Caregiver are you prepared for your own retirement?

Financial advisors are saying that even people who make a lot of $ and have been saving for years are not prepared to retire. I am 59, haven't been able to work for years because of chronic illness, but still need to care for my dad now. No savings left at all. Pretty bleak. The only thing I can think of is to put it in God's hands and listen carefully for direction.

I AM retired and I'm not prepared. Renting out rooms helps me keep my mortgaged house.

I'm semi-retired and semi-prepared. I'm retired from my career and receive enough pension and SS to pay my expenses, but not to provide for my old age if my expenses are significantly more. So I'm planning to work part time for at least the next few years to put some savings away for later. Right now I'm taking a tax preparer course and I think I'll be working at that in the spring. I'm also looking into becoming an Uber driver in the off-season.

Overall, I will be doing better in a few years after I become eligible for Medicare because health insurance under the (Un)Affordable Care Act is killing me between premiums and copayments.

Short of being generationally wealthy, I don't know how any of us can feel secure about the future. Money saved is earning next to nothing in the bank and the stock market hasn't done much for the past few years. Remember when financial advisors were using returns of 8%, 10% and higher to show us what our next egg would look like at retirement? I was beginning to consider a coffee can buried in the backyard! Instead, we bought a couple of "distressed" houses, spent long hours fixing them up and are now renting them out. Time will tell if that was a wise move. Medicare starts in 2016 for us, and, like CarlaCB, we will get a boost from the savings on premiums and copayments..

My mother is stuck with the low earnings which means that she no longer pays any income tax and will need Medicaid sooner. I imagine that lots of seniors are in that same position. It seems kind of like a snowball rolling downhill.

Oh my gosh, akdaughter, I was just thinking the same thing when I was re-reading this thread.... how nice it was back in the 1980's when we were getting 12% interest on our savings accounts :) Mortgages were in the mid-teens but buyers were still out there purchasing homes.

Fast forward to today from when I last posted on this thread 10 months ago and I see a whole different picture with my parents and their expenses. Dad is now paying for professional caregivers [licensed, bonded, insured] and it runs him $20k a month, yes a month, for 24-hour care. Fantastic people from an agency. Dad does have a choice to moving to Assisted Living, he's thinking about it.

I see what the cost is for Dad for a whole year $240,000 and I think with my retirement fund, that would only last me a couple of years of in-home around the clock care.... then what? Sell my house and go into assisted living to help save some dollars. Maybe win the Lottery??? Find a wealthy spouse.... no, wait, they were looking for gals 25 years younger !!

Then I stop for a minute and realize I will never get to my Dad's age of 94 [Mom is 98 and in long-term-care on hospice watch], so why am I worrying so much. I probably won't reach my 80's, either. The stress of dealing with my dear folks has drastically shorten my life :(

Great disscussion. Glad it got pulled up again. I think there are many folks who are in bad shape for old age through events they can't control like illness, job loss and so on. But soooo many people are in bad shape due to poor life choices, bad relationships/marriages, stupid spending habits and living beyond ones means.

We've also got whole generations now that were raised in the philosophy that they are special and somehow entitled to fame and riches. Well guess what, you're just a brick in the wall like the rest of us and there's no mana from heaven.

My wife and I both came from hand to mouth working class families. We've both seen some hard times and have always been scared to death of debt and spending money. We were lucky to be able to retire in our early 60's while still healthy. We're currently waiting for the pets to all die so we can travel a little. We won't be living large by any measure but won't be eating dog food at the end of each month either. But if we do, we should be able to afford brand name dog food.

I have many frustrations in caring for my parents, wishing they had prepared better for old age, but I've come to appreciate them for setting a good example for me as a kid on how to take care of money, take care of things so they last forever, and not to squander money on stupid things.