A new survey by Saga Insurance has found that the grown up children of elderly parents may well end up financing their parents long term care from what was their inheritance.
As a company that works exclusively with the over 50’s Saga Insurance took the opportunity to discuss their plans and found that only 10 percent of people have actually discussed long term care for elderly parents. More worrying still perhaps is that nearly half of them fail to appreciate the actual costs, which are around GBP25 – 30,000 per year.
The view of nearly 60 percent of those who discussed the matter with Saga Insurance is that any inheritance will be used to finance the long term care parents may need. A large part of this may be that, with all the other financial pressures on people, trying to put aside money for parental care is just not possible, at least for the majority of the population.
Interest rates on nearly all the Nationwide Building Society International Sterling savings accounts are being reduced by between 0.25 and 0.3 percent.
The international arm of the Nationwide Building Society is not cutting interest rates on their Euro or Dollar savings accounts though, these will retain their existing rates. In addition they are actually increasing the rate of interest paid on their Lifetime Guarantee Account, going up by 0.2 percent. This gives it a first year rate of 6.4 percent.
Currency based accounts can be subject to fluctuations as the exchange rates vary following economic changes, hence the cuts announced here by the Nationwide Building Society.
A Sainsburys Bank spokesman feels that there are more restrictions and conditions applied to savings accounts than ever before.
Having looked at the current state of the market the Sainsburys Bank spokesman has noticed how many savings accounts have restrictions on withdrawal amounts and periods, as well as how it impacts on interest rates, with some quite hefty penalties on some for making withdrawals during the year.
Another aspect that has been noted is the use of age limits on some savings accounts, targeting either the younger or older market. Ideally all categories of customer should be able to enjoy similar levels of interest and benefits believes the Sainsburys Bank spokesman.