Long-Term Care on Your Own

The person who has to arrange their own care and has no obvious second name to put on the form — never married, divorced, widowed, child-free, or with adult children too far away to make a Tuesday-morning phone call. It is written to you, not about you, and it does not use the adult-child framing that most eldercare books run on. If you are arranging care for a parent instead, Caregiving Without Losing Yourself is the one for that job.

Mostly not, and the book spends a full chapter on exactly where the line falls. Medicare is built around medical treatment and recovery, not the day-to-day help with bathing, dressing, and eating that long-term care actually means — and the pieces it does cover come with conditions people usually discover at the worst moment. The chapter walks the difference, then a second chapter covers what does pay for the hours. Program rules vary by state and change, so the book routes you to the office that can confirm yours rather than quoting a figure that expires.

It depends on what you are willing to be responsible for, and the book lays out both columns rather than picking for you. Hiring directly usually costs less per hour and makes you the employer, with everything that word carries — taxes, coverage when your person is sick, and no backup at seven in the morning. An agency charges more and absorbs some of that. There is a full chapter on the trade, another on vetting and writing the scope of work down, and a fill-in page of hiring questions in the back.

That is the question the last part of the book is built around. It covers what a care arrangement actually asks someone to be able to do, the difference between naming a person and naming a professional, and how to check a professional — a care manager, a fiduciary, an elder-law attorney — before you hand anything over. There is a fill-in tool for it too: Questions I Need Answered About Authority. What the documents are called and what they can do varies by state, so it sends you to an elder-law attorney to make it real.

No, and that is deliberate. It is not an insurance book and it does not sell one — it also does not teach Medicaid asset strategy. What it does is show you the arithmetic underneath those decisions: what care costs by the hour where you live, how many hours a real week takes, and what already pays for some of them. That is the number you would take to an adviser, and it is the number most people never work out.

Nine of them across thirty pages, eight of which take writing: the Care Management Map (one row per job that has to keep happening, and who does it), My First-Call List, Questions I Need Answered About Authority, Checking a Professional Before You Hire, My Hiring Questions, When to Revisit the Plan, My Discharge Sheet, Where to Start Looking, and My Unresolved Gaps. They are made to be photocopied and redone as things change.

No. It is educational — a plain-English guide to the decisions, the programs, and the questions, with every figure and rule drawn from primary sources and cited. Program availability and legal documents vary by state and change, so the book names the local office or professional that confirms your situation instead of pretending a national description settles it.

A 294-page paperback, printed when you order and mailed to you — free US shipping, about two weeks. Published under the pen name M. E. Hart as part of the Retirement In Order series.

The family caregiver arranging a parent's care — that's Caregiving Without Losing Yourself, and this one assumes the person reading it is the one who'll need the care. It also won't tell you whether to buy long-term care insurance; it lays out what the policies do and leaves the decision priced rather than answered. And if you have a spouse or an adult child nearby who will run it, the hiring and oversight chapters are solving a problem you don't have.

Every figure and program rule was verified in 2026 against the primary source and cited in the text: Medicare.gov and CMS for what Medicare does and does not pay, and the federal Administration for Community Living for the aging and disability resource network you call first. Hourly care rates are regional and move every year, so price your own area before you budget from any national number.