The average cost of staying in a care home is around £30,000 a year and many won’t be able to rely on the state to pick up the bill. Alongside with this, is the increase in ageing population and longer life expectancy. This means that you might end up facing some hefty bills in your later life. However, if you are looking at the prospect of financial planning and funding your own care-home costs, there are ways wherein you can keep the expenses down.
You will need to work out how much state support you are entitled. However, according to Competitions and Markets Authority, this isn’t a simple task. They said that it was very difficult to understand how the funding system works and that steps must be taken to make it simpler.
Due to this, individuals and families are needlessly forced to sell their homes and other assets or investments in order to pay for care. A specialist law firm has even recovered £100m for clients for wrongly paying their care-home fees.
This is why we recommend that you get some expert advice when working out whether you will have to pay for your own long-term care. These experts can guide you through the process and help you figure out if you are eligible for certain state-funded services.
If you have done all your calculations and found that you have to pay for your own care, then there are ways where you could significantly cut your costs. The key is to not pay the price the care home quotes you. The average cost of a care home is 43% more than what the local authority pays. Therefore, you have to negotiate a better rate for your care costs.
If you can’t negotiate, there are organisations that can help you reduce your care costs. One of them is the Care Co-operative which is designed to help people cut the cost of their care. It is a network of 50 care homes across the UK that have agreed to offer discounts of up to 25% to self-funders who have found a place through the website. The main objective of the organisation is to let the self-funders enjoy the bulk discounts that are usually reserved for the local authorities.
You can join Care Co-operative for £19.50 as a one off fee and then search the website for places at care homes in your area. One user has already saved £2,000 over six months after getting a 10% discount on their mother’s care costs.
Another organisation that can help you is the Valuing Care consultancy. They will assess whether a quote that you have received from a care home is fair based on data it has accumulated. They will negotiate on your behalf if they think you are not getting a good value from your care home. The cost of their negotiations service varies depending on whether you find a care home for yourself. This will be around £480 to £660.