In this episode of The Pulling Curls Podcast, Hilary Erickson dives into the emotional and logistical challenges of moving her parents into retirement living. From choosing the right facility to downsizing a 6,000 square foot home, Hilary shares practical tips and personal insights to help make this transition smoother. Discover the different care options available, the financial implications, and the importance of planning ahead. Get a firsthand look at the realities of estate sales and the benefits of hiring professional movers. If you’re approaching this stage with your parents, this episode is a must-listen.
Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts
Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines moving your parents can take havoc on your family and having solid routines can make your life still happen. Couldn’t recommend them any more!
Links for you:
My post on moving to assisted living.
Timestamps:
00:00 Downsize, consider assisted living, wait lists fill.
04:59 Medicare assists short-term home health expenses.
08:40 Reasonable storage for family memories and history.
09:45 Downsize immediately; avoid unnecessary storage or sales.
13:17 Estate sale: necessary for selling the house.
16:53 Find experienced real estate agent for parents.
20:44 Fast decisions helped moving process efficiently.
22:44 Upcoming topics: women’s strength training, birth trauma.
Keypoints:
- Hilary discusses her experience moving her parents into retirement living and the challenges associated with it.
- The importance of planning ahead and considering different living options such as assisted living, nursing homes, and independent living.
- Routines can help maintain normalcy during the transition.
- Financial considerations for different living options, including costs for nursing homes, rehab, and assisted living.
- The process of selecting a suitable retirement facility and the benefits of getting on a waitlist early.
- Downsizing possessions and the emotional impact of sorting through a lifetime of belongings.
- The role of professional movers and considerations for hiring experienced movers.
- The estate sale process, its challenges, and financial implications for clearing out a large home.
- Selling the family home and the benefits of engaging a real estate agent experienced with senior moves.
- Reflecting on the timeline and process highlights the importance of starting early and maintaining less clutter for an easier transition later in life.
Producer: Drew Erickson
Transcript
[00:00:00.000] – Hilary Erickson
Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 251, we are talking about moving my parents into retirement living. Let’s untangle it.
[00:00:10.300] – Hilary Erickson
Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and the pregnancy nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop overcomplicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled, the Pulling Curls Podcast.
[00:00:38.420] – Hilary Erickson
This episode of the Pulling Curls Podcast is sponsored by Family Routines. Guys, even though I was gone for so long Because we had great routines, somehow life kept going at my house. And I cannot recommend any more getting into awesome routines so that even when mom’s not home or things are just crazy town, you can still manage your life. So come join in family routine, you can join me for just a month and then leave when you’re ready.
[00:01:03.540] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, first off, I want to say that whatever you’re imagining moving your parents into retirement living, you’re right. It’s not fun. It was terrible, horrible, no good, very bad. It’s all the things.
[00:01:14.750] – Hilary Erickson
But I want to give you a few steps that you should be thinking about or going through as you’re thinking about this process. So my parents had been considering moving into assisted living. We honestly thought that that was the only option was assisted living. We’re going to talk more about that. For maybe the past, Probably since COVID, two or three years, they have a very large home. While they mainly live just on the main floor, that doesn’t mean you’d still don’t have upkeep on the other floors because things might flood or whatever.
[00:01:41.640] – Hilary Erickson
It just was too much house for them. Even with a housekeeper and someone doing the yard work, it was just too much. It was more than they needed, and they knew that they needed to downsize.
[00:01:50.200] – Hilary Erickson
So first off, you need to be thinking about where you’re going to go. And honestly, even if your parents are still fully functional, I think it would be a great idea to start thinking about where they want to go because a lot of these places are starting to fill up. We have a lot of, what are they, baby boomers out there who are going to need places like this.
[00:02:06.560] – Hilary Erickson
So getting on an assisted living waitlist is not a bad idea. Most of them, it was either free to get on the waitlist or very low cost, and you can say, I’m not ready. They can keep coming back to you and be like, Okay, there’s a room available, and you can say, I’m not ready, and then they skip to the next one on the list. So I think that’s something to consider. Now, there are a few different places that parents can go when they leave their large home.
