Long term care insurance is awesome but it can also be challenging. My husband needs minimal assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs) such as dressing, personal hygiene, meal preparation, and transportation. These are things I do willingly every day. Unfortunately, because I am not a paid caregiver, our Long Term Care insurance company does not recognize my work. Our policy, as most, has an exclusionary period before benefits kick in. This means that any help he receives must be documented by a professional, not an unpaid family member. In-home care is expensive, can we afford to pay someone $30 per hour for things I can do myself?

The improvements we want to do involve preparing for the long haul. We want to be proactive and make our home safer so that we can both age in place. Our policy does allow for home modifications, but again he has to be in care with an agency for 30 days before they will consider paying. What that really means is that he must be beyond the threshold of need before they will fix the threshold of our home so he can stay here.

We are again talking about what we do next. Is our plan to stay in our home realistic if we cannot move forward with the needed modifications? We are also talking seriously about what help my husband would accept from an outside person, if that is what has to happen. We are working with an Occupational Therapist as we try to navigate the system and find a pathway to a positive home environment for both of us. Hopefully keeping us in our current home where we have been for 20 years.