5 Aged Care Preparations You Can Make Today

Aged care may seem like a long way off. After all, you have plenty to do before you reach that season of your life, right? But if you take some time and prepare for the future now, you’ll find that life rolls along through the transitions much more smoothly.

If you’ve wondered how to start making preparations for aged care, this post is for you. We’ve put together a simple list of things you can do now to prepare for the future. In fact, you can take care of the following five tasks today.

 

1. Educate Yourself

The first step in preparing for aged care is to learn about your own personal finances. If you feel that your current financial situation could be improved, spend some time learning about how you can make improvements. Maybe you need to start saving more of your income. Maybe you need to pay off debts. Seek out financial information, read personal finance books, and start examining your own finances to see where you can make improvements. 

As you read and learn about personal finances, it might help to meet with a Wealth Mangement adviser to ask questions about how to apply your newfound financial education to your own finances. Even small improvements in financial habits can have huge benefits in the long term.

 

2. Create a Budget

Aged care can be quite expensive, and many seniors find that they haven’t saved as much as they need. Avoid this situation in the future by increasing your savings now.

The easiest way to increase your savings is to create a budget and stick to it. Most people find that once they start paying more attention to their spending, they find ways to cut back on items they don’t really need. When you find ways to cut your spending, apply the saved money toward your future aged care costs.

 

3. Meet with a Wealth Management Adviser

A Wealth Management adviser can help you to prepare for aged care in several ways. First of all, as you begin saving money for aged care, you’ll need somewhere to put it. A Wealth Management adviser can help you determine the best way to save: a savings account, superannuation, model portfolio, investment accounts, etc.

You can also talk with your Wealth Management adviser about how aged care fits in with the rest of your overall retirement plan. The age at which you retire, the amount of assets and liabilities you take with you into retirement, and your spouse’s retirement plans will all affect your future aged care decisions. Work with your Wealth Management adviser to create a comprehensive financial plan.

 

4. Research Financing Options

If your calculations tell you that you won’t be able to save enough cash to fund your aged care expenses, research other financing options. For instance, some people use reverse mortgages to fund their aged care expenses. Others use home equity releases to pay for aged care. These options may be useful for you later on, but it doesn’t hurt to learn about them today.

 

5. Learn About Your Aged Care Options

It’s true that the policies and regulations surrounding aged care may change before you’re old enough to need it, but the basic structures will probably be the same. The more you know about aged care now, the better prepared you will be to make decisions as you get older. 

For instance, did you know that living in an aged care facility isn’t your only option? More and more people are hiring home health care and remaining in their homes. As you learn more about your options and how the different options fit in with your finances, you will be well prepared to make informed decisions.

As you can see, there are things you can do today to start preparing for aged care, even if your need for aged care is many years in the future.