This is ridiculous because a nursing home and the Holiday Inn are not remotely comparable. A nursing home is for people who can't take care of themselves. They have nursing staff available 24 hours a day. They assist people with going to the bathroom, eating, taking medicines, etc. A Holiday Inn does none of that.
Clearly this man is capable of taking care of himself, which is great. He doesn't even need assisted living. He would fare just fine in a regular retirement community or just in a regular apartment, so the question is not how a Holiday Inn compares to a nursing home. It's how a Holiday Inn compares to an apartment.
Eh, it seems like a nice solution for people in a middle case. If you aren't in bad enough shape to need constant medical attention, but aren't quite up for the cleaning and maintenance requirements of a regular apartment, you can live pretty nicely and not spend too much money.
Suppose it also helps if you only really want to have a suitcase or two worth of possessions.
- Nursing home (NH) is a much higher level of care and if you need it then living in a hotel is not an option. Medicare covers NH so it may be cheaper overall to go there than live in an apartment with your own nursing staff.
- Assisted living facilities are closer to living in a hotel and they get (partially?) covered by Medicaid in some states. Prices vary so I don't know how they would compare directly though.
One theme that I see more often lately is seniors transferring their assets to their (grand)kids so that they look poor on paper so that they qualify for low cost assisted living/ Medicare and then cost is not a consideration any more.
Medicaid is last resort, you can’t take care of yourself, nursing home where your social security payment is taken in full to offset the cost to the government.
Assisted living could be covered by Medicaid but there’s usually a waiting list of years for that. Also there is a limit to their care before they send you to a nursing home.
In either case Medicare won’t cover the cost of assisted living, but it will cover some of the cost for inhome care.
Then you have to worry about maintenance and upkeep, utilities, taxes, cleaning, etc. He also wouldn’t get the free breakfast and the optionality of moving from place to place.
Everything old is new again. It used to be common to live in hotels, specially towards the end of one's life, at a time where specialized facilities were scarce or nonexistent. Just off the top of my head Tesla's last years were spent at the Hotel New Yorker, with Westinghouse footing the bill.
Even before you retire, if you are single or just a small family it is far far cheaper and far far better to live in a Holyday Inn than an Apartment building. First they will give you monthly rate instead of daily rate which is half. Then you have no deposit. You interact with hotel staffs who treat you like God instead of a landlord who treat you like slave. You need not clean the room or bed. Officially you occupy a small area though, your bedroom and bath, but you have the whole Hotel facility and area to share, you can also visit the city parks and libraries.
My family stayed in an extended stay between the time our lease was up at our apartment and the time we were looking for a house and had one built. It was about $1500 a month. Our apartment down the street was $1700 a month and with utilities it was around $2300 a month.
But even when you compare like for like. A one bedroom in the same complex would have total around $2000 a month with rent and utilities.
The extended stay had people going to work in suits, a school bus picking up kids, and crew from at least two films that were being shot in the area were staying there.
I dont want to be identified here. You can consider a 1st tier metro city in India like Mumbai, Delhi , where a Holiday Inn accommodation will be far cheaper than a simple Apartment on monthly basis. You also don't need to deposit a hefty amount.
A 1 bed flat in zone 1-2 London is approx £1500 a month. Call that £50 a night?
I think it is pretty rare to see a similarly located London hotel < £100 a night. Certainly i have airbnb'd for ~55-60 comfortably - but with way less personal space.
For my city, at least, i dont think it would be cheaper but if the monthly rate thing is true can imagine it being similar order of magnitude?
The cheap end of hotel rates dont include breakfast. You are right on utilities, but the counterpoint is that you have (for example) lost access to a kitchen to cook, pushing other costs up.
I reckon costs being of "similar magnitude" is plausible (if the monthly rate discount is truly ~50%). Interesting trade offs imo
> What city do you live in where hotel rates, even at half, are far cheaper than apartments?
This frequently happens in areas with aggressive tenancy laws but "temporary accommodations" are exempted. So then you get the discount that comes from not being subject to a bunch of rules that make it harder for the property owner to get rid of a bad tenant, which can affect the cost significantly, exceeding the value of those rules to a good tenant.
I'm going through this with my father. Since he didn't buy a long term care plan, the assisted living facilities by us will be $11k a month out of pocket.
If you live in the USA, please talk to your parents/spouse/friends about long term care.
Not sold on LTC. That’s great if your goal is to live in a facility some day. But hopefully I never have to. Can downgrade from big house to maybe a smaller condo over time. Take care of myself so hopefully will end up OK.
