Well, things are chugging along. The things that were either wrong or annoying about the place have taken a bit more time to fix but nothing has been a horror story so all in all I am pleased. When they removed the faulty previous renovations to the attic (made into an office and bedroom) I thought there might be a lot of rotting wood because of the way things were stained on the siding outside. But rot was minor. The main focus has been getting that area updated since it was in such poor shape. The corrections to the supports and the installation of skylights really opened up the room and the whole thing has now been blessed by the county inspector (yay! a big relief). This old house was built solidly but out of two by sixes whereas now things would be made out of much bigger lumber - so getting things blessed by structural engineers can be tricky. Currently the work is focused on moving the massive HVAC unit from the sunny front of the house to the shady back of the house, building a false chimney up the outside wall to carry the ductwork upstairs to the home office. This involved cutting new holes into the brick foundation wall and re-working all the ducts throughout the house. The old system was patched and in some places just homeowner done and not efficient. The problem now is that I really want to use as much of the basement as possible as a workshop but getting the duct guys to understand me has been difficult. There are certain rules about how sharp a turn and how many feet a duct can travel and I want as much of the ductwork as possible out of the way which doesn't look like it is feasible. So in order to get from one end of the room to the other I am either going to be stepping over ducts or stooping under them a couple of times. Not what I wanted. Most of the problem is that the HVAC unit that came with the house is monster big (actually a good thing), the previous owner didn't have it ducted the right way so it was unable to cool or heat every room and he used small ducts. My crew is putting in these massive ducts which will do a great job of keeping things ventilated and cool but I will sacrifice workspace down in the basement - so I should shut up and quit complaining. The previous owner has never shown up to finish hauling off his junk. My understanding is that he really fell on hard times financially and just couldn't get it together. I've been piling it up and having the workers add it to their loads to the dump (and I've been paying for that pleasure). In addition to all that - I been fixing up my current house to put it up for sale and things are going s-l-o-w. I had such big plans about really going through everything and tossing out the stuff I don't use or need but that just takes way too much time. I'm down to throwing stuff in boxes and piling them up in the corner and hoping that someday I will be able to go through it. The realtor winced when she saw how much clutter I have (and my house is only a quarter of how cluttered my parents house is) and she suggested I find some newer appliances for the kitchen. She also warned that looking at the numbers I should not expect to get much for the house - so that's a bummer, but things are changing everyday so by the time I have it ready to sell and the new house is ready to move into the situation might be better. You asked for numbers: My final low ball offer was just under $30,000 of the debt owed by the seller (remember I thought I found the actual payoff amount online but I was wrong. So I went in thinking I had the facts when in reality I was way off). This made it a short sale and his lender took about a month to accept my offer and forgive the rest of his loan (remember he was about to foreclose). Then my lender appraised the place at $20,000 less than my low ball offer and I said I would only pay the appraised amount. His bank took one week to accept. The realtor pointed out in the closing that the final price was less than half of the original asking price - so it sounds like I got a great deal but the houses value dropped even further after I bought it. So I got it for a song but if things had drug out for one more month I could have saved another $35,000!!!

