Healthy Aging Starts with Eating Right

Posted on | November 9, 2011

Did you know that eating healthy makes you healthier? How many of us wake up at 6:00am to get to work on time or get the kids off to school and make that nice big cup of coffee and think that’s going to hold you over until lunch time six hours later? Eating a healthy breakfast of more whole grains has been shown to lower your bad cholesterol, reduce blood pressure, and prevent heart disease. I think the best advice I can give you for changing your diet is to try to eat foods that have been processed as little as possible. This is true with grains or cereals. For instance, if you are going to have cereal for breakfast, the more basic the cereal is the better. Oatmeal and shredded wheat are better than Cheerios, which are better than corn flakes. All of these are better than Frosted Flakes or Fruit Loops.  Whole wheat pasta is another easy change to make, and you’ll find that it gives a whole new flavor to your pasta dishes.

Choosing a weekly meal plan before doing you do your grocery shopping will save you money and help you control your health and diet. You should not eat any large meals after 7:00 pm since the food does not get digested before you go to sleep. Fresh ingredients make for healthier meals. Whenever you can, use the highest quality ingredients for your recipes. The flavor will always come through in your finished dish. Eat heather and enjoy a happy life.

About the Author:

Chef Trev is a gourmet chef providing healthy meals for seniors who wish to live at home in South Florida. Working with Nightingale Private Care in Hobe Sound, Florida, Chef Trev along with the Nightingale Private Care staff provide quality in-home care services allowing seniors to age in place. Serving residents of Martin, Palm Beach, Indian River and Palm Beach Counties, Nightingale offers affordable in-home senior care.  Call today to see how Nightgale Private Home Care can help you or a loved one 1-877-391-2548.

Family Caregivers – National Caregivers Month

Posted on | November 9, 2011

Debbie turned the ringing alarm off. It was 6:00AM and time to get herself ready for the day. Her son would be there soon to help her shower and dress her husband Jim. Her son came every day before work to help because Debbie, at 75 years old and suffering with arthritis, could not lift Jim out of bed or help him to the shower. This has been the daily routine since Jim’s stroke a year ago. When her son leaves for work, Debbie spends the day caring for Jim’s needs.

President Barack Obama, in his Presidential Proclamation of National Family Caregivers Month -2011 states:

“Across our country, millions of family members, neighbors, and friends provide care and support for their loved ones during times of need. With profound compassion and selflessness, these caregivers sustain American men, women, and children at their most vulnerable moments, and through their devoted acts, they exemplify the best of the American spirit.”

Statistics from the Administration On Aging show that the population 65 and older is expected to grow from its current 13% to 19% of the total population by 2030. With the older population increasing, the need for elder caregiving will continue to increase. Family caregivers play a vital role in filling these caregiving needs. Who better than family can understand the needs and ensure the best care of their loved ones.

Caregiving can be very stressful and demanding. In the case of a healthy spouse or a child living with the disabled person at home, caregiving can be a 24 hour, 7 day a week commitment. But even for the caregiver not living in the home, looking after a loved one or friend can consume all of the caregiver’s free time.

Surveys and studies consistently show that depression is a major problem with full-time informal caregivers. This is typically brought on by stress and fatigue as well as social isolation from family and friends. If allowed to go on too long, the caregiver can sometimes break down and may end up needing long term care as well.

A typical pattern may unfold as follows:

1 to 18 months–the caregiver is confident, has everything under control and is coping well. Other friends and family are lending support.

20 to 36 months–the caregiver is taking medication to sleep and control mood swings. Outside help dwindles away and except for trips to the store or doctor, the caregiver has severed most social contacts. The caregiver feels alone and helpless.

38 to 50 months–Besides needing tranquilizers or antidepressants, the caregiver’s physical health is beginning to deteriorate.  Lack of focus and sheer fatigue cloud judgment and the caregiver is often unable to make rational decisions or ask for help.  It is often at this stage that family or friends intercede and find other solutions for care.  This may include respite care, hiring home health aides or putting the disabled care recipient in a facility.  Without intervention, the family caregiver may become a candidate for long term care as well.

Since most family members go into informal caregiving without training or counseling, they often aren’t aware of the possible outcome described above. It is therefore extremely important to seek counseling and to formulate a plan of action prior to making a caregiving commitment.

According to the National Care Planning Council:

” In 1965, Congress passed the Older Americans Act which provides guidance and funding to the States to give help to caregivers. All states offer programs at no cost or very low cost which might include: counseling, caregiver training, respite care, adult day care, meals, support groups and much, much more. It is vital for the health and longevity of all caregivers to make use of these services.” (www.longtermcarelink.net)

In 1994 President Clinton proclaimed a week in November as National Family Caregivers week to be observed with appropriate programs and activities.  It has since been changed to the whole month of November with each President giving a yearly proclamation for its observance.

