INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO USE THE WORKSHEET TO COMPARE FACILITIES
http://www.ccrcdata.org/Worksheet.xls and save it to your computer. Then open the worksheet
by double-clicking in its filename, on your own computer and enter data as instructed below.
DO NOT type or input any data into the YELLOW or shaded columns. These are used for automatic
calculations from your data in the other columns.
1. Complete the Personal Data and Requirements section which will guide your selection.
Home Value-This will provide you with a baseline on an Entrance Fee.
Single-Double Occupancy-Choose
either, depending on your situation.
1 BR-2 BR-2 BR+-Choose either, depending on your needs.
Years of Residency: Preset to 10 years. Many facilities offer a declining balance (over 8-10
years) refund, which results in 0% refund after that period of time of residency. You can change this,
depending on how many years you expect to live at the facility.
2. Complete the Priorities section. This will help you in “rating” each facility in comparison with others.
Select Your Priorities (If one of the Priorities is not significant to you, simply leave that column blank
Low Price
Low Monthly Fees
Asset
Preservation
Provision for
Long-Term-Care (LTC) and Assisted Living (ALU) or
Fee-For-Service
Lifetime Cost
3. Go to Table 4 and locate the CCRCs of interest.
Using your designation of Single-Double Occupancy and 1 BR-2 BR (Step 1, above) copy the
Facility Name in the Facility Name column and the Average Entrance Fee for that Facility in
the
Entrance Fee column, Monthly Fee into the Monthly Fee column, and the Refund % and
Discount % in their appropriate columns (Labeled Refund, % and Discount, %).
4. You can put up to 10 facilities in each spreadsheet page to compare costs. If you want to add more
facilities, download the spreadsheet again. You can also replace data for a different type of calculation
(i.e. If
you decided to see how it would affect your costs if you reduced your
Requirements from 2 BR+ to 2
5. The Worksheet will calculate the Lifetime Cost, on a Monthly basis. This calculation allows you
to compare the Actual Expected Lifetime costs for each facility. This is important to understand
what the REAL costs are based on your personal Requirements and Priorities.
6. You can then “rate” the facilities, depending on how they compare for each Ranking column.
The Overall Ranking column adds the facility rankings you have assigned. (See explanation below for ranking.)
A Sample Worksheet is shown in Figure 5, below. This spreadsheet was filled in from data in Table 4,
for
representative CCRCs in
should not be construed to represent YOUR costs, because your
Requirements and Priorities
may be different from those shown.
Referring to Table 5, below, we can see that the Lifetime Costs for Facility F are 50% higher on a monthly basis.
This appears to be caused by the Discounted price, which if that option is chosen results in 0% refund after 10 years
(This facility provides a declining balance refund over 10 years.). The 100% Refund facilities may offer significantly
lower Lifetime Costs. (However, it should be remembered that the 100% Refund facilities do not provide,
generally, for Long-Term-Care in their fees. Most CCRCs allow residents to “draw down” their refund,
if needed to cover Long-Term-Care coverage, thus reducing the 100% refund.)
Explanation of Rankings:
Each facility should be given a rank order (In this case 1 to 6). For example, for Low Entrance Fee,
Facility D was given the top ranking of “1” since it had the lowest Entrance Fee, and Facility A was
given “6” since it had the highest Entrance Fee. Monthly Fees were ranked in a similar fashion.
Asset Preservation is a little harder to rank. This example selected the highest Actual Refund as the top (“1”).
Lifetime Cost was also ranked from low to high. The Overall Ranking column adds the individual numerical
rankings listed here. The lowest Number indicates the highest Overall Ranking. Thus Facilities B and D scored
at the top of the rankings, and Facilities A, C and E scored at the bottom. If any of the Priorities columns were
left blank, you would not give a ranking to that column. It should also be remembered that a higher
Lifetime Cost, may not be bad. For example, if a couple had a moderate value home, which they could
sell to raise the Entrance Fee, and a higher retirement income, the high Lifetime Cost might not be as
significant as it would seem at first glance.
It should be
understood that no calculation will be able to find your “perfect” choice. If
you have
made the decision to
move to a CCRC, this database may help you to narrow down the field of
many,
confusing choices to a few obvious ones, which you can then compare to
find your “best” choice.