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The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

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Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#71

Post by RajT88 »

ryandrake wrote: post #24
rco8786 wrote: post #15

Pretty sure we’re all being milked for profit. Thats kinda how this whole thing works.

Retirees are more likely than not to have built up at least a small pension or 401(k)[USA]: money sitting there earning interest and capital gains. You don't think the Aging Industry is going to just sit around and not try to grab as much of it as they can? They are going to do their best to ensure the system is set up to let them harvest those accounts dry.

Everyone wants to grab whatever seniors have. I've seen it.

Children and other family squabble over the assets even before they pass. You'll see neighbors talking senile/demented seniors into giving away their stuff, or selling it for a silly low price (like a truck for a dollar, or my one neighbor asking my other neighbor for a free fishing boat). Then there's the scam calls...

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#72

Post by bluGill »

leoqa wrote: post #68
notmyjob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with LTC insurance is it’s likely to go belly up and you are at the end of the day dealing with an insurer whose business model involves denying valid claims. All of that is assuming you can actually get LTC insurance. Good luck if you are over 50. It’s like the private form of social security, a Ponzi that’s approaching its moment of truth.

You’re probably correct (I’m 30 and don’t have a policy) but I can’t think of any financial instrument that would guarantee skilled nursing ($4-8k/month in MCoL) for 10-20 years. No one in the bottom 90% of American earners can afford that drawdown even if they saved considerably.

Most people won't need it for long and so the risks average out to a more reasonable cost. However it is still thousands and people buy cheap not best coverage when they need it so that is what the market provides.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#73

Post by ModernMech »

ryandrake wrote: post #24
rco8786 wrote: post #15

Pretty sure we’re all being milked for profit. Thats kinda how this whole thing works.

Retirees are more likely than not to have built up at least a small pension or 401(k)[USA]: money sitting there earning interest and capital gains. You don't think the Aging Industry is going to just sit around and not try to grab as much of it as they can? They are going to do their best to ensure the system is set up to let them harvest those accounts dry.

That's the fun part about all of this. Boomers bought their houses for $30k in the 80s and today they're worth $3M. Sounds like they are set up comfortably for retirement and their millennial kids, who are pushing 40 and haven't been able to afford a house yet, are in for a nice inheritance.

Wrong! Because while their house is worth $3M, it will be fully leveraged to pay for the cost of their deathcare. Mom and dad will die broke in a retirement home, and your inheritance will be paying for their funeral out of your own pocket.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#74

Post by cpncrunch »

dash2 wrote: post #56

I read the article and didn't actually see any evidence that this is not a reasonably fair and functional system. I did read: * People complaining that the cafe wasn't as good as they liked. * The fact that old people have signed up for a retirement village. * The fact that some of them get confused and need help. What's the evidence base here?

Exactly. I just tried fact checking the "milking" bit. Looking up lists of care home groups, Allegra Care came up first. Looking at their financial statements (all public, and include full details of profit and loss, thanks to UK company law), their profit in 2024 was 30k, and in 2023 they had a 300k loss. So not exactly milking!

I think running a care home isn't a great way to make a huge profit.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#75

Post by BeetleB »

leoqa wrote: post #43

I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how my mother spent her adulthood partying instead of providing and now it’s become a critical issue for our family to provide for her. Ultimately I don’t expect my children (or staff-journalist) to project pity on me for my circumstances. I run a weekly route with…

LTC is risky, as others have pointed out.

My company offers one that claims to be reliable (owned by an insurance company that's been around for over 100 years, albeit not in the LTC space).

