u/Significant_Menu_313

Thank you for reading this!

Hi Reddit. My sibling and I are in the position of caring for my father and his wife in their last years of life. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, within a couple months, my father's health worsened irreparably and his wife was admitted to long-term memory care. Meanwhile, they continue to pay bills, have a large home (that needs work!), etc. My wonderful sibling has been taking on the majority of the responsibility because she lives nearby but I am trying to support her by gathering information.

Who will be paying for their care and how? We estimate they have about 200K in property and cash at this time. We do not expect to get any sort of inheritance. There are 3 vehicles and a house in addition to retirement benefits and payments from pensions, etc. It has been really hard to gather the passwords and information we need to administer all this as my father is weak and in and out of consciousness and his wife has no ability to help either.

So if we didn't exist, would the nursing home social worker or billing department work this out? What should we do about their finances right now? This is all kind of sudden and so confusing.

My father is a veteran and we have applied for veteran's benefits - that took about 10 hours to do. My father's wife has a court appointed POA who is working with her. We have canceled almost all house-related payments. Advice please??

Ha ha - made you look. But seriously, I am about the only person I know who can actually say this with any veracity. I am a high school Spanish teacher who is NOT A NATIVE SPEAKER. So, when I get hired in a district they always ask me why they should hire me when they can get a native speaker. I will tell you why. I had to learn that shit the hard way and I had to live and work abroad so that my Spanish was excellent. At my best, most native speakers thought I was from some Spanish speaking country. I was good - I mean I still am, but I have not lived or worked abroad in a while. Anyway, it really irks me because being a native speaker is not an automatic advantage for 3 reasons:

1. I teach all the Spanish and all the cultures - not just where I am from. I don't have deep cultural hatred for other countries. I don't have a favorite.

2. I learned it as an additional language so I know exactly what my students are going through and what worked for me.

3. I know my grammar, spelling, elements of writing, etc., inside and out. I majored in education with certification in Spanish. I didn't "know Spanish" and then get a degree in Spanish. I actually know about the science behind the instruction.

Obviously there are native speaker teachers who are excellent. But they aren't automatically more excellent than those of us who learned it later.

I would love some recommendations for relocating after we retire (we are 60 now). We live near DC presently and we move very frequently so we are absolutely fine changing addresses. These are our priorities in order from most to least important:

1. Weather - not too hot - above the Mason Dixon Line and preferably pretty dang cold, tbh. We really hate the heat. We don't care if it is humid or dry, just not hot.

2. Health care - I have multiple diagnoses that are well managed but we need to be able to keep up with things.

3. People are outgoing to outsiders. Not an insular, homogenous community.

4. Natural disasters NO - we spent 10 years in tornado alley and 10 right on the West Coast fault line. No thank you.

5. Cost of living - we don't want to pay a ton of taxes on our retirement income and obviously, we don't want to buy a house for half a million either. But we are set for retirement, so there is no need to live somewhere awful just to save money.

6. Access to the outdoors/activities via public transportation.

Everything else is negotiable. We don't care to be on the coast or in a huge city but that could work too. Please, please give us some ideas so we can learn about possibilities we haven't yet considered!

Background - I was raised by two alcoholics, one of whom very much got their shit together and evolved to become a great parent in many ways, the other - not so much. There is a history of very abusive behavior in the family - both emotional and physical. There is a history of neglect and not being provided for - like not going to the doctor enough or not having food in the house.

My abusive parent is in the last year or even months of their life. I have not sought out much of a relationship with said parent as an adult because there is a lot of really murky water under the bridge and I refuse to subject myself to any more meanness and abuse. I just see the family that I love who love me and ignore the rest and have done for about 20 years now.

My sibling still tries to make things work with the more abusive parent. I don't really know why, I could guess that they feel guilty or that they haven't given up trying to have a real relationship but I am not sure. I have an excellent and supportive relationship with my sibling.

Now that death is seemingly imminent, I am... concerned? that I will feel guilty later if I don't go visit. This parent has not visited me in many years and has continued to be a real monster in a lot of ways. Experience has taught me that only negative and hurtful things come my way when I spend any time with them.

I don't want to visit. I don't care what the rest of the family thinks about my choices in this matter (and everyone understands that I have no tolerance for this bullshit) but I don't want to be the asshole who doesn't care to visit their parent before they die! I don't want to have regrets about how I deal with this.