[00:02:31.050] – Hilary Erickson
They can go to an apartment, and my grandma did this, and it ended up being great for her. My dad, they considered going to an apartment, but they felt like the apartment probably wouldn’t last long term, and so they probably needed an upgraded level of care. They could go to a nursing home. Now, I worked nursing home right out of college. That was my first job.
[00:02:49.730] – Hilary Erickson
This is for somebody who needs a lot of medical care. It’s expensive. I will say that when we looked into a nursing home, not for both of my parents to go to, my mom had some issues that she needed some for. It was about $250 a day. Now, this is for a Utah nursing home, but I like giving you guys the pricing because I literally had no idea. Now, my mom actually went to a rehab because she had broken her ankle, which you would go to a rehab, and that’s double the price of a nursing home. But you get more rehab care. There’s more nurses per patient to take care of you. So that’s a different option. You need to realize that a nursing home is also called a skilled nursing facility, and then rehab is an upgrade from that, and obviously, it costs more.
[00:03:32.070] – Hilary Erickson
So then we looked at assisted living. An assisted living is a downgrade from a nursing home. There aren’t nurses constantly there, but there are CNAs on staff who can come help you. You have a little button that you wear, like help, I can’t get up a button, and the CNAs can come help you. There are, I believe, LPNs, I’m not sure, RNs who divvy out the meds, and you can decide if you want to take care of your own meds or if you want the nurses to take care of it for you.
[00:03:58.070] – Hilary Erickson
When you’re admitted to an assisted living, apparently, they do an assessment on you and they categorize what level of care you’re going to need, and then you’re priced off of that level of care. So my dad, fully functioning, does his own meds, takes care of him himself. He’s still going to have some a medical charge in association with being there, but it should be low. Although you don’t really have control over that. When I pushed them to find out how many of their people were on the lowest level, I couldn’t really get an answer. So there you go.
[00:04:28.320] – Hilary Erickson
But there’s also something called independent living, which I had not heard of. So I would look at that as an apartment area. This is what my parents ultimately chose. It looks just like a cruise ship or a hotel with larger hallways than a cruise ship. It’s an apartment, but they have to check in every day. They have to push a button in their apartment that they’re up and that they’re going. Otherwise, they’ll come check on them.
[00:04:52.040] – Hilary Erickson
And there is a CNA service that works within the facility. It’s not the same facility, but they can come in and help you. Like when my mom came home from rehab, she had somebody coming in to help her shower through that CNA program, right? She didn’t need help every day, but because of the ankle and the thing that she has, there’s somebody that comes in and helps her shower that they pay through the CNA program, which is ultimately less than assisted living.
[00:05:17.390] – Hilary Erickson
So, assisted living looked to be about $8,000 a month for my parents, whereas the independent living was about $6,000 a month. And I think something that’s important to know is Medicare is paying for the CNA for a certain period of time as home health because of an issue she had.
[00:05:34.710] – Hilary Erickson
They will not pay for it long term, but they will pay for it initially. So if you have a short term issue, like a broken ankle, then Medicare can supplement some of these things versus if you were in an assisted living facility, they would not be paying for that because they don’t pay for assisted living.
[00:05:51.390] – Hilary Erickson
So, with assisted living, my parents would have gotten three meals a day, and with independent living, they got two meals a day, which my parents were happy about because they were hoping to go for some meals. But you’re understanding how many meals are taken care of, how much housekeeping, how much laundry. These are important things to look at as you choose which facility is best for you.
[00:06:09.320] – Hilary Erickson
I don’t know all of these things, but I have a basic idea of how they work, but I think it’s really important that you know that. I think A lot of people think that if they go to a nursing home, their insurance is going to pay for it, and that is not the case unless they have a short term problem.
