Evaluating Your Existing Coverage for In Home Nursing Care Needs

Most Americans approaching retirement age assume their health insurance or government benefits will automatically cover the cost of a nurse visiting their house if they fall ill. They lock their policies in a filing cabinet and focus entirely on accumulating assets. This assumption is a fast track to financial ruin. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs requires tearing open those policies and staring at the exact dollar amounts they promise to pay. The cost of hiring a professional to help you bathe, eat, and manage medications inside your own house has exploded over the last decade. Relying on vague promises from an insurance agent you spoke with fifteen years ago will not protect your retirement savings from being wiped out by a single prolonged illness. You need a cold, hard audit of what you actually own and what those contracts legally obligate the insurers to provide.

The Financial Reality of Aging in Place

Staying in your own house as you age sounds peaceful until you receive the first invoice from a private home health agency. The numbers are staggering. A family in Columbus paying for an aide to visit for eight hours a day can easily spend over six thousand dollars a month. If you require around-the-clock supervision because of a cognitive decline, that monthly bill doubles or triples. The financial reality of aging in place means you are operating a private, one-patient medical facility inside your living room. Every expense falls directly on your shoulders unless you have specific, contractual coverage in place. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs means determining exactly how many months you can survive those bills before you have to start selling off index funds or liquidating real estate. You cannot plan a retirement based on the hope that your health will hold out forever. You must plan for the worst and verify your defenses.

Why Standard Medicare Falls Short for Daily Living Assistance

Millions of people turn 65 and breathe a sigh of relief because they believe Medicare will handle all their medical problems. This is a massive misunderstanding of how the system works. Standard Medicare Parts A and B are designed to fix acute medical problems. If you break your hip falling on the ice in Chicago, Medicare will pay for the surgery and the hospital stay. They will even pay for a nurse to visit your house for a few weeks to change bandages and administer physical therapy. But Medicare completely abandons you the moment your condition stabilizes. If you just need someone to help you get out of bed and prepare meals because you are weak, the federal government will not send you a dime. Relying on standard Medicare for daily living assistance is like expecting your car insurance to pay for your weekly gas fill-ups. It is the wrong tool for the job.

Defining Custodial Care Versus Medical Necessity

The entire insurance industry separates human suffering into two distinct categories. They call one category medical necessity, and they call the other custodial care. Medical necessity requires the skills of a registered nurse or a doctor. Custodial care refers to the activities of daily living, such as eating, dressing, bathing, and using the bathroom. If your doctor prescribes physical therapy to restore your ability to walk after a stroke, that is a medical necessity. If you cannot walk because of advanced arthritis and you need someone to push your wheelchair to the kitchen, that is custodial care. Almost no standard health insurance policy pays for custodial care. If your evaluation reveals that you only hold policies covering medical necessities, you have a massive hole in your retirement planning that will leak cash the moment you lose your physical independence.

Decoding Your Current Health Insurance Policies

Pulling out a sixty-page health insurance contract is a miserable way to spend a Tuesday evening. Do it anyway. You are looking for a very specific section titled "Exclusions and Limitations." This is where the insurance company lists all the scenarios where they will refuse to hand over their money. You will almost always find a clause stating that long-term care, private duty nursing, and custodial services are strictly excluded. If you have a supplemental plan from AARP or Blue Cross, read through their specific home care provisions. These supplements often pay the deductibles that regular Medicare leaves behind, but they do not invent new coverage categories. If Medicare refuses to cover the home health aide, your supplement will refuse as well. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs requires looking for the word "no" rather than searching for the word "yes."

The Hidden Limitations of Medicare Advantage Plans

Medicare Advantage plans, also known as Part C, flood the television with commercials promising extra benefits like dental cleanings and gym memberships. They occasionally mention home care benefits, which leads many retirees into a false sense of security. The reality is far less generous. These private plans operate under strict profit margins. While they might offer a few days of meal delivery after a hospital discharge or a temporary home health aide, they cap these benefits ruthlessly. You might get authorization for ten hours of help a week for exactly one month. After that, the care coordinator will determine that you have reached your maximum benefit and cut you off. You cannot build a multi-year aging-in-place strategy on a policy designed to give you a slight bump in convenience for a few weeks.

