Long Term Care On Your Own: A Planning Guide for Aging Without a Spouse or Adult Children (Solo Aging)

Long-term care has two jobs. Most people only plan for one of them.

One job is the care itself — bathing, dressing, meals, transportation. The other is running the care: finding help, hiring it, checking that it is working, dealing with schedules and bills, replacing someone who does not show up, and eventually handing the whole job to someone else.

If you do not have a spouse, adult child, or nearby family member who will automatically take that on, who will?

Long-Term Care on Your Own is a practical guide to planning for that second job before you need it. It walks you through the questions in the order they are likely to arrive:

What does long-term care actually include?
Understand the different kinds of help you may need — and the difference between medical care and the day-to-day assistance that makes up much of long-term care.

What will it cost, and what actually pays?
Work through care by the hour, understand where Medicare does and does not fit, and learn where to look for programs and resources available where you live.

Who do you call when you need help?
Learn where care often starts locally, how to compare an agency with hiring someone directly, and what responsibilities come with each choice.

How do you know whether the care is working?
Learn what has to be managed week to week, what to watch for, and how to think about backup when you cannot supervise everything yourself.

What happens if staying at home stops working?
Look honestly at the signs that a care arrangement is no longer enough and compare the major care settings without the sales-brochure version.

And who takes over when you can no longer manage all of this yourself?
The final part of the book focuses on the handoff — including personal and professional backup, what needs to be decided in advance, and the gaps that still need an answer.

Inside are nine practical planning tools, including:

The Care Management Map — who handles each job now and who could take over
My First-Call List — the numbers to find before the day you need them
My Hiring Questions — what to ask before bringing someone into your home
Questions I Need Answered About Authority
Checking a Professional Before You Hire
When to Revisit the Plan
My Discharge Sheet
Where to Start Looking
My Unresolved Gaps

This book does not assume the same programs or services exist everywhere. Rules, resources, and legal documents vary by state and locality, so it shows you where to start and who can confirm what actually applies where you live.

It does not sell long-term care insurance, teach Medicaid asset-planning strategies, or tell you which facility to choose. It helps you build something more fundamental: a care plan that does not depend entirely on you remaining able to run it.