I’m 28 years old, and recently I was told I have 58 years left of living independently.
Apparently, there’s a chance that I’ll start to need long term care help when I turn 86. And it’ll be costly. Upwards of $10 million, even. Yikes.
Waterlily, a new AI tool that predicts long term care needs, ran the numbers in seconds after asking me a few questions, including “How many siblings do you have?” and “During the last 5 years, on average how many alcoholic beverages have you consumed per month?”
I have two sisters, and I like a glass of wine or two on the weekends. I shared my ZIP code (I live in Cincinnati, Ohio), my estimated net worth (I went with the median net worth for people under 35 from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, which is $39,000), how tall I am (5’0″) and how much I weigh (none of your business, reader).
More: Her baby was born at 26 weeks. She was expected to work from the hospital.
Users can share other information, too, like details about their medical history, their care preferences and if they already have a will set up. It’s free, though you have to meet with an advisor or care professional to access your results. The algorithm typically predicts outcomes for users 40 and older.
“You actually might be the youngest person we’ve actually put through our system,” Lily Vittayarukskul, Waterlily’s CEO and founder, told me before we started to go over my results.
The algorithm predicted there’s nearly a 1 in 5 chance I’ll encounter a long term care event that leaves me unable to care for myself. If that happens, Waterlily expects I’ll be around 86 years old and that I’ll need help with things like bathing, eating and dressing for about five years, starting at 15 hours of care per week and ending at about 35 hours of care per week. It will cost about $10 million over those five years, adjusting for inflation. Vittayarukskul showed me how my care could cost more or less, depending on the type of care I choose and if I’d like to stay in my home or go to a facility, and how my current savings plan would offset those costs in the future.
After that, I’ll either die or get better, until I have another long term care event. How comforting.
“This is not a crystal ball,” Vittayarukskul said. “But, it’s the best that we have.”
Most people find they need care sooner than they’d expect, often leaving their loved ones scrambling to put together a plan. A recent report from A Place for Mom, a senior living search platform, found more than half of the 1,000 family caregivers surveyed wish they had started planning sooner for long term care, and 88% said families need more guidance and support to understand their options.
Granted, it’s early for me to start preparing for my own elder care. Heck, my parents aren’t even retired yet. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned covering caregiving for USA TODAY, it’s that planning is essential.
“I’m already organized for my children,” said Gen Xer Julia Beck, founder of the caregiving consultancy group It’s Working Project. “It’s not always a progressive illness. There’s also things like heart attacks and accidents that could happen to anybody at any time.”
Why planning for long term care is important
Every day, more than 11,000 people turn 65. Folks around this age have a lack of confidence in what their later years might look like, according to Jason Fichtner, a Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research fellow and executive director of the Alliance for Lifetime Income’s Retirement Income Institute. And even when financial professionals try to talk about long term care scenarios, survey data shows those conversations aren’t sinking in.
While 96% of financial professionals say they discuss physical health issues with their clients, only 44% of clients recall those conversations, according to Alliance survey data of about 3,500 consumers aged 45-75. And less than one-third of those respondents remember their financial advisors discussing cognitive decline.
It’s not just financial planners trying in vain to talk about elder care. Adult children are struggling to have the same conversations with their parents.
“Your parent is not interested in talking about their demise. Why would they be?” Beck said. “The hardest part about that talk is literally getting to a point where your parents are willing to sit down and have it with you.”
The goal is for people to have as much control as possible over their aging process, Beck said. And that control is made possible by having conversations about what people want their care to look like, including where they want to be, who they want helping them and what lifestyle elements are most important to them.
Financial advisor Frank Fantozzi created a “Plan of Care Guide” on how to have these conversations. It’s all about starting a dialogue, he said, so that families aren’t making their most important decisions in the midst of their most stressful moments. “Don’t be afraid to bring it up,” Fantozzi said.
“My mom is fiercely independent,” he said. “It has to be her idea.”
Fantozzi’s guide is full of prompts that can help frame the conversation as distant hypotheticals, not immediate needs. That’s key, Beck said, to manage potential hurt feelings and egos among aging parents.
“The further away that moment feels, the better,” she said.
$10 million is a daunting figure, but financial advisor says not to fret
There’s a lot Waterlily doesn’t know about me that could impact my longevity, like my activity level (sure, I sit at a computer most of the day reporting and writing articles, but I also ran my first marathon last October and I teach yoga at a local studio) and social connections (I’m lucky to have lots of love in my life among friends and family).
And there’s a lot that could change in between now and my golden years. Waterlily asked if I had kids, and I don’t. But I’d like to be a mom someday.
Do I want those kids to help care for me in my old age? That’s a question for 80-year-old Madeline.
Vittayarukskul suggests I use the algorithm again in a decade or more, when my life stage has changed. I might get more accurate results then, she said.
In the meantime, I have a daunting figure to save for: $10 million.
In today’s dollars, that’s just shy of $400,000. Future dollars are hard to relate to, Fantozzi said. “When it becomes too unrealistic, people just check out.”
Fichtner told me to ignore the big figure for now, and just start saving in general for my eventual retirement. I’ll want to live a little in between my reporting days and my long term care event, right? That’s (hopefully) about 20 years of retirement savings I’ll need before handing over another $10 million for long term care.
“I wouldn’t fret over it,” Fichtner said. “I would just start saving today and planning appropriately, and as you get closer, then you can start making different changes.”
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A new AI tool estimated how long I have left to live independently