The Garden and Costs

As I move forward, I think it would be helpful to begin to discuss where we stood financially.

First my parents had three income streams: social security, my mom's pension, and my dad's pension. All of these were stable and did not rely on personal investments. My rough estimate was that they grossed around $6000 a month. Of course they did not receive all this, their charges for health plans added to Medicare plus some tax withholding meant they took in about $5700 each month.

For the time being there were costs for their house. There were some once a year costs like taxes which I will not include in my calculations. I lowered the air and heat usage so I was able to lower those costs. Their house had a monthly HOA fee. There were also phone and cable bills. I felt stuck with those because of the power of attorney issues. All told except monthly costs  were around $500 a month. 

I knew when we signed up for the Garden we didn't have enough money on our own. But I also hoped we'd be close to covering the cost. Further I also hoped that mom's long term care policy would cover the lion's share of the Garden. 

So let's turn to those Garden costs. I was able to get my parents in a corner unit with that completely separate bedroom. The cost was $5900 a month for one person; adding my dad cost another $1800. But wait! There were also care costs. The Garden assigned people to different levels. My mom was assigned to level 4, $750. I had hoped Dad could be level 1, with no cost, but I got a long talk about how the next level, 2, would include helping him with drugs. Remembering the problems the summer before, I allowed them to put him there, $250. This brings us to $8700. So this meant we were $3000, at least, in the hole. 

My hope was that for the first two years mom's costs would be completely paid for while we paid Dad's. If so, we would save money. In my view Dad's cost were $1800 + $250. 

But insurance is smarter and cheaper than me. The Garden would not split their bills so that mom's bill  held the overall room cost on hers. Instead they split the room and second person cost between my parents. (Around $3800 each). While this wasn't as good for us, we would still be able to save a modest amount of money. 

And because I like to fret out into the future, I hoped that I could invoke Dad's long term care policy at the end of this first two years. 

There was additional financial bad news when mom fell, we had to continue to pay her full cost, even the care level cost while she was in rehab. Since she had used up her first free 21 days, we would be paying $50 a day for rehab as well.