14 Personal Finance and Funding for a Person with Dementia [Update 2 - 03/11/13]

Personal finance and funding will vary with each individual's circumstances - so this Post is necessarily an overview. For some each 'stage' of life with dementia is likely to reveal a need for thinking about money.

This series of Posts examines the likely needs of two broad age-related groups where a person may be one of those who begins a life with dementia, namely:

1. the mature perhaps retired individual (say, 65 years or more) in their own mortgage-free home or renting in social or private housing.
2. relatively uncommon, the person who is of working age, perhaps supporting a spouse and children, with a mortgaged or rented home.

Approximately one percent of those with dementia are in the second group. The bulk are those over 65 years of age. Here each ten years of life results in more developing dementia, eg at 95 years nearly a third will have dementia. [You may like to note that only about 50% of about 800,000 with dementia have been diagnoseed.]

The main costs are likely to be centred on the following:

• early assessment, diagnosis and initial treatment
• longer-term clinical and other medical expenses (Generally, in the UK these are a cost on the National Health Service paid through national taxation.) 
• daily personal care costs and expenses
•  longer term care accommodation costs.

Sources of funds (income or capital) will depend on a person's estate, ie comprising the likes of the following:

• income from employment or business, including that of a spouse or partner
• income from pensions and state pensions
• the individual's home, ie owner-occupied house or flat  
• income and/or potential capital from property investments, eg house or flat,
• interest on bank or building society deposits,
• insurance policies - to mature or to cash in
• other kinds of savings, 
• premium bonds 
• shares, government bonds, and other like investments
• antiques and other chattels
• any entitlements to other state benefits, eg care costs.