Hi Speghetina: I'm in the same area as you (Palo Alto, Zone 9) and I just harvested sugar snap peas in July, so perhaps it's the variety you are growing or the specific location in your garden. This year, I had squash beetles infect my winter squash with bacterial wilt. I'm going to start the plants over from seeds. The Common Ground Guide recommends planting squash in April, and I agree that that is the best time to plant them because they take 100 days. But, as you know, we get warm weather out here in September, so there's a fighting chance I'll still be able to grow these squash even though I'm planting them in July. The bottom line is that any of these guides provide good rules of thumb, but they are not absolutes. By the way, Common Ground is a great store, I shop there frequently!

Three thousand a month is about right for private nursing home care--or was. Some of the upscale places can cost even more. If you can afford the insurance--it makes good sense--if not you may want to consider other alternatives. A family member, in Louisiana, now deceased, gave away his property--everything--to the kids and retained usufruct until his death. That solved part of the problem of worrying about nursing home expense to the extent of his possibly losing the results of a lifetime of work--if leaving it to your heirs is what you want to do. I believe at the time that the exclusion period was six months, i.o.w. the property had to have been out of his ownership for at least six months or they could go back and reclaim it. That period of time may have changed. Only a good lawyer is going to know for certain. Cash is a different ballgame altogether. Single premium life insurance policies can sometimes provide a means of transferring any cash that isn't deemed necessary to maintain a lifestyle--if leaving it to your heirs is what you want to do. If there's a sizeable amount of cash involved then you can use this as leverage to insure that those gaining the real property "behave" since the beneficiary can be changed up until practically the moment of death. Talk to a financial planner (a CPA with experience in the field) and a lawyer.

Smart Money magazine published an article several years ago that argued against buying LTC in your 50s or earlier because the standard 5% inflation protection coverage would not keep up with the average 7% increase in nursing home costs. Basically, the earlier you buy the policy, the larger the gap that you will have between what your policy pays out and what the actual costs will be. Here are a couple of quotes from the article: "The 5% inflation adjustment is the industry standard, adopted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) in the early 1990s. If the insurance industry were to adopt the 7% inflation figure that some predict, 'the cost would be prohibitive', says Tom Foley, an actuary with the North Dakota Insurance Department who chairs the NAIC's long-term care rate stabilization woking group." "The average age at which people buy long-term-care insurance is now about 65, and given the effects of inflation on your coverage, not to mention the uncertainty of health care costs and public policy 20 or 30 years from now, why buy it earlier than that? 'If there's a liklihood you might develop a health problem that makes long-term-care insurance expensive, you might want to buy it sooner', says Chuck Mondin of the United Seniors Health Cooperative, a nonprofit advocacy group. Otherwise, wait."

>>(from luvstocraft) So am I understanding correctly that the Living Trust can help protect some of our assets--but just a Will will not do that? >> I'm sorry that I didn't pay more careful attention to some of these questions, and hope it's not too late to get these answers to luv since like her, we live in CA. First off, Living Wills are not legal in CA. The document needed is called the Durable Healthcare power of attorney. All forms since 2009 should include the POLST questions (Physician's Order for Life Sustaining Treatment). Anyone with a DHPoA prior to 2009 should Google and download this 1-page form, fill it out and give a signed copy to your doctor or HMO, ASAP. Second, as pointed out, you need to be careful about which type of Financial Power of Attorney you want. Be especially thoughtful about who is the successor agent should you **and** your spouse become mentally incapable. Make sure that all your financial records are filed properly and are easy to access in an emergency. Now, to wills vs trusts: A will MUST go through probate. This has certain advantages: a will is public record, meaning it's a lot harder (although not impossible) to commit fraud. If you don't have a large estate, there is nothing wrong with using a will. There are two kinds of personal trusts (well, there's many different kinds, but you generally need to have substantial assets to make use of them): Revocable and Irrevocable. In a revocable living trust (RLT), you or whoever is named trustee/co-trustee, own those assets and manage the trust. You can change the terms however and whenever you please. An Irrevocable trust is just that - once set up and funded with assets, it cannot be changed. The trustee is just a manager of the assets. It can't be canceled if you change your mind or your situation changes. You no longer own any of the assets in the trust. It is a permanent legal entity unto itself, until all assets are exhausted. Any trust must be funded; e.g., you must take legal steps to transfer assets to the trust. Just setting up a trust does not mean anything is inside the trust. Trusts do not go through probate. They are a method of passing assets to heirs without the costs of probate. OTOH, speaking as one who served as Executor of a simple estate, I can tell you that even a simple estate or trust takes hours and hours to settle. It is neither easy, nor simple, and when a person is grieving it is extremely exhausting. An Executor of a will gets paid a fee (and in CA, believe me that fee is earned) - but a Trustee NEVER gets paid unless payment, hourly or flat fee or percentage, is specified in the Trust....even though a Trustee can spend just as much personal time, if not more, than any Executor does, on settling an estate. Revocable Living Trusts will NOT save on taxes. They are a conveyance, a means of passing assets more efficiently in certain situations. They do not “protect” anything because that is not their intent. The only thing it will save is the court costs of filing for probate, and the mandated fees to Executor and Attorney from the assessed value of the estate. For example, my MIL has an RLT. Realistically, there was never any need for she and her (now deceased) husband to have one. They have only one son, had only one house, and modest financial assets. It made the transfer of assets to her as the surviving Trustee simpler, but then we had to have a lawyer draw up yet another trust, this time with her and her son (DH) as co-trustees. Had they had a good will drawn up instead, we could have continued with that and spent less half the amount of money it cost, by having her update a will instead of creating a new trust. In comparison, DH and I have a trust. We have no children, and our estate falls under whatever the federal estate tax limit is or is going to be. But because we have no children, our heirs are not directly related to us - and both heirs have siblings who by law would have just as much right to any inheritance. Therefore, we had our trust drawn up with specific language that excludes anyone not named in the trust. We also arranged for the Trustee to be paid on an hourly basis for work done for the estate, because we believe that's fair. I did a little research on the so-called "Medicaid trusts". These are apparently encouraged by certain lawyers who claim they will protect assets from being seized by Medicaid. There is a debate about this subject, and some lawyers say there is no current legal decision that fully supports any trust as being 'untouchable' by Medicaid. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. A Medicaid trust is Irrevocable - once set up, you have lost all assets you transfer over. It is NOT excused from the Medicaid 5-yr look-back on asset transfers. If Medicaid does decide your trust is a fraud designed to hide assets from them, you would need a lawyer to file suit. And of course, no one should ever set up any trust, Revocable or Irrevocable, without the advice of a lawyer. Even using good forms, such as those available from Nolo Press/Berkeley, can produce a document that does not address all the issues your estate may face...if only because there are things you don't know which may be issues in the future, that the questions of a professional might have avoided. If you use a good estate attorney, they often charge a flat fee for drawing up the RLT, both PoAs, a pour-over will (VERY important) and even transferring the title to your home into the trust. Our attorney spent hours with MIL and with us, both together and separately, to ensure she had a clear picture of what we wanted. Then it was her job to create documents which would enable our wishes to be carried out, when we're no longer able to be there. I apologize for going OT. But these are critical issues that all too many Boomers have left undone for too long. HTH!