteria would probably be (1) the student has to be in an approved program and achieving good grades, (2) the student has to perform some sort of work, either paid or volunteer, outside of their studies, and (3) the student has to be in need of financial support. I wouldn’t require the student(s) to work in some location after graduating or even complete their studies if they decide it’s not for them. Want to drop out after a couple years? Fine. You don’t owe us and we don’t owe you.
I just believe in giving people a chance they might not otherwise get.