My mom's dementia got so bad that the assisted living Facility kicked her out.
She moved in with me a short time ago. I have noticed my water bill has gone through the roof (I do laundry a lot more as she soils sheets and her clothes plus she goes to the bathroom alot/flushes and more dishwasher use, etc) same with electric, gas. She was fed 3 X a day at the home and now we feed her. I had to hire a cleaning service for the house because we just can't keep up with it anymore with all the extra time we now spend on mom. So I am thinking $500/mo would be about right. The issue I have is that it is NOT income but more paying of related expenses. I also want to make sure it passes the fed's 5 year look back sniff test. I have to assume everyone has additional expenses when a parent moves in. What do you all do?
I don't know about other situations but when I moved my dad in with me we agreed that we would share expenses. Neither of us knew exactly how to go about doing that. He had more money than I did so we just kind of figured it out as we went along. Eventually we got into a routine of sorts. Since he had more money he paid for the house each month (I had found a cute rental for us to share) and I paid for the monthly house-related bills like electric, water, gas, trash, etc. However, since I gave up working to care for him frequently I came up short each month since I also had other non house related bills. When this happened he would transfer money into my account (our names were on eachother's accounts) so I could get by the rest of the month. Groceries were a gray area. If I had the money I bought them. If I didn't have the money he paid for them. He made about $1,000 more a month than I did so he was always happy to help me out and I did my part by not spending frivolously and trying to do my best to cover the household expenses. We never did sit down and write down our individual expenses so we could come up with a formula for who paid for what but what we did worked out well for us. In the beginning we did discuss this at length and we did put eachother's names on our respective accounts as I mentioned but other than those steps we just made it up as we went along and that worked for us. I think it would have different had I been in your shoes and my dad moved into a place I already occupied and paid for. I would have known what the monthly expenses were and could have probably come up with a figure that my dad would pay each month to contribute to the household since he would have become a member of that household. I guess me and my dad were like a married couple, financially (although it gives the creeps to use that as an example). We just shared everything financially although he shared more since he made more.
THX for the reply. I think I am in a little different situation than you are right now.
Yes I have a place and I get by paying the bills BEFORE my mom moved in.
I really didn't expect what the financial burden would be. I expected the time burden but that has led to more expenses since I now have to hire a cleaning service. I can only take so many hours out of my days for my mom and still work but the house is getting away from me. I also noticed a large up tic in Utilities (original post) So I am not looking to make money, just be able to pay the bills.
My main concern is that darn 5 year lookback and I don't want any issues. I am thinking $500/m0 is more than fair. My monthly mortgage & taxes are over $2000.00/mo alone.
There is a lot of information here about Medicaid and the look back period. I don't comment usually about Medicaid because I guess I had the one lucky experience in that getting my dad on Medicaid was very, very easy. I had one meeting with the caseworker who took my dad's information, I had to provide just one additional document and that was that.
But there are a lot of folks here who have gone through it as well and know way more than I do especially about Medicaid and living expenses and what's allowed and how to go about setting it all up. You'll get some good feedback. Good luck!