Hi - we will be traveling in multiple countries this summer and the first is Portugal. We will only have two carry ons and a backpack total between the two of us. We are flying TAP. The carry on luggage dimensions are 22x16x10. Our bags, including handles and straps fit those dimensions. However, I have been reading a lot of commentary about how "strict" and unpleasant they are with baggage. Should we bring even smaller bags?

When we finally found a home during our last move, our realtor said that we had to offer over asking price because she knew there were multiple offers. We do live in an area that has been a seller's market for a few years now (DC area). So, we offered 40k over the asking price (360k) and ended up getting the house. It is a nice but not luxurious townhome. Built in the 90's, no garage but beautiful grounds and mature trees. Our unit is a corner unit with a hill behind the back and it is really private and quiet. The yard is twice the size as the interior models.

I have remodeled one of the powder rooms and the whole kitchen (still trying to figure out countertops). We took out all carpeting and added nice LVP. We repainted or wall-papered 5 of the 10 rooms. The back yard is hardscaped with a pergola and really nice elevated garden beds.

Question 1: Now that the housing market and the economy has settled down, we are seeing no comps in the area above what we paid and many are below. If we were to sell it in the next year or so, what are the chances we would lose that 40k or even more? (Comps in the area vary from 325 - 500k but some are a different configuration or have a one car garage.)

Question 2: We are not going to stay here forever. High city taxes, no family nearby, just our jobs to keep us here and we are in our late 50s. And we have amazing neighbors but if the renters change we could end up next to some real jerks. Is it crazy to try to sell this place and buy something we are more likely to live in for many years - something we really love that is smaller and costs less?

(Edit to remove distracting info and add detail)

Hello! I am enjoying this sub.

I am a fat, happily married, sociable person but my God. If I have to endure dinner with someone one more time listening to their "weight loss journey" powered by Ozempic, I am going to start throwing things. I want fat friends. I have plenty of average and slender friends. I want friends to shop with at the same stores and share ideas and back each other up. I do not want to hang around anyone who fat shames themselves and regurgitates their trauma. Sigh.

There have got to be some glorious, fat women in the greater DC area who want to hang out! It does get harder to meet people as you get older and we have moved about every 3 years for a while now. It is very hard to break into an established friend group for sure.

If you are a "local" somewhere and you see a recently arrived transplant, invite them out. We all need more girlfriends, more love and more radical acceptance. Speech over. Hope you lovelies have a great Wednesday!

I have read so many posts and comments about this but I still have one question. We are traveling USA - Lisbon direct, then 7 days layover in Lisbon and fly to Frankfurt for three weeks. Then we are going back to the USA via Lisbon again. Our flight home has a 22 hour layover in Lisbon!!! We purchased these flights a while back and they are neither changeable nor refundable.

The question is: We fly Frankfurt - Lisbon - USA. Schengen - Schengen - USA. If we stay in the airport the whole time in Lisbon, will we have to go through passport control like we would have done in Frankfurt? Would we have to go through a security checkpoint to change from Schengen to International?

Can we leave the airport in Lisbon and stay in a hotel? Will we have to do the whole process again to leave Portugal?

We will only have hand luggage, no checked bags.

Hello everyone,

My spouse and I are 61 and 57 respectively. I am only working part time now after working as a teacher for 35 years. My spouse is still teaching as he got started a little later in life. We both have some unexpected health issues I won't go into but suffice it to say they will influence our choices. So, here is the dilemma:

We live in a very high cost of living area (DC area) and when we both were working we brought home about 215,000 per year jointly as teachers. We have moved a lot - we have been teachers in 6 different states. (We are in a specialist field.) We bought a little townhome and we have one car, one phone and we are relatively budget conscious. We have about 750K in annuities, IRAs and TRAs. We have about 75K in the bank.

We are trying to decide if we should stay here until he gets a teacher pension (7 more years), move to where my family lives to enjoy some years "home" and be able to spend quality time with my mom or move house to a neighboring state that does not have taxes like we are paying. (DC area is notorious.) We have also considered refinancing the loan if rates ever go down or selling our townhome and renting or buying a small condo that would cost less per month.

The plusses about where we live - we really like our neighbors and community. It is quiet but less than an hour to all the culture and sites we could want. My husband works half a kilometer from the front door.

Does anyone have any guidance on any of this? If you were me (us) would you do any of the aforementioned things to make your dollar go farther? Am I missing something? We have no elders to advise us as he is from Europe and they have a completely different system than we do in the US and my parents are weird as hell and would not be helpful.

Thanks in advance!