If you have to start providing home care for an elderly parent(s) and you haven’t done the financial planning, there are three easy ways to get a handle on the process.

Remember the idea is to use their assets to provide for their care.  Their assets may not be enough however to cover the expense of home care.

The first way to understand what programs are available to help you and how you can access those programs is to go to benefitscheckup.org.

Benefitscheckup.org is a service of the National Council On Aging.  You will be asked to supply information about your parent’s current financial condition, their housing situation, and their medical needs.  Based on their responses you will be given a list of the programs that are available to you in your area.  The survey takes about thirty minutes to complete but it is worth the time.

The second thing to do is to review their social security statement for accuracy to be sure that they get all the money due to them.

The third thing to do is to sign up for a supplemental medical insurance policy.  This will cover the 20% that Medicare does not cover.  Without this coverage they or you  could be stuck with huge bills.  For example, Medicare covers twenty days of rehab and a supplemental insurance policy covers an additional eighty days of rehab.  If you didn’t have that coverage you would have to pay for the rehab.

We used the AARP program and had it deducted automatically from his account.  This way there was no way the bill could be overlooked and his insurance canceled and we stuck with the bills.