Do you think you'll die rich by just saving?

[Wesley_Clark]

@dracoi

To some extent, it depends on just what type of medical expenses you’re talking about.

For my mother-in-law, it was a long period of needing assistance 24/7. That started at 6,000 per month (and reached 10,000 per month before she died), and wasn’t covered by Medicare or her supplemental insurance. It could have been covered by a Long-Term Care policy, but she didn’t have that.

Once her money ran out, Medicaid was happy to pay for everything. While that was a blessing, it was also not the way she wanted to live out the last few years.

Contrast that to my wife’s ex-husband’s mother. She could afford in-home care and managed to afford it for 20 years, in fact, passing away at 102. My mother-in-law always resented the difference between their situations, but it was at least partly of her own choosing. (In fact, mother-in-law had so little interest in saving or planning financially that we discovered she had opted out of an employer-paid life insurance policy because it wasn’t going to do her any good, was it?)

In mexico health insurance is $100/month and long term care is $1000 a month (I’ve seen some quotes as low as $550, but that was a decade ago). I think the US is becoming like NYC, it is a good place to live when you are young and healthy but you have to get out when you retire and go somewhere else.

I believe most people who end up in a nursing home end up dead within 3 years, because of that a lot of long term care policies have a set limit and if you are still alive after that you are screwed.