[00:06:21.800] – Hilary Erickson
Rehab was paid for by Medicare for a certain period of time, but because she ended up having two issues, they ended up having to pay cash for part of it. So it’s just It’s really important that you understand these big finances that you’re going to have to look at.
[00:06:35.580] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, after you pick where you’re going, you’re going to want to put down a deposit or however it works. My parents found a spot that put them pretty close to the dining room, which because of my mom’s mobility issues, was going to be helpful. They just thought it was a good spot, and so they decided on that place. Then you’re going to want to downsize your life and pack. And honestly, my dad had been trying to downsize their life for years. We had been working through giving things away to the goodwill in their area and just working through it. But they had a lot of stuff. As you could imagine, they moved the day I graduated high school, and they left soon after my 30-year reunion. So they had been in this house for 30 years. My mom’s a buyer. I’m not going to say she’s not a buyer, but they had a lot of stuff to go through, and it is super overwhelming. So once they decided they were going, we started just having boxes that we were putting things that we knew were going to the assisted living with them.
[00:07:29.560] – Hilary Erickson
We started in the kitchen because that was an easier area. You’re going to not take as many things as you would if you were going to a straight-up apartment. While you’re looking at packing and putting your things in there, figure out who’s going to help you move. My parents have maybe the world’s heaviest furniture, so I was definitely not going to be moving it. Look into movers. And I got to say that when you’re looking at all this, there’s a lot of balancing how much money you have to devote to this, right? And money wasn’t too much of an issue for my parents. It’s always an issue, my dad is an economics professor, so there was always balancing out how much things were going to cost and things like that.
[00:08:05.610] – Hilary Erickson
But trying to decide how much money you have to devote to this, or if I had six or seven other siblings, maybe they could have come to help, but I only have one brother. So hiring movers was important to us. The independent living place actually had a place that they recommended, and we loved the movers. They were so helpful, so courteous and kind to my parents.
[00:08:24.820] – Hilary Erickson
I think they were more expensive than if I had just hired movers, but I think they were more careful of the stuff and of their feelings. It’s a big deal to be moving out of your house and do an independent living, and the movers were just great. So I would recommend looking for ones that maybe have done this or worked at the facility that you’re going to.
[00:08:40.460] – Hilary Erickson
At the same point in time, we were trying to decide, should we get a storage place, right? I think it would be really easy to think, Well, I’m going to want to go through these things later on. My dad was very reasonable and realized that he wanted to put some memories and family history in the storage facility so that he could go through them, decide he wanted to scan and what could be thrown away or what he just enjoyed looking at and draw a line. So he got one that is just the size of a good size home closet. We stored some things there that my mom wasn’t going to be using because of her broken leg for a little bit. A few hobby type items that they might want to get to, and then family history, and then that was it.
[00:09:19.610] – Hilary Erickson
I think it’s really smart to have one so you’re not throwing away things that you might regret later on, but also important to not have a giant one of things that I I would then end up having to go through later on. I could throw away all the things that are in that storage shed or look at them on my own. That wouldn’t be overwhelming to me. But I think a lot of older adults are thinking, Oh, I might want to save this, or my family might want it later, so let’s get a storage head. And I think it’s so much better to just make the choice and make the cuts right as you’re making the move out rather than having a storage facility that you are likely not going to use.
[00:09:55.600] – Hilary Erickson
Now, my parents were very clear that this was where they were moving, and they weren’t intending to go to a home. If your independent living state is planning to be short term, then this could look different for you. Then what do you do with all the other stuff? So my parents were moving from a 6,000 square foot home to a, I want to say maybe a thousand square foot apartment, maybe 1,100.
[00:10:17.520] – Hilary Erickson
So obviously, there were a lot of things that weren’t going to be coming to that assisted living. And so we looked around, we looked at the possibility of having just a charity come and clean out the house and then getting the tax deduction, and we looked at an estate sale. Now, I’ve got to say, I feel like estate sale people are shady like pawn shops. I think it’s a difficult job to make good money in, and you’re dealing with the subset of the population that’s overly emotional about their items and probably expects to get paid more than what you’re going to end up making them.
