Retirement News : Seniors : The Cost of Senior Living

The Cost of Senior Living

Date Added: 10-11-2005

Iowa needs more long-term care facilities for the generation of seniors to come.  Read the excerpt below.

WHO-TV - Des Moines,IA,USA

Des Moines, November 9th, 2005- Anyone who reaches the age of 65 has a two in three chance of needing some sort of long term care in their lifetime. By 2020 some 12 million Americans will need long term care. Right now the state of Iowa isn't meeting the demand. The Iowa Finance Authority estimated that even if only five percent of the people 75 and over in Iowa wanted some sort of assisted living care, the state would need more than 3,600 more units to meet that demand.

A survey of older Iowans by Aging Resources of Central Iowa shows one in four live on less than $844 a month. The study concluded those older Iowans will likely need some help from family or from the government to meet the costs of their long term care. That means if you are the adult child of an aging parent, you need to be ready to help pay for Mom and Dad's retirement too

Jerry Lawson, who retired to assisted living says, "If we get to be 75 or 80 years old what's that going to look like...where will we be and what is that going to do to our kids?" That one question drove years of research for Jerry and Toady Lawson. At age 74 and 75 , the two decided it was time move into an independent living facility so their kids wouldn't have to take care of them, a burden both had to carry for their own parents. Toady says, "You always wonder did I do enough did I do everything I could for them...and there's a level of guilt there...we didn't want our kids to have that."

Read the entire article:

http://www.whotv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4094124&nav=2HAB