Reading the Fine Print on Temporary Rehabilitation Benefits

Insurance companies love the word rehabilitation because it implies a temporary expense with a definite end date. If you suffer a heart attack in Denver and your doctor says you need home nursing for sixty days to recover, your policy will likely cover it under the rehabilitation clause. The trap snaps shut when your condition turns chronic rather than temporary. Once the insurance company determines that you are not going to improve and that your care needs are permanent, they label your situation as "maintenance." Nearly all standard health plans drop coverage the instant your status changes from rehabilitation to maintenance. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs means acknowledging that your current health insurance is a short-term band-aid, not a long-term solution.

The Role of Long-Term Care Insurance in Retirement Planning

If you want real protection against the cost of an aide showing up at your house every morning, you need a policy specifically designed for that exact scenario. Long-term care insurance exists to pay for the custodial care that other policies ignore. These contracts are expensive, underwriting is strict, and premiums can jump unexpectedly. However, for a high-income earner who wants to protect a multi-million dollar portfolio from nursing expenses, this product is often the best line of defense. When you buy a policy from a company like Genworth or Mutual of Omaha, you are buying a pool of money. You are making a bet that you will need this money to pay for your care, while the insurance company is betting you will pass away peacefully in your sleep before filing a claim. You have to review your existing policy to ensure the math still works in your favor today.

Assessing Daily Benefit Amounts and Inflation Riders

A long-term care policy bought in 2005 might state that it will pay one hundred dollars a day for in home nursing care. In 2005, one hundred dollars could buy a full shift of professional help. Today, in a city like Seattle, one hundred dollars might barely cover three hours. If your policy does not have an inflation rider attached, your coverage has been secretly shrinking every year. An inflation rider automatically increases your daily benefit amount by three to five percent annually. Without it, you are holding a piece of paper that will only cover a fraction of your actual expenses. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs demands that you calculate the gap between your policy's stated daily limit and the current market rate for nurses in your specific zip code. You have to plan to pay that difference out of pocket.

The Elimination Period Trap That Drains Your Savings

Insurance companies use the elimination period to shift the initial cost of care back onto you. This period functions exactly like a deductible, but it is measured in days instead of dollars. A standard elimination period is ninety days. This means that if you become incapacitated on January first, you must pay for your own in home nursing care out of your own pocket until the end of March. The insurance company will not start sending checks until day ninety-one. If your care costs two hundred dollars a day, you will bleed eighteen thousand dollars from your retirement accounts before the policy kicks in. Check your contract immediately. Some policies measure these days by calendar dates, while others only count days where you actually paid for professional services. The difference between those two definitions can cost you thousands of dollars.

Medicaid as a Safety Net for the Middle Class

Medicaid is a joint federal and state program designed to provide healthcare for individuals with almost no money. Most successful professionals ignore Medicaid entirely during their retirement planning because they assume they are too wealthy to qualify. This ignores a grim reality. The crushing cost of extended in home nursing care can drain a lifetime of savings in just a few years, reducing a middle-class family to poverty levels. At that point, Medicaid becomes the only option left. However, Medicaid is biased toward institutional care. If you want Medicaid to pay for care inside your own house, you have to apply for specific home and community-based services waivers. These waivers have long waiting lists and strict medical requirements. You cannot rely on the government to fund your aging-in-place strategy without a brutal fight.

