They were able to give me the prices for a lot of the top places, but not all. I wanted to know all of them so this woman was somewhat helpful but I had to “push her. “ She only sent info on about 4 places and there’s about 20-30 of them in this area. There is usually an entrance fee that you have to pay right off the bat - in Naples, FL, it was between $2,000 - $3,000. They are pretty expensive.
Since I’m into swimming, I checked out the pool and the temperature of the water. At one place, I found the receptionist was quite bossy about the pool and said the pool was closed because it was cold out (this is SW Florida) so I asked her a bunch of questions. Apparently, you do not get a key to the pool and are under the supervision of this woman - which was a bit of a turn-off for me. I think wherever you go, the receptionist is often going to “run the show.”
Important - find out if they have storage there because there usually isn’t much room or closet space. You will want to set it up so you get a meal to see what the food is like. In the long run, it was waaay too expensive ($60,000-$80,000) so my bf and I decided against it. If you have two people, often you can get a pretty good deal by being the second person, so you don’t have to pay the whole fee. I would almost go with finding a person you can be “roommates with if you’re in a budget. One of the big things I found out was that there is a big difference between independent living, assisted living, and a nursing home. You want to make sure that they have enough assisted living beds if you need to go from independent living to assisted living. I found that there were only 10 assisted living rooms at one of the places and it was very “tucked away” and somewhat unpleasant - locked up. Then if you need a lot of care, like you end up with dementia, you would have to go to another facility that is locked - a nursing home which I found with all the places in my area. You want to make sure that they have sort of a sister facility that you can go to for that if you need to, hopefully without paying for another “entrance fee.” I googled all the assisted living places in the area and found that a “Place called Mom” didn’t even know of many homes - mostly the newer ones. I you want, I can send the info I have so you can see what these places are about and what the prices are. Keep in mind that Naples Florida is a very expensive area and these facilities are almost like country clubs.
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