Friday, November 17, 2017

5 Things Singaporeans Don't Know About End-Of-Life Planning

Unexpected costs can make palliative care for a loved one dauntingly expensive. Take note of these 5 points to avoid getting caught in a financial bind. No matter how long medical science extends our life, we all have to face the reaper. In the final years and months, as our loved ones await the inevitable, the last thing we want is more stress for money reasons. Hence, it’s important to prepare financially for the twilight years of our dependents and family. Here are five key things to note.
 
Insurance May Not Cover Palliative Care Equipment
Palliative care is, contrary to popular belief, not “care for those who are definitely going to die”. Palliative care can, and often is, coupled with medical treatments that continue trying to prompt recovery. That said, one factor that’s often ignored is the prohibitive cost of palliative care. For example, say the dying person would prefer to be at home (especially if the end could come at any time). This may require the rental of medical equipment, such as oxygen tanks, dialysis machines, or other devices that would usually only be available in a treatment centre or hospital. Some insurance policies, however, only cover the cost of treatment when the patient goes to a centre or hospital. The policy may not cover the rental of medical equipment for palliative care, which might mean you have to pay out of pocket. If you have a loved one who may nearing the end, and they want to spend their final days at home, speak to your financial adviser quickly. If your policy does not cover palliative care at home, you need to know early to plan for the costs.
 
Hiring a Caregiver May Not be Optional
Many families make the mistake of assuming they can care for the dying. In truth, it’s rarely as straightforward as we imagine. Certain illnesses may mean the loss of coherency, or the ability to communicate. For example, advanced stages of Alzheimer’s may mean your loved one is unable to recognise you, and may often be angry or agitated. This can be difficult to bear with day-in and day-out, over the course of several years (particularly if a sole family member is placed in charge). You also have to acknowledge your own physical limitations, if you’re the main caregiver. It’s difficult to be available around the clock; and if you’re elderly yourself, you may endanger your own health by having to lift or carry the patient. No matter how determined you are to look after the dying by yourself, budget for a caregiver just in case. Seek out agencies that specialise in this, and approach your neighbourhood community services if a private caregiver is beyond your budget (many HDB estates have volunteers from grassroots communities, who can lend a hand).
 
Medical Costs Most Certainly Will Increase Significantly
Contrary to popular belief, switching to palliative care doesn’t mean medical treatment will be cheaper. For example, patients who are in intense pain may require more expensive painkillers, and patients with multiple health problems may need a whole regimen of drugs on a daily basis. Even if medical costs do fall, they may not drop as much as you assume. You must also be prepared for situations where medical costs increase, during the last few years. For instance, a cancer patient may initially pay a lower cost, by choosing not to have chemotherapy. Later on however, they require more frequent ambulance trips, or longer hospital stays in intensive care. This can be mitigated with the correct whole life insurance policy, or even basic term insurance. Many policies pay out a lump sum for terminal illness, which will more than cover the costs; speak to a financial adviser about complementing MediShield Life with such policies.
 
Denial Can Break You Financially
This is the greatest hidden danger in end-of-life care. Studies in countries like the United States have shown that, when loved ones come down with incurable conditions or illnesses, denial is the immediate response. No matter how level-headed you usually are, the reality of such a situation can change you. Most families push for aggressive and expensive intervention, in some cases even falling for scams (e.g. fake “miracle cures” that extort tens of thousands of dollars from them). This situation is aggravated if the dying person can’t communicate, and hasn’t declared their intent. For example, if your dying parent is on life support and in a coma, should you make the decision to end their life? Doctors will carry on medical care if the dying person has not signed a Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) order, and if the family does not give consent to end treatment. However, every month of medical care could rack up thousands in medical bills, and even insurance benefits will eventually run out. It’s best to discuss such situations early. Families are more likely to overcome their denial, and take steps to end it if the dying patient makes their wishes known.
 
Bad Credit Can Seriously Hurt You
You’ll often find yourself confronted by unexpected costs, when caring for the dying. From emergency room visits, to flying abroad for experimental treatment, the number of unknowns and variables are staggering. Even the old rule of thumb – saving up six months of your expenses – may not suffice. For example, you may be in situations where you not only need to pay for medical treatment, but you also face permanently reduced income (e.g. you need a job that allows you more hours at home, to provide care). The chances are high that, at some point, you will need a loan from the bank. This is where previously bad behaviour, such as paying your credit cards late, could come back to haunt you. Banks are not obliged to lend you the full two to four times your monthly income for personal loans – especially if they see that you’ve applied for several large loans quite recently. What will convince them to fork out a big loan is if you’ve proven reliable, over the course of many years. There’s nothing more painful than being denied credit for a major operation, which could potentially prolong the life of your loved one. Be responsible with credit, to ensure you can get it when it’s most needed.


