During the retirement planning process, long-term care costs are often an important consideration, and rightly so. Long-term care costs can go beyond what Medicare covers, and 70% of people over 65 will need some form of long-term care, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Because of this, many people planning for retirement begin to consider long-term care insurance. This can be a great option for protecting your finances as life evolves. However, financial protection is not the only aspect of long-term care planning that needs to be considered.

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How to Stay at Home While Planning for Reliable Long-Term Care
Seventy percent of people turning age 65 can expect to need some form of long-term care during their lives, usually due to contributing factors such as age, gender, health status, disability, and living arrangements, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. This underlines the importance of thoughtful planning. That’s why Friends Life Care has created a free, interactive resource to help adults decide how to plan for their future and what resources they’ll really need.

During the…

With a new year, we often think about resolutions and making new plans. If your preference is to age independently in the place you call home, then planning for financial security is critically important.

Planning for retirement isn’t just about saving enough. It’s also about understanding how your spending will change over time. Research shows that retirees don’t spend in a straight line. Instead, spending tends to start high, dip in the middle years, and rise again later in life. This pattern forms what experts call the “retirement spending smile.”

For Bab…

People living with dementia can cause significant distress for their caregivers by exhibiting strange or difficult behavior. This could take the form of repetitive questions (“When am I going home?”), delusional thoughts (“I have to take care of the baby!”), exit-seeking, agitation, verbal aggression, or physical aggression can all appear. These behaviors can seem random and unmanageable.

We’re often told to redirect our loved ones to another activity to distract them from their behavior, but this runs the risk of passing over the real emotion they are expressi…

Care partners of people living with dementia must often cope with their loved one asking the same question many times a day. Why does this happen? How can a care partner respond helpfully while keeping their sanity?
Case Study: “Where’s James?”
Twelve, Anita thought to herself. This was the twelfth time today that she would have to explain to Mom that her son, Anita’s little brother, died of a heart attack years ago at the age of 45. This question came so frequently that Anita had numbed herself. “James is gone, Mom.”

She watched her mother’s face as she …