The one thing I didn't like about them: They don't adjust for inflation. So if you sign up for a $100K plan, you'll get $100K - which will worth a lot less by the time I need it.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#76

Post by OkayPhysicist »

josefritzishere wrote: post #58
joules77 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retirement is a stupid concept. One of my Grandfathers just stopped taking medication and going to the docs. And died quite peacefully within a couple years of retiring. Death and decay is just natural and quick. While my other grandfather has been kept alive 30-35 years post retirement popping a tray full of pills everyday, having gone through dozens of surgeries and has had hopeless quality of life post retirement.…

Some of us get old and tired. Retirement is a necessity. Your opinion will change with age on this one I expect. retirement has existed really since humans lived past their 40s. (1700s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement

Humans have always lived past their 40s. You've misunderstand life expectancy statistics, because human age-at-death forms a bimodal distribution: A lot of kids and infants die (especially historically), and then your body starts falling apart in your 50s. So while the average life expectancy at birth for a lot of history might have been in the 30-40 year span, it has never been common for people to die in their 30s. Because once you make it to ~15, your life expectancy is another 30-40 years. And if you make it to 30, your life expectancy was still another 25-30 years.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#77

Post by ceejayoz »

josefritzishere wrote: post #58
joules77 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retirement is a stupid concept. One of my Grandfathers just stopped taking medication and going to the docs. And died quite peacefully within a couple years of retiring. Death and decay is just natural and quick. While my other grandfather has been kept alive 30-35 years post retirement popping a tray full of pills everyday, having gone through dozens of surgeries and has had hopeless quality of life post retirement.…

Some of us get old and tired. Retirement is a necessity. Your opinion will change with age on this one I expect. retirement has existed really since humans lived past their 40s. (1700s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement

> retirement has existed really since humans lived past their 40s

We've always lived past our 40s. We just stopped having a bunch of people die in childhood (or birthing children).

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc...

"If one’s thirties were a decrepit old age, ancient writers and politicians don’t seem to have got the message. In the early 7th Century BC, the Greek poet Hesiod wrote that a man should marry “when you are not much less than 30, and not much more”. Meanwhile, ancient Rome’s ‘cursus honorum’ – the sequence of political offices that an ambitious young man would undertake – didn’t even allow a young man to stand for his first office, that of quaestor, until the age of 30 (under Emperor Augustus, this was later lowered to 25; Augustus himself died at 75). To be consul, you had to be 43 – eight years older than the US’s minimum age limit of 35 to hold a presidency."

"As a result, much of what we think we know about ancient Rome’s statistical life expectancy comes from life expectancies in comparable societies. Those tell us that as many as one-third of infants died before the age of one, and half of children before age 10. After that age your chances got significantly better. If you made it to 60, you’d probably live to be 70."

Neanderthal elders probably took on lighter-duty tasks as they aged just like today's elders do.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#78

Post by [deleted] »

leoqa wrote: post #68
notmyjob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with LTC insurance is it’s likely to go belly up and you are at the end of the day dealing with an insurer whose business model involves denying valid claims. All of that is assuming you can actually get LTC insurance. Good luck if you are over 50. It’s like the private form of social security, a Ponzi that’s approaching its moment of truth.

You’re probably correct (I’m 30 and don’t have a policy) but I can’t think of any financial instrument that would guarantee skilled nursing ($4-8k/month in MCoL) for 10-20 years. No one in the bottom 90% of American earners can afford that drawdown even if they saved considerably.

[deleted]

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#79

Post by triceratops »

John23832 wrote: post #10

Under capitialism, why would anyone think that this is anything but expected. These living communities are meant to house you, until you die, for a price. You have saved up money to pay for that service until you die. Why would they leave money on the table? Why would they spend any extra on someone who's "going to die anyway". Someone who is barely ambulatory; who has few outside connections. It's the horrible resul…

Is there a reason to believe this wouldn't happen under other economic systems?

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#80

Post by gtowey »

rco8786 wrote: post #50
stouset wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager that’s exactly what the GP thinks. It was pretty clear to me they think the entire system is set up so that anyone with needs is milked to extract the maximum possible amount of money.

I mean that's just trivially true right? For profit corporations are designed to maximize profits, therefore they must try to maximize the amount of money they extract from their customers.

And now you know the entire reason the US is consumed by political chaos.

A rational society would be regulating those corporations to ensure they act in the public best interest at least some of the time. We're seeing the result of what happens when we are 50 years behind on that. And the current administration is generally rolling back regulations all over.

Think of the money at stake and it will become obvious that our current situation isn't mere happenstance. The chaos is a deliberate smoke screen -- perhaps not exactly planned by the current administration, but orchestrated by the oligarchs behind the scenes.

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