Government assistance is available all over the country.  Area Agencies on Aging and local senior centers give aid and support to family caregivers.  Numerous religious and community organizations also lend their support.

This month of November 2011, as individuals, we can take note of those around us, in our families and community, who are family caregivers.  A note of acknowledgement of their service, a gift of thanks or even an offering of our time to give them a needed break would let them know their service is recognized and appreciated.

LTC Financial Partners, LLC is one of the nation’s most experienced Long Term Care agencies. Our passion is to provide our clients with the best long term care insurance options to meet their needs. We do this by offering clients an array of products from leading insurance carriers. Each producing agent earns the same commission no matter which insurance company is chosen. This way our clients know that our agent has objectively selected the company that meets their needs. We are domiciled in Washington.

Senior Care Options:Nursing Home Costs and Ratings for Medicare and Medicaid Insurance

Posted on | November 4, 2011

Seniors in the U.S.A. qualify for the government senior health insurance programs once they turn 65-years-old.  At this age, they must sign-up for either  Medicare or Medicaid.  Medicaid is the option for very low-income seniors with few financial assets.  The benefits are different for each of these insurance programs and Medicaid is provided in partnership with the federal government and each state government.

Medicare will be the option for most seniors and provides adequate insurance coverage for doctor’s visits, hospital stays and rehabilitation care in a nursing home.

Very low-income seniors will receive Medicaid insurance instead of Medicare.  Each state creates their own Medicaid program and this means the financial requirements and benefits will vary slightly in each state.  Overall, assets owned must be very low to qualify for Medicaid insurance as a senior.

Nursing home care has become an extension of hospital care for seniors.  After a stroke or hip replacement, for instance, Medicare insurance will pay for some rehabilitation in a nursing home.  Medical doctor preapproval is required for Medicare to pay for a nursing home stay, with benefits available for up to a 100 day stay.  Medicare will pay for the first 20 days of a nursing home stay after a qualifying hospital stay (minimum 3 days in a hospital).

Medicaid, as a state and federal program, will pay most nursing home costs for those who qualify as low-income seniors with assets of less than $2,000 (asset amount varies slightly in each state and you can review the Medicaid qualifications in your state on Caregiverlist).

As nursing homes can cost from $100 to $400 per day, seniors who will require long-term nursing home care will often “spend down” their financial assets and then qualify for Medicaid health insurance.  Nursing home stays are fully paid for by Medicaid, for as long as the nursing care is needed (this is why some seniors with progressive age-related illnesses will opt to spend-down their assets and go onto Medicaid, which will pay for ongoing residency at a nursing home).

Long-term care insurance is another option, if a senior has purchased a long-term care insurance policy.  Veterans of certain wars do qualify for Veteran’s Aid & Attendance home care and veteran’s retirement care nursing homes.  If you are not a veteran and do not have long-term care insurance, then you must privately pay for your senior care, until you spend-down your financial assets and qualify for Medicaid.

Seniors who choose to move to an assisted living community or stay in their home may hire a private duty senior caregiver through a licensed senior home care agency.  Private duty caregivers will cost between $16 and $25 per hour and $180 to $300 per day for 24-hour live-in care, depending on where you live (metropolitan cities have higher costs of living than rural areas).  Senior home care agencies provide training, payroll taxes, insurances, benefits and active care management for the senior caregiver.

Research the nursing homes in your area before you need them.  Understand the daily nursing home costs for private and shared rooms and their ratings from their health inspection reports.  Some nursing homes will not accept a new resident who is on Medicaid, but if you enter the nursing home paying privately and spend down your assets, they will allow you to stay as a Medicaid resident.

Understand which nursing homes accept Medicare and Medicaid and know your preferred choice should the need arise suddenly, which is often the situation.  Nursing homes usually are not a preferred choice for senior care, but some of the more modern nursing homes do offer quality services and comfortable accommodations.  Ad Medicare and Medicaid will pay for rehabilitation in a nursing home, you should plan ahead the same way that you would when choosing a college.  Research the options, visit their facilities and understand the services offered.  This way, if the time arises when you will need nursing home care, your family members and medical doctor will know your senior care preference and you will not have the added stress of making a last-minute choice.  Nursing home accommodations vary widely, which is another reason to research the options before you need the services.

Caregiverlist provides the only resource with the daily costs of nursing homes nationwide and provides easy-to-understand star-ratings to make the research process easy for seniors and their family members.

