101 Death Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for Arranging Your Affairs Before You Die [Part Four]

When you build a house, you want to do so efficiently. Pine 2x4s are cheaper than 1½” oak floor boards, so that’s what you use to frame the house. When you’re making your estate plan, you don’t want the family farm to wind up being sold to pay a tax bill, the costs of probate, or the medical expenses of your beneficiaries. Fortunately, with a little forethought and some organization, you can avoid those kinds of problems and make a plan to pay or even avoid those costs without jeopardizing your wishes. [Read More]

High Five: The Zen Guide to Planning for a Nursing Home Stay

If you’re dealing with a nursing home, it will quickly become clear that the options for paying the care bill are dizzying. Paying out of pocket is cost prohibitive. Long-term care insurance is probably not workable. For many, that leaves Medicaid, but those rules are spread over hundreds of pages of federal and state statutes, regulations, and policy manuals. What you need is an oasis from the stress, not the exponentially increasing stress that comes from trying to make sense of all those rules. Don’t despair. You can achieve calm in this whirlwind. Follow these five steps and you’ll soon find that the zen of nursing home planning is easily reached. [Read More]