[00:10:52.710] – Hilary Erickson
But I didn’t love the person that we went with. I wish that we had interviewed a few more estate sales, but my dad was just ready to go with one that seemed fine. That’s who we went with. How an estate sale works is she took half of the proceeds. So she got half of the… We have a couch. We sell it for $500. She gets $250, we get $250. From when we sign the contract to when she did the sale was about a month, where people were coming in, they categorize things, they display them, they put them on tables, or I don’t know what else they do, because I did not go in that house once the estate sale people were there.
[00:11:28.120] – Hilary Erickson
I did look at the estate sale online, and even that was extremely painful. It’s like all of your things just out there needing to be sold. The initial sale, I get the feeling that it did not go very well, that not very many things sold at an estate sale. And as someone who garage sales shopped a lot. Whenever I went to estate sales, I felt like things were super overpriced. So after the estate sale, then she must have a list of people who are interested in couches or interested in yarn.
[00:11:57.370] – Hilary Erickson
My mom had a lot of yarn, things like that. And they come in and they probably either just bulk purchase all the couches and take them out, or she gives them a discount if they’re buying a bulk amount of these items, and they take them out. Now, when you sign an estate sale contract, you sign for the estate sale, But then there’s a separate contract for a cleanout. So she said that we could pay something like $650 per truckload that goes out either to charity or to the dump, or you could just pay $3,000 and they would do the cleanout fee.
[00:12:28.490] – Hilary Erickson
I literally had I had no idea what we would make from this estate sale. Initially, after reports of the initial sale and how much was left in the house, I was like, Wow, are we even going to make the 3,000? But he ultimately… Think of this. This is a house that is full of stuff, furniture, all those different kinds of things. He ultimately made $8,000 and paid her $3,000. So he netted about $5,000 in total from the estate sale.
[00:12:53.730] – Hilary Erickson
I could tell that it was painful to my dad. He had bought really high-quality furniture that was probably not sold for a lot. And I think we sometimes have this feeling like, Oh, well, someday I’ll be able to sell this and I’ll make some money off of it. And we need to just love the items that we have, not plan on them making money. That was something that I really learned from the estate sales. Remember that the big money came when they sold the house. We’re going to talk more about that in a minute. But you got to clear out the house in order to be able to sell it. And so the estate sale is almost just a means to an end.
[00:13:24.760] – Hilary Erickson
So you’re looking for people that will be helpful in the process, will help your items go to a good home, because I think my dad It would have been fine if they had all just gone to charity and he could have gotten a giant tax deduction. But also he needed it to be easy. So trying to balance all those different things. And I would encourage you to look for a few estate sale companies in your area and be aware that they’re all a little bit weird, and hopefully you can find somebody good. I did not enjoy the estate sale process, but it was a necessary evil just for how it was going to work.
[00:13:53.370] – Hilary Erickson
Could my nieces have maybe sold some of the stuff on Facebook marketplace ahead of time? Maybe they could have made a little cash on the side. But would it have really been worth it overall for my dad to do something like that? Absolutely not. So, yeah.
[00:14:06.730] – Hilary Erickson
Side note, you start the estate sale after all of your things are out of the house, which I didn’t know that either. Once you sign the contract for the estate sale, she owns all of the things in the house, and she was real adamant about all that.
[00:14:20.050] – Hilary Erickson
So you got to get everything that you want out of the house ahead of time. Or you mark the things that shouldn’t be sold. There were a few things that my dad didn’t want to be sold. I will say that there are a few things we didn’t think about, like his thing to turn off the sprinkler heads. Didn’t mark that, still got sold. So it’s a process.
[00:14:37.810] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, so back to moving into the apartment. There is a reality that was very similar to moving my kids into the dorms, right? When you were moving in, you realize that what seemed to look very big when no furniture was in there is much smaller than you thought. We had a blueprint of the apartment that they were moving into, and we had measured all the furniture. And then a few days before the move in, we realized that the Blue Parents number of inches was based on the outside of the room. So when you took off the drywall and the boards or something, we lost three or four inches, which was a big deal. We ultimately had tried to move in a bookshelf and had to take it back home because it wouldn’t fit.