About the Author - Julie A. Northcutt

As an entrepreneur in digital media, Julie Northcutt launched Caregiverlist.com to deliver the efficiencies of digital technology to senior care companies, professional senior caregivers and families. After graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism, she jumped fence from writing to advertising sales, due to her attraction to launching new business streams for companies. She credits her entrepreneurial skills to experiences gained while growing up on a family farm. She joined USA Today and then became a pioneer in the internet, launching the online advertising sales for Morningstar.com. Often having hobby businesses on the side, she finally saved her money to start her own business, a senior home care agency, combining her entrepreneurial skills with a service she had personal experience in. She grew the agency to be a leader in the Chicagoland market and sold it to a national company in order to focus full-time on Caregiverlist. Caregiverlist.com provides the online tools she wished she had when she owned the senior home care agency, serving as a reliable resource for senior care professionals, adult children and seniors. Caregiverlist answers all the questions that begin when senior care becomes a need, while providing efficient business tools for senior care companies. She credits clients, employees and business colleagues with keeping the idea for Caregiverlist.com on track and contributing to the continued success with their suggestions and feedback.

Baby Boomer Retirement Living Will Be Very Different Than Our Parents’

Posted on | November 3, 2011

For many Baby Boomers the word “retirement” evokes images of 50-something parents hanging it all up to relax and enjoy life.  It appears that Boomer retirement will look very different for a number of reasons.

During World War II, much of the world’s manufacturing capacity was turned into rubble.  As companies rose to fill the needs of the world, U.S. manufacturing jobs grew.  The middle class was born as rising wages for blue collar workers helped usher in an era of prosperity.

Even without a college education, many of our parents earned enough to raise a family on a single income.  Unions grew strong and negotiated forcefully for wage and benefit increases that helped keep our parents loyal to their employers.

Interest rates and home prices were low enough that many blue collar workers could afford to build new homes in the suburbs.  Their wives often stayed home and cared for their Baby Boomer children who went to brand new schools, played in safe parks, and rode bikes on streets that weren’t clogged with traffic.

While most of our parents hoped that their children would attend college, many good paying jobs that didn’t require a degree were available as Baby Boomers came of age. As many quickly left home after finishing high school or college to start families of their own, many of our parents were able to save for retirement during their peak wage earning years as they were often done with child, mortgage and education expenses.

In the early 1980’s, the government battled price and wage inflation by raising interest rates.  For our parents who were able to save some money by then, the benefit of earning 15% or more on those savings for years cannot be ignored.  Many retired with a nicely padded bank account due to the government’s efforts to stem inflation.

Many of our folks lived in the same house for years and for the most part, the value of those homes rose.  Real estate often proved to be a good, if often only one-time investment for our parents.  With mortgages often paid in full by retirement, the proceeds from selling a home often provided a major portion of retirement savings.

For many of our parents, retirement was largely funded by generous pension plans that included health insurance.  There were no concerns about Social Security or Medicare going under and for many, those programs adequately boosted personal savings and private pensions to help create a comfortable retirement filled with choices and leisure.

Baby Boomers benefitted from the prosperity enjoyed by their parents even though our sheer numbers meant that we would always have to compete with each other for jobs, housing, good colleges, etc.  We grew up largely during a time when fathers worked and mothers stayed home, when jobs weren’t sent overseas, when blue collar workers could buy or build their first home in the suburbs, and when children could get a college degree without incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.

Many blessings have been showered upon Baby Boomers even as our sheer numbers have brought untold benefits to our economy.  Our buying power has created huge demand in all areas of our economy.  But the world has also changed substantially during our lives and our “normal” would have made our parents’ knees buckle.

Home prices rose quickly as 76 million people came of age and sought to get into the market. Many Boomers couldn’t afford to follow their parents’ path of buying or building a nice home in the quiet, safe suburbs because homes cost far more than they had when their parents came into the marketplace.  Instead, Boomers often bought “starter” homes, lived in them a few years, and then parlayed increasing values into better homes in nicer areas. Rising home prices often required buying and selling several times before achieving the dream home in the preferred neighborhood.

As interest rates exploded in the early 1980’s, mortgage rates also rose, pricing many out of the market. For those who could still participate, more income went to housing costs than ever before.  Waiting until you could “afford it” wasn’t wise because prices were rising so fast that waiting might price you out of the market for good. Those who jumped in rode a wave of ever increasing prices, rapidly growing equity, and as they parlayed and moved to better homes in nicer areas, rapidly rising mortgage costs.  For many Boomers, the cost of housing continued to rise during their wage earning years.

