. I made it to Saturday morning yoga class, the first time back in several years time.
I thought since I was walking an hour a day, 5 days a week, I was in pretty good shape. Wrong, very wrong. Yoga was exhausting...way too many downward facing dogs for my taste. It's basically a modified push-up.
Oh, my. I shall return. The stretching is badly needed. I Thought my balance was pretty good because I sometimes randomly stand on one leg for minutes at a time, but it just wasn't working at the class.
I ran into someone I used to work with; she was laid off a few months ago from where we both used to work. This was a p/t job I had before the bank job.
I felt like a nap when I got home, but the good thing is, the drive home was about one-third of a mile!
The electrician has arrived
When I got home, my electrician was already here and starting to do some rewiring for me in the garage, replacing some old fabric-type wiring that was in deteriorated condition and replacing a 2 outlet thing with 4 outlets, for my many electric or battery landscaping tools. It should be about $242, not exactly in this month's budget but a small enough amount that I can maybe eat out of the pantry most of this month and not notice the added expense.
No long-term care for me
I've known for a while that one big gap in my overall financial planning is the lack of any coverage for long term care. So yesterday I randomly called Mutual of Omaha after reading their premium rates online. They didn't seem that bad.
I learned I'm not eligible for long-term care insurance because of my MS. It doesn't matter that I've missed MAYBE 2 days of work over the course of nearly 30 years living with it. Nope, nada, no how.
It's a little unsettling, but I will have to self-fund.
I think the electrician will be done in the garage around noon, and once I pay him and see him off, I'll be able to head to dad's for lunch, to take a photo of his mattress label to send to mattress store and also to go to library to get them to sign a form so dad is eligible to borrow reading materials from the state library for the blind and physically handicapped.
Those are the sum total of my responsibilities for the rest of the weekend; after lunch, I'll return home and just try to recover from the yoga and enjoy the day close to home.
Other items on the weekend agenda:
1. Make split pea soup for the work week.
2. Run my kerosene heater to burn down more fuel as we approach the end of the heating season.
Death by yoga
March 17th, 2018 at 02:53 pm
March 17th, 2018 at 03:48 pm 1521301700
March 17th, 2018 at 05:44 pm 1521308680
As for LTCI: While you can't get LTCI, you *can* probably get life insurance. Life insurance is easier to get than either LTCI or disability insurance (DI), because LTCI and DI are products where only *some* of the people who buy them will ever use them, while life insurance is based on the premise that there will be a payout eventually, since everyone dies.
There are now "hybrid" products out there that you can draw on for income in the event of your health going downhill, so that *you* could use some of the benefits rather than leaving money to your beneficiaries. The hybrid insurance products are based on "permanent" insurance, so they are relatively expensive--typically you pay either a big single premium--like 100K to get 350K worth of LTC benefit or 125K of death benefit, OR you pay something like 10K over 10 years. (I'm sure that half the amount/half the benefit is possible, too.)
Something that might be more up your alley is a *term* life insurance policy with accelerated living benefits--see this article https://topquotelifeinsurance.com/term-life-insurance-with-accelerated-living-benefits/. It's not as comprehensive but it is a lot more inexpensive. Of course, it is *term* insurance so the term eventually expires. Typically at the end of the term, you have the option to continue paying for the insurance but the premiums become dramatically more expensive--like 10K a year instead of $500 a year. But if you are ill at that point and want access to the living benefit, that could still be to your benefit. Or, a few years before the level term period expires, you would have the opportunity to "1035 exchange" (tax-free exchange) the term policy for a permanent policy. (Ask if any term insurance is convertible.)
Go through an insurance BROKER, not an agent for a particular company. http://integratedinsuranceonline.com/ and https://llis.com/ would be good places to start--they both work heavily with "NAPFA" advisors (National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, which is an organization for fee-based financial advisors who are fiduciaries, unlike most of the broker/dealer advisors out there).
One reason for going to a broker is that there is a national database where all life insurance quote requests are put into and if you ask for too many quotes at one time, it works against you--something I learned just this week. It's the Medical Information Bureau and you can request your own file online once a year. If you go thru one of the brokers, they will pre-screen you with a questionnaire and they can tell based on their experience which insurance company would work best and have the most reasonable premiums for your situation.
Another possibility is looking into Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs), where you buy into a community and get a residence and future LTC needs taken care of--again, fairly costly. You can read more about CCRCs at http://www.mylifesite.net/free-guide/. This is a possibility I am considering--I really like the idea of aging in community, though not so sure I want it to be a community of just the elderly.
There is also a new product out there, which I don't know ANYTHING about, since I just found it while googling in response to you, called a "point of need" product, that you can buy AT THE POINT where LTC is needed--here's a link to the product, and it has a decent A.M. Best rating, which is good (the most important thing about insurance is not the price but the stability of the insurer!) http://www.reliablelivingplan.com/reliable-living-plan.html.
So there *are* options even if you don't qualify for traditional LTCI.
March 18th, 2018 at 12:18 pm 1521375526
I did once have a friend, maybe he was around 60, and he bought a condo at a large 55+ community, the same one I often considered because they had so many activities and things going on. Technically, you can move into this community as soon as you hit 55. He said he hated it because he was surrounded by older people in their 70s, for the most part, and everyone was dying or on their way. He said it was very depressing.
I think I'll explore the term life insurance first.
March 18th, 2018 at 12:33 pm 1521376400
March 18th, 2018 at 02:05 pm 1521381940
March 18th, 2018 at 02:09 pm 1521382158
March 18th, 2018 at 08:00 pm 1521403221
There's a senior condo community near us. The thing is just like Dido said. It is part of a care community. The condo itself is just like any senior condo, but there was a call cord in some of the rooms in case one needed it. It also guaranteed a place in the assisted living community if that was needed and the nursing home if it came to that. My friend who lived to be 88 didn't need anything but the condo. Although she neighbored with those living around her, she was free to come and go as she wished, but could take part in any of the activities at the other two communities and she felt since she was widowed and without children, she had a safety net.