The Long-Term Care Bill That Will Wipe Out the Middle Class

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We built retirement planning around the pleasant years and largely ignored the expensive ones.

Americans spend decades preparing for retirement as if it were primarily a very long vacation. We calculate Social Security benefits, argue about the 4% rule, estimate investment returns, and imagine what we’ll spend on travel, restaurants, hobbies, and the occasional emergency roof.

What we rarely calculate is the cost of needing help getting out of bed.

That omission isn’t minor. It may be the largest unplanned expense many families will ever face. A recent Business Insider investigation found families spending six figures to care for aging relatives, including one woman who paid roughly $600,000 over five years for assisted living. Nursing-home and adult-day-care prices have risen much faster than general inflation, while home care now costs a median of about $34 an hour.

At that price, a few hours of help each day can cost more than a mortgage. Round-the-clock assistance can devour a lifetime of savings with astonishing speed.

We keep calling this a retirement-planning problem. It’s really a structural failure disguised as personal responsibility.

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