If not? I get checked into the same home as a LTC user with Medicare. I pay for it until I am broke, then Medicare takes over.
I really don’t see the upside. In the case I have a large estate and need LTC, the LTC insurance protects my estate so I can pass more of it on. But as not a huge fan of generational wealth, I see no benefit to me or the world to buy LTC insurance. In fact, less money to enjoy now or grow my estate.
Medicare won’t pay for assisted living, but you can use your social security money towards it. If you can’t pay, and you can’t take care of yourself then Medicaid kicks in, your social security gets taken and you go to a nusing home.
I'm new to it myself, but it seems difficult to navigate the minefield of LTCI, particularly the Daily Benefits payouts available are around $200/day, which is lower than the cost of many facilities.
Long Term Care insurance was a massive miscalculation in the insurance industry and shareholders paid dearly for it. It was super smart to buy it in the 80s and 90s but most insurers have gotten out of the business. The rest have raised rates so high as to make it not worth it.
Genworth’s stock more than halved when they announced they had to take additional LTC write offs a few years ago.
There's actually a whole industry around this in certain low tax areas in Switzerland. High end retirement/nursing homes in olaces with low/zero inheritance tax, so the family can park the elderly relatives in good care until the inevitable happens but then avoid paying inheritance tax. It looks silly, when you have almost entire villages whose core business is this.
> If you're thinking he's overlooking the care one gets in a retirement home, he's considered that as well, and feels confident the staff of Holiday Inn are up to the task.
Having lived out of a suitcase at a competitor's inn for 3 years on a job out of town I think Planning Man is in for a care let-down. Or if dementia sets in, perhaps not.
This is really no different than the huge number of older retired people who move to foreign countries. Expats. Obviously, not for everyone as it is quite different and sometimes challenging to live in a foreign country.
As someone who has moved to SE Asia (Vietnam) and is 'only' 45, I think almost daily about how much money I'm saving for my eventual 'retirement' and how much happier I am.
Even better is that you learn about new cultures and ways of thinking. Maybe it is selfish, but I'm getting to experience so much more out of life than I ever have before.
My dad and a few friends have come to visit me. I can and have gone back to visit friends. But the reality is that you do make new connections and communities. No different than moving to a different state, except the flight is longer.
I will add that the thought of retiring to a hotel chain is awful. For even less money, you can retire to a nice house in the countryside of SE Asia (not that far away from anything really) and hire a local for 24/7 care.
Again, not for every one, but in my particular case I'm super happy with my choice.
The nursing and rehab center my dad is currently staying costs $700/day. That's what I paid for Sandals Jamaica for my honeymoon, an all-inclusive all you can eat/drink resort.
I’m not optimizing our lives to leave an inheritance. The optimum scenario is to spend our last penny on our last breath and leave nothing for our kids.
We took care of them growing up, we gave them the advice and financial backing to help them get their lives off to a good start. It’s up to them to not mess that up.
I’ve told my parents the same thing - I am an only child. They should enjoy their lives to the fullest and not worry about me. We’ve had discussions that they brought up. They know I’m not keeping the house and I am going to sell it as quickly as possible if they pass and not worry about optimizing what I get out of it. I’ve done the real estate thing before. It’s a headache when you live close by, let alone when you are a hundreds of miles away. They know we aren’t keeping anything in the house besides the pictures.
They have long term care insurance, but if they didn’t and it meant selling the house to qualify for Medicaid - so be it. They said it is just “stuff”.
My parents are in their 70’s and they both retired in their mid 50s when they were both healthy enough to enjoy themselves. They are still relatively healthy today. They didn’t have millions in the bank. My dad was a factory worker and my mom was a school teacher.
I get that and feel the same. But as a parent that loves his kids, I'd love to leave them a little something (heck, even help educate the grandkids)...It feels like our legacy is being sapped by the high cost of eldercare. Compare a quarter mil a year to the historical 'Grandma comes home to live with the family' that was not uncommon in the past.
My mom had the standard teacher’s pension which I believe is 60% of your last years salary. Assuming she made 60K a year at retirement that is like 900K savings at a 4% withdrawal rate. My dad had less than a million in savings.
Of course she did have guaranteed access to health care insurance. My dad has less than a million.