[00:15:18.920] – Hilary Erickson
Measure, but also just be prepared for the reality of things are not going to fit exactly how you want. Hopefully, they can maybe downsize some furniture as they keep downsizing the things that they have. It’s tricky. There were a lot of emotions that day, and I felt like I hadn’t done enough, and he was frustrated. It was a lot.
[00:15:38.850] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, so once you’ve picked where you want, you’ve moved your stuff, you started the estate sale or the charity coming through. I didn’t talk about this, but there is a really nice benefit of being able to go through a room and just decide what you want to keep, and then you literally leave the rest. When we were going through my parents’ office, I literally just had a corner. I was chucking things that were supposed to go to the estate sale. That was probably one of my favorite parts of being able to do it this way because the estate sale just took care of that. So you really just had to focus on what was important. I, of course, had a lot of anxiety that we would somehow miss something that was important. But we, honestly, I feel like we did pretty well.
[00:16:16.630] – Hilary Erickson
Are there some boxes we probably should have labeled better? Yes. But you have the estate sale, you’ve moved into the assisted living, now you’re looking to sell the home. I know a lot of people might look to sell the home on their own, and my dad, I think, considered that because of the savings. But ultimately, having a realtor was super helpful because he didn’t live at the home at that point in time. He really didn’t want to deal with the buyers. They did not want to fix anything. They just wanted to be done with the house. And so we got a great real estate agent that actually happened to live in their neighborhood and was super helpful and got the closing at the assisted living with them and just really helpful. So I would say look for a prime real estate agent who is good at doing all of the things and maybe has done this type of sale before with older parents.
[00:17:03.320] – Hilary Erickson
As a side note, so my mom was living in the rehab for her broken ankles, not drug rehab, physical therapy rehab, at the same time that we were doing all this.
[00:17:13.040] – Hilary Erickson
And I felt for her, right? We were moving her out of her home, that they built this home. It was a custom home, and she had no control over it. So I tried to do everything that I could to give her as much control as I could. There was a lot of FaceTiming, going through her clothes, going through the memorabilia in the house, so that she could have an opportunity to have some control in this. However, I feel like I didn’t have very good boundaries during this process. There were times that I was overworked, just crying while I was working. So I think you have to balance those two different things. It was difficult, but I would encourage you to try and give if there’s a parent who can’t be there as much control as you can while also setting your own boundaries, which I did not do a great job at. Not unusual for me, though. Let me give you guys just an idea of the timeline and then share a few mistakes that I feel like we made. So on July first, my mom fell and my dad realized that it was really time to look at assisted living.
[00:18:13.340] – Hilary Erickson
But they went through a period with lots of surgeries. It was just too much for my dad to really look in a place to go. And I actually happened to be there at the beginning of July. And so by the end of July, he had picked the spot where he wanted to live. He had put down the deposit. And then August 1st-ish, I came and we started that initial move out.
[00:18:31.660] – Hilary Erickson
So we were just going room to room, picking out what needed to go to the assisted living that they weren’t using at that period of time. That’s when we started. I don’t live in the same state as my parents, so I was flying in to help do this.
[00:18:44.920] – Hilary Erickson
So I was there for probably five days that first time, and then the second time I came for, I think about a week, around August 10th. And that is when we were real serious about packing stuff up. About five days into that stay, we had the movers come, we got him into the assisted living and all those different things. On August 17th, he signed for the estate sale. I think he moved about the 15th.
[00:19:07.730] – Hilary Erickson
He signed for the estate sale on the 17th because remember, you got to have everything out before you sign for the estate sale. The estate sale started about September 19th, and by September 27th, the house was cleaned out and ready to be put on the market. The house was put on the market by October seventh because she had to finish cleaning the house and stage it for sale. And then October 12th, they accepted offer on the house, and I am recording this early November. They should sign really soon for the final sale of the house, and then they will be done with it. I always want to know a specific timeline, so if that helps you guys, maybe that would help you.
