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This article appears in the September edition of the Financial Post Magazine. Visit the iTunes store to download the iPad edition of this month’s issue.

Patty Randall began caring for her 80-something parents in the 1990s. For the next decade, she learned the limits of the Canada Health Act and the merits of advanced care planning. Flying from her home in Vancouver to her parents’ place in Kelowna, B.C., for a week each month, she was both the long-distance care manager and hands-on caregiver. “We eventually moved my father to a long-term care facility and then we basically set up a mini nursing home for my mother in her house,” Randall says.

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It was a lot to manage. It was also a lot to pay for. “My parents had their regular pensions, their house was all paid for, but there was no way they could have paid for those extra thousands every month,” she says. “So it came out of my budget.”

The experience was a wake-up call for Randall, who went on to become a care planning advocate. “The experience with my parents taught me that we’re each responsible for our own care and the care of our immediate loved ones.” It also underscored the cost of the care we may need and, more importantly, the kind of care we may want down the road.