The amount of money the elderly person or the person’s family have available for care can make a vast difference to the quality of care and the happiness of all involved.

It is, unfortunate that many elderly people don’t have enough funds to afford extra care in their later years. This can place a burden on the family or children of the elderly. If the family, children or friends also don’t have the funds, it can become a real problem that can affect everyone’s happiness and quality of life.

There are a few ways to find possible money to assist with this problem.

- If the elderly still owns a home of their own and they need to move into an assisted care facility, the home can be sold and the money can either be invested or used to pay for the assisted care facility. If the monthly interest on the investment is enough to pay for the care facility, it will always be a better option to invest the money.

- The elderly person might be eligible for federal or state benefits that they are not aware of. The National Council on the Aging has a website Benefits CheckUp, where you can quickly fill in a checklist to see if any of these benefits apply to the elderly person.

- Look into local and state support services. On the website Eldercare Locator you will find names and telephone numbers of services in the area.

- Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is additional to Social Security and will pay the difference if the Social Security income is lower than the minimum. People who qualify for this usually also qualify for Medicaid and food stamps.

- Taking out a reverse mortgage on the equity of the elderly person’s house is another option to get hold of some money. It is, however, necessary to get all the information on how this works before taking this step.

- Life settlement is another option. This is when the elderly person sells his or her life insurance policy or policies to an investor. Older people themselves don’t need these insurance policies anymore as they might have taken it out to make provision for children or a spouse. If this can improve the quality of their lives, it should be considered.

It would be worth your while to look into some of these options to ensure that your elderly parent or family member has all the possible opportunities to be happy and taken care of.