Moving into an aged care facility has further challenges emotionally and financially. The emotional decision can be very heart wrenching and difficult.
There are placement consultants that specialize in helping to find suitable residential care places. You can Google “Finding residential care”.
Financially this decision can be very complex however. First you need to understand the costs of each individual residential care facility you are looking at so you can compare them.
Secondly you have to work out how that can be funded.
Our recommendation is to get good financial advice around this independently of the placement consultant.
Residential care providers will charge you the following:
- -“basic daily fee” for the cost of daily living.
- -“means tested fee” as a contribution to the cost of care. With regards to government funding of residential care this is “means tested” as well as “income tested”.
- -“accommodation payments” as a contribution towards the capital accommodation costs ie the cost of the capital to build the facility you will live in.
- – “extra service fees” generally for higher standard of accommodation services and food.
- Remember there are many retirement villages providing different standards of care .Subject to availability you can select the “economy” all the way up to “first class” but at an additional cost.
To fund “accommodation payments “ your financial advisor may need to consider the financial implications of either renting or selling the family home. When retaining or renting the family home it is important to consider the income tax impact, consequences of gifting the home, capital gains implications and whether renovations are required.