Category Archives: Third Age Matters

How to help kids financially without severely impacting your own savings

Family gatherings at this time of year may trigger talk of early inheritance or financial assistance with upcoming expenses. But, as they say on the airlines; fit your own life vest before assisting others. It doesn’t matter whether additional funds are needed to pay for living expenses, school fees or holidays; take the time to

Continue Reading →

Five ways to fund aged care

  Placing a parent in an aged care facility can be a distressing time for families. It is not a pleasant experience financially either. Since the federal government introduced aged care reforms in July 2014, collectively families have been forced to find an extra $3 billion a year to move an elderly relative into an

Continue Reading →

Inside aged care facilities

You’ve seen the brochures and driven past the building; but the only way to really know whether an aged care facility might be the right one for you is to look inside. First impressions count for a lot but it is also important to get an understanding of how they operate to know whether it

Continue Reading →

Canberra aged care bed boost

Canberra winters can be cruel, but for someone waiting for a bed in a residential aged care facility the cold weather may have been their salvation. Most of Canberra’s 30 aged care facilities are used to long waiting lists and to turning away people who need higher levels of care than can be given in

Continue Reading →

Home Vs residential care

Would you or your ageing parents, given the choice, prefer to grow old at home rather than moving into residential aged care? Whether it’s complex nursing, palliative care or help with daily chores that’s needed, leaving home is no longer always necessary for those requiring assistance. Not only are there growing numbers of government-subsidised home-care

Continue Reading →

Do you sell the house to fund aged care?

To sell or not to sell the family home is one of the most often asked questions when it comes to trying to work out the best way to fund aged care accommodation costs.  Trying to work out the money implications of different ways to fund aged-care accommodation can be mind boggling. Aged-care specialist Later

Continue Reading →

Aged care assessments wrong

Six months into a new means testing process for individuals entering aged care, only one in five people are being given correct information about their income and assets. Getting it wrong means that some people are being asked to pay an amount of money for care that they don’t have, while others who can afford

Continue Reading →

Navigating the aged care maze

The following article first appeared in the Australian Financial Review: Deirdre Border knew it was time to talk to her 84-year-old mother, Margaret, about stepping up her care needs when she arrived to find the water to her home had been cut off. What Deirdre hadn’t realised was that Margaret had unpaid utility bills going

Continue Reading →

Happily looking for an aged-care solution

It is always distressing to hear stories about older Australians being placed into residential aged care against their will. Often they are too frail to remain in their own home without care 24/7 and so residential care is deemed by family to be the obvious, safest option. So it was lovely to speak to a

Continue Reading →

Why Third Age Matters?

Welcome to Third Age Matters. Why third age and why does it matter? I think of the third age as a new stage of life. I like the term because it isn’t prescriptive about what a person is doing. It engages with concepts of a golden age and active retirement. Clearly, third age refers to

Continue Reading →