[00:19:43.340] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, what would I do differently Or what am I thinking that I should do? I’ve got another few years before I’m having to do this, but I am thinking about it. Less stuff, guys. We all need less stuff. There’s so many things that we’re not using. There’s so much stuff that we buy that we don’t actually need. And so I I am definitely, what is it, Swedish death cleaning? I feel like I am doing that as we move through stuff.
[00:20:05.920] – Hilary Erickson
But having less stuff is definitely a priority after I did this. Also, I personally always look, I try and get three quotes for everything. And trying to find the best people to help you in this process is so important because your parents are vulnerable, you’re vulnerable. There’s so many emotions for having somebody that is really good in this field, I think would be nice.
[00:20:28.320] – Hilary Erickson
I would also start early. So while your parents are still with it, no problems. You would say, What are your plans once things start to go downhill health-wise? Is there anything I can do? Is there stuff we can be thinking about? Have you looked at places around? Have you talked with friends? Just mention this. They probably have. But if you have an idea and they know that you’re thinking about it, it just opens up the communication lines.
[00:20:51.390] – Hilary Erickson
Obviously, you’re not trying to send them to an assisted living while they’re still doing great living at home, but it’s something to think about. In my head, if you look back at that, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is going so fast. We probably should have taken more time to do it.
[00:21:04.720] – Hilary Erickson
But ultimately, I was not sad that it was done quickly. When you’re going through rooms just looking for the things that you actually need, it was nice to have it done speedily because we weren’t having to take up the time to box up the items we weren’t going to use or trying to haul them down the stairs. We were just looking at what we needed for the new apartment.
[00:21:25.980] – Hilary Erickson
Ultimately, I liked the timeline, even though when it was happening, I was like, Is this going to work out? It seems so fast, right? So a lot of people go, Oh, are your parents happy now that they’re settled in the apartment? Maybe. They love that life is simpler. They love that somebody can haul them to appointments if they want. My dad still drives very safely. They love not having to deal with a giant house, but there’s a lot of things they miss. They miss not having some of the stuff that they left behind. It’s a small space, so they can’t have a lot of people in their apartment, although at the assisted living, there is large other places you can request and do family parties in.
[00:22:03.220] – Hilary Erickson
And as we’re heading back this Christmas for a family wedding, we are having to get a hotel, and all of that is just weird because we can’t stay at my parents’ house anymore, obviously. So there’s just changes, things that are different. There’s a lot of things that are better. I think the idea that that part is done is a huge relief because they knew that it needed to happen, and that was difficult for them. So there’s always pros and cons of different things. But hopefully this gave you guys an idea of what to expect or some things I wish different or some finances stuff. If you guys have questions, come find me over on Instagram. I also have a whole post about it with tons more information on Pulling Curls, and I’ll put that link in the show notes.
[00:22:44.800] – Hilary Erickson
Stay tuned. Next week, we are talking about strength training for women, which is so important in this whole process of moving my parents. I realized that I really needed to build bone and muscle better, so I’m working on that. And then the week after that, we are talking about avoiding birth trauma, so stay tuned.
[00:23:01.520] – Hilary Erickson
Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls Podcast today. If you like today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you.
Keywords:
moving parents to retirement living, assisted living, retirement living options, downsizing home, moving into assisted living, independent living, nursing home costs, Utah nursing home, rehab care, skilled nursing facility, CNA services, independent living costs, Medicare coverage for seniors, estate sale process, choosing an estate sale company, selling family home, storage facilities for downsizing, hiring movers, downsizing furniture, realtor for senior home sale, financial planning for senior care, managing parent’s move, Swedish death cleaning, simplifying life for seniors, retirement community, emotional aspects of moving seniors, family involvement in senior move, senior meal plans, home health services for seniors, balancing finances for senior care
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