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Monday, November 13, 2017

7 Common Things Singaporeans Don't Realise Are A Waste Of Money

From health supplements to single-serve consumables to cable channel packages, here are 7 common ways Singaporeans waste money. We all have impulse purchases, which we make without thinking. If we learn to control these, we would have much more cash to spend on the things that we do care about. The following items aren’t really things that we love; they’re the habitual, money-wasting purchases that we should weed out.
 
1. Bottled Water
Singapore is currently suffering from a S$134 million bottled water addiction. This is mostly because (1) we don’t like to carry water bottles, and (2) we consider it disgusting to drink from a public tap, especially when most of them are in public toilets. That causes us to end up spending S$1 to S$1.20 for bottled water, which is no different from tap water. But while S$1 may not seem like much, consider that a rising number of Singaporeans buy a bottle of water as often as twice a day. That comes to around S$60 a month, or about S$730 a year. That’s enough to fund a weekend family getaway to a nearby country.
 
2. Multi-vitamin Supplements
Medical studies have shown that multivitamins (and related vitamin supplements) do virtually nothing for your body. Even worse, some could be dangerous. In the United States, which has largely the same brands of vitamin supplements we do, studies of 54,000 different brands showed that only a third of them had any sort of safety standards. 12 per cent of them (a stunning 6,480 brands) were actually found to be dangerous, potentially increasing the takers’ risk of disease. Many of the claims made by vitamin brands, such as improving concentration or preventing loss of bone density, have been debunked. And as it turns out, you can’t “megaboost” the vitamins in your body by taking pills – once your body has enough of a particular vitamin, it will naturally reject any more; it doesn’t matter how many more pills you take.
 
3. Cable Channel Packages (Instead of Internet Streaming)
Singaporeans like to buy bundled cable TV channels, just out of laziness. It’s tedious to compare prices and shows, and half the time we have access to channels that we never watch. It’s a total waste of money, especially in an age when we have services like Netflix (just around S$15 per month). Before you buy cable television channels, ask yourself if you’d have problems watching shows on your tablet, phone, laptop, etc. instead. If services like Netflix already have the shows you want, you may be better of skipping the cable channels. (Some thrifty Singaporeans have even gotten rid of TV altogether, reasoning that all their favourite shows are on the Internet anyway).
 
4. Unnecessarily High Interest Rates
Many Singaporeans are averse to thinking about interest rates, or topics like refinancing. It’s common to hear them insist they “don’t want to deal with that stuff”. It’s a pity, because they waste tremendous amounts of money that way. For example, if you have a S$5,000 credit card debt growing at 26 per cent per annum, there’s a simple way to reduce that interest to just six per cent: You could look for a cheap personal instalment loan at six per cent per annum, borrow S$5,000 on it, and then use the money to pay off your card. Just like that, your debt has gone from 26 per cent per annum to just six per cent. With online banking, all of this can be done in a matter of minutes; but we’re often too lazy, and thus end up paying unnecessarily high interest.
 
5. Credit Card Fees
Many banks (not all) will give you fee waivers for your credit card, if you just call and request for it. Credit card annual fees range from around S$200 to several hundreds per year – but if you repay your card reliably, and you actively make use of it, many banks may not mind processing a waiver. In fact, some of them even have a specific button for it, on the call centre support system. (Other cards reward you with points or air miles for paying your annual fee. This is often at a superior exchange rate than normal, so you should definitely consider taking advantage of it.) Whether you decide to pay your fees, or to get them waived, there’s no harm in spending a few minutes to make the request. At the end of the year, that S$200+ can go toward funding your Christmas and New Year gifts.
 
6. Travel Insurance (At the Last Minute)
Travel insurance not only protects you against accidents, it can also covers trip cancellation or postponements. However, you need to have the travel insurance plan in place before such an event. For example, if you buy travel insurance today, and two weeks later your trip is cancelled due to natural disasters, you’ll be able to make a claim. But if you hadn’t bought the insurance yet, your trip would be cancelled, and the money paid for flight tickets and lodging would be a total write-off. Of course, travel insurers love it when you buy at the last minute. You see, when you buy travel insurance exactly as you’re leaving, you pay for protection you don’t use – part of your premium was meant to cover you in the event of a cancelled trip. Hence, the fiscally responsible option here is to buy travel insurance once you’ve decided to go on a trip. Consider buying an annual plan if you go for multiple trips per year.
 
7. Single-serve Consumables
Do you use a lot of jam or peanut butter? Or how about margarine? If your household makes regular use of these items, stop buying them on an ad hoc basis. In other words, don’t pop into the store to get a few whenever you need them. The prices of small or single-serve packs can be up to 50 per cent higher, when compared to buying in bulk. A good example of this is milk: the difference between 600 milliliters and a full litre can be as high as S$2.50 for some brands. If you just buy the full litre, you’re effectively getting the fourth bottle for free, as opposed to buying the smaller bottle all the time. That’s not forgetting the increased waste your household will be generating.


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