With more and more Americans reaching retirement age and needing senior care each day (a recent report by the federal government found that 1 in 6 Americans is now over the age of 65), the question of how do I pay for senior living (and related services like at-home senior care) has never been more pressing or asked by more people. While here at Sunbound we wish senior living wasn’t so expensive (we were founded to make senior living more affordable for everyone!), the reality is that senior living and at-home senior care can be very expensive, sometimes costing upwards of $10,000 per month depending on the location and specifics of your senior loved one’s care. For this reason, senior living residents often rely on their family to help manage, coordinate, and finance their senior living and senior care payments each month. If you or a senior loved one are currently in, or thinking about one day moving into, a senior living community, it’s worth considering all the ways in which you might finance your care.

Life savings

One of the most common ways that people will pay for (at least part of) their senior living or senior care is out of their accumulated lifetime savings. While senior living and senior care might not be the first thing that people think of when they’re daydreaming about how to use their retirement savings, the high cost associated with senior care means that it’s a good idea to keep your senior living expenses when you’re putting money away each month. But while some Americans are lucky enough to have saved up enough money to pay for their own senior care, many seniors and their families do not have the required cash on hand and must look to other ways to finance their senior living and senior care.

Selling your senior parents’ home

For many seniors and their families who do not have the required cash on hand to pay for senior living, a very popular method of financing senior living and senior care is a sale of the senior loved one’s home. While the decision to sell a family home can sometimes be difficult, particularly if your senior loved one has lived in their homes for years, it is often a very natural decision as the home you raised a family in is often not designed to be a home to grow old in. For this reason, many seniors are already interested in selling their homes in order to downsize and find a smaller home (or a senior living community) that is more appropriate to their retirement lifestyle. Because a larger percentage of seniors own their homes, this provides a store of wealth for seniors to use to fund their retirement lives (particularly their monthly senior living rent). While selling your senior loved one’s home to pay for senior living or senior care is often a very natural and sensible decision, it can still be a very difficult given all the moving pieces involved with selling one home and moving into another one.

If you are thinking of helping your senior loved one sell their home in order to help finance their senior living or at-home senior care, consider whether a power of attorney form is appropriate. As we’ve covered in more detail elsewhere on the blog, power of attorney is a legal mechanism that allows you to handle your senior parents’ medical and financial affairs, including doing things like help them sell their home. Make sure to speak to a local attorney, as well as to your senior loved ones themselves, to see whether a power of attorney document might be appropriate for your family’s situation. 

Government assistance

Another incredibly popular method for Americans to fund their senior living or at-home senior care is through some form of state assistance, either provided at the federal, state, or local level. The two main programs for providing assistance to seniors with paying for care at the federal level are Medicare and Medicaid. 

Medicare is mainly designed to cover health care costs, and is available to individuals aged 65 and over. Medicare pays for medically necessary care such as doctors visits, medicine, and hospital stays, but will only cover long term care in specific circumstances. Generally, Medicare will only pay for short stays (no more than 100 days) in hospitals or skilled nursing facilities following a hospitalization. In contrast to Medicare, Medicaid covers nursing home and community-based services for qualified individuals. In many states, Medicaid will also help cover services that help seniors stay in their homes, such as personal care and cleaning.   

In addition to federal assistance programs, many states have their own programs to assist seniors with senior living or senior care. In Arizona, for example, the Arizona Long Term Care System (known as ALTCS for short) which helps qualified Arizona seniors aged 65 and above pay for some or all of the care of long term senior care in a medical facility, at home, or in a senior living community.

And while it isn’t directly related to paying for senior care, it’s worth mentioning that many states have additional tax benefits for qualifying seniors. If you are already looking into whether government assistance programs would be able to help pay for some or all of your senior living or senior care, it’s worth taking the time to also consider what other senior assistance programs might be available and helpful.

Long Term Care Insurance

While it’s less common than some of the other methods on this list, another method that many Americans use to pay for senior living and senior care is long term care insurance. Long term care insurance helps individuals who have trouble completing the Activities of Daily Living and therefore require daily care due to a chronic injury or disability or aging. Long term care insurance pays for a wide range of services, often related more to daily personal care than strictly medical care, including at-home senior care, adult day care, or time in an assisted living or nursing home community. While long term insurance policies can certainly be costly, they can sometimes lead to huge savings in the long run depending on the nature of your senior loved one’s particular care needs.

Use Sunbound!

If you’re thinking that these don’t sound like the best solution for how to pay for your own or a loved one’s senior care, then there’s good news: we agree! Sunbound was founded because none of the current solutions for paying for senior living make sense for seniors or their families. Sunbound is the first online finance platform designed exclusively to help seniors and their families manage and afford senior living and at-home senior care. Sunbound pays your senior living and at-home senior care expenses up front, and then allows you and your family to pay Sunbound back in as many installments and from as many accounts as you would like, as for just $19.99 a month. If you’re looking for a better way to pay for senior living, congratulations: you just found it. Request a Sunbound demo here.

To learn more about how Sunbound can help make senior living more affordable for you or your loved one, send us an email at info@sunboundhomes.com or request more information on Sunbound. Sunbound is the best way to pay for senior living and is on a mission to make senior living affordable for everyone.