D., don't worry about it! I know this is a tough topic to discuss and I know the whole topic of protecting assets from the auction block is often fraught with the presumption of greed, selfishness, and entitlement. I've been reading your posts for some time now and know you aren't unreasonable. Truthfully? my parents wanted us to have the house, but were too ignorant/trusting that they couuld transfer it to us at the very end. You can't do that, any more; you have to PLAN the transfer years in advance or they will be quickly appropriated to fund LTC. Our case is no different from most families. There are liquid assets and there is real estate. We have protected the real estate, and the liquid assets are still largely intact minus a few permitted "gifts". My mother has been with me for 3 years now, at no cost to her. The idea behind our calculated decisions is that there will be sufficient funds to move her into long term care for a few years. Statistically, the person dies within a year/two of entering LTC. This was what the elder law attorney advised. I used to feel sort of "guilty" about the way we've set things up, but now I don't. We've used every legal means at our disposal to preserve some of what my parents stated time and again they wanted to leave to us, but were too ignorant to isolate and protect. And I understand completely that there are plenty of families that "skim the cream" and hustle the infirm family member off to the home and onto the public dole. That bothers me, too. Realistically, though, with the looming SS and Medicare/Medicaid crisis there will no safety net for the likes of me, even though I've paid more in taxes to fund Mum's benefits than she or my father ever paid in to the system. I will do my level best to parlay whatever I'm fortunate enough to inherit into long term, long range investments to buffer my own old age and inevitable infirmity. My 3 years of devoted care for my mother deserve to be compensated, too. Frankly, I'd rather inherit the real estate tax-free than be paid, moved into a higher tax bracket, and have to pay taxes on the earnings every year! I'm willing to wait for my compensation, no nursing home would accept that sort of arrangement.

What do you mean "legit"? A broker is a broker - they'll just sell you insurance, it doesn't mean they're going to hold your hand if you have a claim. Unfortunately, insurance is a field where you must educate yourself thoroughly and be aware that premiums on LTC are increasing rapidly. I expected this because people are living longer - the increase in mortality since 1957 is amazing - but this works adversely for such things as LTC and disability insurance. For one thing, contact your local state dept. of insurance and find out which LTC insurers had the most complaints, per number of policies sold. You don't want just numbers, but the percentage of #s. Register for the NYTimes website. They ran a recent series of articles on health issues, including LTC insurance. Their investigative reporting is outstanding (would that our local paper should be half so good!). Read the article linked below - it's old, and I've linked it before - but it has the best "checklist" for determining what to look for in an LTC policy I've ever seen. Yes, it's long and not an easy read! But too many people have bought LTC insurance and found it was not what they thought, or even worse, the carrier was reluctant to pay. This is a sizable $$$ investment over time for anybody, and it will pay you to be certain you aren't wasting your money. The major carriers in the LTC market are Met Life, Bankers Life, Genworth (formerly GE Assurance), Lincoln Benefit (part of the Allstate Group) and John Hancock. Bankers Life and its many subsidiaries have 3x the rate of complaints about non-payment of claims as some of the others, according to the NYTimes. I've never dealt with them, so don't know what they're like personally. In my previous job at an independent CFP office, we preferred working with Met, Genworth, Lincoln Benefit and JH. They are not the cheapest, but my boss said he liked to recommend companies he thought were quality companies committed to the business. It's always a crapshoot, you never know what's going to happen (who would have thought 20 yrs ago that MONY would go belly-up?) but life is always going to have some risk - can't avoid it all, I'm afraid. The two features that will cost you the most - they will double your premium, in fact - are home health services and compound inflation protection. However, my boss considered them essential and so do I. Home healthcare is the fastest growing segment of the health services market and NO government agency pays for it. If you want to stay in your home as long as possible, LTC insurance with a home healthcare rider is the only way practical (unless you have a very big retirement portfolio, in which case you don't need LTC insurance at all). Compound inflation protection ensures your daily benefit amount increases each year to help offset inflation. Some policies use 3%, others use 5%. Do NOT get simple inflation protection, it's useless in light of the huge annual increases in medical expenses we've all seen in the last ten years. Here is a link that might be useful: Consumer Law Education: understanding LTC policies

Several years ago I took a four-class staging course at the local community college. The person who taught the class had her own business staging and was teaching this class for folks interested in selling their own houses, I believe. The course probably did not teach me anything I couldn't have learned by reading books, watching HGTV, etc., but I consider it worthwhile anyway because it was really fun. An added bonus was that some specific ideas did stick in my mind so that when I ended up having to sell in a hurry, I could. The teacher had a certification through one of the organizations that offers the more costly courses for professionals---so if you were to take a course, teaching DIY folks in classes like the one I took might be another source of income :)