Retirement
Planning for late-life care
The most expensive years of a Quidsmith life often come right at the end. From age 80 a care cost is added on top of your living expenses, and it only grows. Ignoring it can undo decades of careful investing in the final stretch.
How care costs escalate
From age 80, an unavoidable care cost of around £12,000 a year (in today's money) is added to your expenses, rising at roughly CPI plus 2%. From age 85 there is a growing yearly chance of needing residential care, a step-change to £35,000 a year or more. These costs are mandatory: there is no option to decline them.
You cannot avoid the risk, but you can shape it
The probability of needing residential care rises with age and falls with wellbeing. A player who has looked after their health over a lifetime faces a lower chance of the expensive outcome.
The means test: a large estate pays more
On Standard difficulty and above, late-life care is means-tested. Once your net worth is over about £1,000,000 in today's money, you pay an extra annual contribution, a slice of the wealth above that threshold, for as long as care is needed. The bigger the estate, the bigger the bill, so a large fortune stops being a pure shield and becomes part of what care can draw on. It is how the game keeps runaway wealth from making the final years risk-free, and it is why care cover and wellbeing matter even to the well-off. On the hardest settings the slice is larger, and a big net worth can visibly shrink in your final years. It is charged only while residential care is actually being received, and it is the one part of the bill care cover does not reimburse, so a fully insured player still pays it. Your annual statement shows it on its own line.
Three ways to plan
- Care-cover policy. Between ages 50 and 75 you can buy a one-off policy that reimburses part of your residential-care costs later. Like any insurance, it trades a known cost now for protection against a large cost later.
- The care-risk telegraph. From age 70 the game shows how likely you are to need care given your wellbeing, so you can plan while there is still time to act.
- Wellbeing. Investing in diet, exercise and community across your life lowers the odds of the most expensive path.
Treat late-life care as a near-certain future expense, not a tail risk. Reaching 80 with a larger buffer, a healthy wellbeing score and, if you chose it, a care-cover policy, is what stops a £35,000-a-year bill from erasing the wealth you spent 55 years building. It is the difference between a Legacy ending and merely surviving.