It's critical to plan and execute the plan >= 5 years (less in California but I'm not licensed there) in advance of the need. A good inheritance suggests the affordability of an Elder Law attorney. See for ex https://www.naela.org/
In Australia this largely seems to work better. There's obviously public aged care but that can be a crap shoot in many ways. Like there might only be a place for you 200 miles from where you'd been living, which might be a challenge to maintain contact to friends and family. But if you have some capital behind you (eg you own your house and sell it) then you have private options, which tend to be a lot better. Typically, you pay a "deposit" (for lack of a better word) and then the facility collects 85% of your aged pension. When you die, your deposit is returned to your estate. The size of that deposit varies a lot. It might be as little as $300k or it might be $1m+. It depends on what you want.
The whole thing seems a lot less "gougey" than what I know about aged care in the US, for example.
I'd seriously look at retiring on a cruise ship. Might not be as cost effective, but it would give you a ton of stuff to do. I could probably live on a cruise ship for less than what it costs me to live.
You don't have to stay on one cruise ship, you can try different ones all the time, as long as they're all with the same cruise line. The point is to get a long term discount.
What if we tweak it to, “More stuff to do within (walking/assisted mobility device) distance of your personal living quarters?”
There are assisted living residences in urban areas, of course, but even then you may need to use public transit or taxis to get to all of the activities you enjoy.
I doubt the statement is always true, but it feels like it might be true enough of the time for it to be worth a “Hunh, that’s an interesting conjecture to explore.”
Our generation of people, millennial, have no hope of having the same retirement as people in their sixties today.
Simple arithmetic says that once the taxpayer/dependent ratio will hit that of Germany, it will be very very hard. Either you have a very strong industrial economy, or you study Greek.
Having some kids, and expecting them to give back one day does not seem to be anything unnatural to me. Though, I hope I will get some humility by then, and not have them bail out me financially by my fifties as my own parents did :(
That is why it is important not to solely rely on W2 income. Income has to be supplemented by starting side businesses in order to actually save and invest for anything without falling for the illusions of debt. On top of moving to places more affordable, it might be possible for the average person to retire. I just doubt that employment and a 401k are going to do that on their own. All the modestly wealthy people I know have other sources of income besides their main job.
Just because a lot of people fail at it doesn't mean that those who might want to take the risk shouldn't be made aware of the benefits. I would personally rather deal with failure for the shot at making more income. It's not for everyone, and they can certainly stay on the beaten path and do just fine. (so long as their debt doesn't spiral out of control) I'm not saying that people should dedicate their lives to home businesses, but they can try different things on the side to see what works with a minimal risk of catastrophic failure.
If you are a software developer in any major city in the US and you’re just really good at your bog standard enterprise developer type jobs or yet another software as a service CRUD app developer, you’re already probably in the 80th income percentile. If your goal is increasing net worth, it’s quite easy to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle and still put aside enough to have a couple of million and a paid off house in 15 to 20 years just by putting money in an index fund.
There is really little risk of being long term unemployed as a software developer if you keep your skills in line with the local market and keep your network strong. This is coming from being a developer for the past 20 years. I’m not talking about how much I have personally saved, just how easy it is to get a job or at least a contract. It’s even easier for dual income earners. You can literally save an entire second income or put it toward net worth building.
On second thought, the best “investment” I guess is a working spouse and a happy marriage. Statistics back that up.
With all respect, this logic fails to account for the rising taxpayer/dependent ratio.
If American tax rates will reach that of Europe, even dual income high earners, will just break the comfortable level — way less what I deserve with my position in society. And even that will worsen further over time.
At some t/d ratio, the nation will simply turn into a "transfer economy" — when cash value of all pensions/savings withdrawals/welfare/rents will begin closing on on the total income of working populace. That's something close to what we had in Eastern Europe when Bloc collapsed.
You don't realise the severity of issue until you calculate that NPV of an average boomer generation person, might've been higher 40 years ago, than NPV of savings and future contributions of highest earning young people today.
I’m going to repeat a previous argument in a way that hopefully doesn’t get my hand slapped and my comment flagged:
There is an easy answer to that: a pro immigration policy for both high skilled labor that creates a jobs by starting businesses and low skilled labor that can do the work that our native born society is too old to do.
Could you please stop posting political and ideological battle comments to HN? They're off topic here, and destructive of the curiosity the site exists for.
Clearly this man is capable of taking care of himself, which is great. He doesn't even need assisted living. He would fare just fine in a regular retirement community or just in a regular apartment, so the question is not how a Holiday Inn compares to a nursing home. It's how a Holiday Inn compares to an apartment.