{"id":50328,"date":"2026-05-12T12:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/the-great-wealth-transfers-real-recipients-elder-care-costs\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T12:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:31:15","slug":"the-great-wealth-transfers-real-recipients-elder-care-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/the-great-wealth-transfers-real-recipients-elder-care-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Wealth Transfer&#8217;s real recipients? Elder-care costs."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69fa54aa90e4f69dca930d6d?format=jpeg\" alt=\"older woman and young woman sit on couch talking\"\/><figcaption>\n<p>Susumu Yoshioka\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li><em>This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>You can sign up for <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/subscription\/newsletter\/insider-today\" rel=\"noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Business Insider&#039;s daily newsletter here<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The great wealth transfer is taking place, but it&#039;s not landing in the pockets of the supposed heirs.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Costly long-term elder care is putting a major dent in the trillions of dollars in wealth held by boomers that&#039;s been earmarked for their Gen X and millennial children.<\/p>\n<p>Zach Hefferen wrote about the high costs of caring for his father, who struggled with dementia for over a decade. The memory care unit that his father ended up in cost $17,000 a month, nearly wiping out his father&#039;s entire life savings in the 16 months before his death.<\/p>\n<p>As heartbreaking as Zach and his dad&#039;s story is, it&#039;s not necessarily unique. Boomers and their children are facing the staggering healthcare costs that come with aging. (If you&#039;re going through this now, we want to hear from you.)<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s also an incredibly uncomfortable conversation to have. You don&#039;t want your parents thinking you&#039;re counting their money before they&#039;re in the grave. But a surprise diagnosis or less-than-expected retirement savings can quickly turn their finals years into a recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s not just the financial pain of paying for full-time help or a spot in an assisted-living facility. Sometimes it means stepping back from your career to care for an aging parent.<\/p>\n<p>That responsibility typically falls on daughters, and it&#039;s steep. One estimate found that unpaid family care costs American women an average of $295,000 in lost wages and retirement savings over a lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>BI&#039;s Katie Notopolous also wrote about the terrifying so-called &quot;millennial daughter tax.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>For some, the solution to elder care is looking abroad.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Peter and Rita Millard have spent the past few years in a care facility in northern Thailand, a hotspot for retirees from around the world. Peter told BI that living in the facility, where a resident&#039;s average monthly cost is about $1,914, is an &quot;insurance policy&quot; for whoever gets left behind.<\/p>\n<p>Mexico has also proven to be a more affordable option for long-term elder care. Costs for assisted living in the country averages between $1,000 to $2,000 a month.<\/p>\n<p>Others have found strength in numbers, bringing multiple generations under one roof, a trend BI has covered extensively. Multigenerational households can ease the financial pressures of childcare and eldercare.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, breakthroughs in longevity science mean the issue could only worsen as people live well beyond their retirement savings.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Susumu Yoshioka\/Getty Images This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter. You can sign up for Business Insider&#039;s daily newsletter here. The great wealth transfer is taking place, but it&#039;s not landing in the pockets of the supposed heirs. Costly long-term elder care is putting a major dent in the trillions of dollars [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}