Parents over peers

Rick Beason imagines his parents both dying peacefully of old age, at home. It’s the way William and Venice Beason would want it, he knows.

But he also knows this from his decades of experience as a financial planner and accountant: Most folks don’t go quietly into the night.

Rick Beason

Beason, 55, isn’t too worried about his parents’ final years. But after peering into the financial statements of many about-to-retire baby boomers, he has found cause for concern. Too many boomers have raided their 401(k) plans and home equity lines to pay for children’s college tuitions, home improvements and the like.

Indeed, Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research reported last year that nearly 45 percent of American households are going to fall short of meeting their expected retirement income needs.

“A family making $30,000 a year can put some money aside and still have a fairly nice life,” Beason says. “It’s better than living wide open on $200,000 a year and not putting anything aside, which I see a lot.”

Unlike his parents’ generation, which was more likely to retire with company pensions — and their Depression-era frugality fully intact — many boomers are supporting their children well into their late 20s.

“I’m not taking my own advice,” Beason concedes sheepishly. Two of his own twentysomething sons still live in his Botetourt County home.

He worries more about his peers than he does his parents. With their modest house in Mason Cove long paid off and no debt to speak of, Venice and William Beason are much better than he is at distinguishing a want from a need.

His parents don’t have long-term care insurance because they don’t have enough wealth to merit it. (Beason recommends $150,000 in cash assets in order to justify buying the insurance.) If they had to enter a nursing home, Medicaid would likely take over — after the home was sold and the assets depleted via spend down.

“Nursing home is definitely a fear for most people, but typically your stay there is less than a year if you’ve been in fairly good health,” he says. “If you have Alzheimer’s, where your physical health remains long after your mental function is gone, that’s when it really becomes devastating.” (He recommends that boomers with a family history of Alzheimer’s investigate long-term care insurance, ideally in their early to mid-50s.)

Retired from the railroad with a pension plan, his 86-year-old father has macular degeneration, a vision ailment, to the point where he can’t recognize his son when he walks into the room. But he still manages to weed his rows upon rows of tomatoes with a plow.

“Last year, I couldn’t figure out how he was still doing it, and he told me he had run a string down the rows and held onto it from his plow,” Beason says. “He can’t slow down.” His mother, 82, spends her days baby-sitting a 3-year-old great-grandson.

At this point, his parents are healthy enough that the family has side stepped the touchy discussions about transitioning to long-term care. “We all just say, 'Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it,’ ” he says.

“The likelihood’s more that daddy will die out in the field and mama inside chasing the young ’un around.”