Most Boomers found it impossible to stay in one job for an entire career like our fathers did. As jobs disappeared and new ones took their places, our responsibilities and the skills required also changed.  We adapted, retrained, and went back to school to meet ever changing workplace challenges and take advantage of new opportunities.  We’ve embraced new technology and increased productivity to remain employed even as employers have become far less loyal to their employees.

Unions fell out of favor during our careers and their protections were lost to many Boomers.  Defined benefit pension plans helped keep our fathers’ retirement dreams safe.  For Boomers, those dreams became less certain as defined contribution plans shifted the responsibility of creating a financially secure retirement from employer to employee.  The traditional “three-legged” stool of retirement income – personal savings, defined benefit pension plan, and social security – had become a little less stable.

IRA’s and 401K’s were designed to bridge the gap and help us create the wealth required for a secure retirement income stream but the stock market collapse of 2000 wiped out more than half of many Boomer retirement accounts.  A rising market helped many regain lost ground but the economic tsunami of 2008 put many Boomer portfolios under water again.  As retirement nears, the faithful continue to invest but see their efforts bear little fruit.  As our government tries to spur our broken economy, interest rates remain historically low and Boomers are not earning enough interest on their savings to have a positive impact on their financial health in retirement.

Home values which had soared during most of our lives have now dropped over 50% in many markets.  Many Boomers find themselves “under water” on their mortgages and owe far more than their homes are worth today.  With loan requirement growing more stringent, those who would buy are often prevented from doing so.  Most Boomers hoped to sell their homes and use the proceeds as a large portion of their retirement savings and can now ill afford to sell.  Their homes, once major retirement savings vehicles, have become depreciating assets that are threatening their financial futures and reducing their retirement options.

Being the sandwich generation has also had an impact on Boomers’ ability to save for retirement. Their children are often still living at home well past the time that Boomers went out on their own.  Boomers may also be helping their elderly parents.  The strain to their financial health cannot be overstated as they continue to help pay for tuition, rent, food, etc. and perhaps help their parents with medical or other bills and home health care costs during the years that they should be saving for retirement.

The recent economic turmoil has cost many Boomers their jobs.  As some of the highest paid employees, they were often severed as companies sought to cut costs.  While unemployment for younger generations is far higher, unemployed Baby Boomers remain on the sidelines for over twice as long and a large percentage of the “99’ers” (those unemployed for over 99 weeks) are Baby Boomers.

Out of work during what should be their highest wage earning years will change their retirement outlook – likely for good.  As they draw down what savings they had, including their IRA’s and 401K’s to pay living expenses, their ability to retire comfortably may be lost. With few employers anxious to add older workers to their payrolls, the ability to grow their savings will disappear.  Throw in the uncertainty over the future of Social Security and Medicare and you can see that Boomers do not have the same certainty about their retirement as their parents enjoyed.

The “three legged stool” of retirement income – pension, savings, social security – has had its legs cut off for many Boomers.  Self-funded pensions decimated twice in less than a decade in volatile financial markets, personal savings rates that were low by our parents standards now strained by unemployment or expenses that our parents often did not have later in life, and Social Security and Medicare funding issues all serve to make retirement look far different for Boomers than for our parents’ generation.

Perhaps the silver lining is that for many Boomers, retirement dreams did not include idling away their remaining years living off of their investments and other income streams as they walked the beach or played 18 rounds seven days a week.

Many look forward to retirement as a time when they can do other things that interest them. For many, a hobby may well become a business and a source of retirement income.  For others, a new career helping others may be on the horizon.  Still others will share in the classroom what they have learned over a lifetime. Others will finally take their inventive idea to the marketplace or create an innovative new product or service to fill an unmet need.  Hopefully, they will hire other Boomers to work for their companies.

Boomers have spent their lives driving demand in the marketplace due to their huge numbers.  As we age, we will continue to demand new products, services and features that will help us stay active, healthy, alert, and able.  We will seek out and purchase products and services that will help us age in place, make life easier, more convenient, more satisfying, help us stay in touch with families, and remain safe.  Those who tap into those wants and needs will find a marketplace that is receptive to their offerings.

There is a lot of opportunity knocking and Boomers may well fill some of those needs during “retirement” as entrepreneurs.  Statistics show that the fastest growing entrepreneurial segment is the over 50 crowd and there is little reason to expect them to sell or close their businesses just because they reach the “magic” age of 65.  They will likely continue to produce products and jobs for many more years.  Boomers have always been a driving market force.  Why expect anything different as we “retire”?

About the Author:  Shelly Scribe writes for www.myboomer2boomer.com, an information and resource site designed to help Baby Boomers find and support Boomer Entrepreneurs and other Boomer Friendly businesses, employers and products.