My mother never had much.  She was a stay-at-home mom, only working at Hutzlers downtown in the wrapping department during the holiday season to get extra money for Christmas.   That was the pattern of her life until my father plunged them into debt to support his gambling, then skipped town.   She finished raising her daugther alone.  She never remarried, didn't own a home, kept cars until they broke down, counted her pennies.  She worked at Provident for 25 years, retiring in July 1990 at 63 with a small pension supplemented with Social Security and stock dividends from Provident's performance.  When her mother died four years later, she and Aunt Nell sold the house and split the proceeds and that provided a little interest as well.  

She had dementia and Alzheimer's  She needed care, ending up in Ivy Hall.  They took very good care of her, but it was expensive -- $7K a month.  To pay it everything that she had saved was used.  The house money, the money she saved counting pennies, the stock even though it was a depressed market and she only got $20K for it.  The last thing to go were the two savings accounts she had opened for her grandchildren; she had managed to save $7200 for them and it too is gone.  Everything she had worked for, gone.  All that she owned fitted in one little box.

Understand, I do not begrudge that the money was used -- that is not my point. It was her money and if she had to spend everything before going on Medicare, so be it.  But going on Medicare VS a being a "private pay" patient meant she had to give up her single room and go into a ward -- there were no family resources to fall back on.   My point is that my mother decided that she was done rather than do that; my point is the more affluent will never be faced with such a choice and have no concept of what it means to give up all privacy when you are in need of care.  The affluent have other options.

My mother was out of options.  

She simply stopped eating and drinking.  She died on Thursday.