State-Specific Asset Limits and the Five-Year Lookback Rule

To qualify for Medicaid, you must strip yourself of almost all your assets. In most states, an individual cannot have more than two thousand dollars in countable assets. They will look at your checking accounts, your mutual funds, and your second home in Florida. If you have too much money, they will deny your application and tell you to spend your own cash on nursing care until you are broke. You cannot simply give your money to your children to beat the system. The government uses a five-year lookback period to penalize you for any gifts or transfers made specifically to qualify for Medicaid. If you gave your daughter fifty thousand dollars three years before applying, Medicaid will impose a penalty period where they refuse to pay for your care. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs includes knowing exactly how your state views your assets.

How Spousal Impoverishment Protections Actually Work

The government recognizes that forcing a healthy spouse into poverty to pay for their sick partner's care is bad policy. They created spousal impoverishment protections to leave the healthy spouse with enough money to buy groceries and pay the light bill. The healthy spouse is allowed to keep the primary residence, a vehicle, and a certain amount of cash, often up to around one hundred and fifty thousand dollars depending on the state. The rest of the couple's money must be spent down to qualify the sick spouse for Medicaid-funded home care. These rules are insanely complicated. Relying on them as your primary strategy for funding in home nursing care is a massive gamble. You are betting that the state rules will not change and that the healthy spouse can comfortably survive on a fraction of their original net worth.

Tapping Into Life Insurance for Immediate Cash Flow

Life insurance is traditionally a defensive tool used to protect your family from the loss of your income after you die. But if you are seventy-five years old and staring down a massive bill for an in home nursing aide, a death benefit does not help you today. Many retirees hold permanent life insurance policies with massive cash values or death benefits but lack the liquidity to pay for their daily care. You do not have to die to get value out of these policies. The insurance industry has created several mechanisms to allow policyholders to access their money while they are still breathing. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs means looking at your life insurance not just as a legacy, but as a potential source of emergency funding for your own survival.

Accelerated Death Benefits for Terminal or Chronic Illness

Modern life insurance policies often include an accelerated death benefit rider. This rider allows you to request an advance on your death benefit if a doctor certifies that you have a terminal illness with a short life expectancy, or if you become chronically ill and cannot perform the activities of daily living. If you have a five hundred thousand dollar policy, the insurer might allow you to withdraw half of that amount tax-free to pay for your home health aides. The catch is that every dollar you take out reduces the payout your family receives when you pass away. You also have to prove your condition meets their exact contractual definitions. Some older policies from companies like Northwestern Mutual or New York Life might not have these riders attached automatically. You need to pull your original contract and check for these specific provisions today.

Selling a Policy Through a Life Settlement Transaction

If your life insurance policy does not have an accelerated benefit rider, and you cannot afford the premiums because you are spending all your money on nursing care, you can sell the policy to a third party. This is called a life settlement. Companies like Coventry will buy your policy for a lump sum of cash that is greater than the surrender value but less than the total death benefit. They take over the premium payments, and when you die, they collect the payout. This feels macabre to many people, but it is a highly effective way to generate immediate cash to pay for an in home nursing staff. A seventy-eight-year-old man in Dallas could sell his universal life policy and use the two hundred thousand dollar lump sum to fund four years of continuous home care. You lose the asset, but you buy yourself peace and dignity in your final years.

Hybrid Insurance Products Bridging the Coverage Gap

The biggest objection people have to traditional long-term care insurance is the "use it or lose it" nature of the product. If you pay premiums for twenty years and then die suddenly of a heart attack, the insurance company keeps all your money and your family gets nothing. To solve this public relations problem, the insurance industry invented hybrid products. These policies combine the mechanics of life insurance or an annuity with a long-term care rider. They guarantee that someone is going to get a payout, whether it is you paying for a nurse or your children receiving a death benefit. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs might reveal that trading in your old, single-purpose policies for a modern hybrid is the smartest financial move you can make in your sixties.

Combining Life Insurance with Long-Term Care Riders

Products like Lincoln MoneyGuard or Pacific Life's PremierCare operate on a very straightforward premise. You pay a large upfront premium, perhaps one hundred thousand dollars, or you pay over a set number of years. The policy provides a death benefit of roughly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. However, if you need in home nursing care, the policy allows you to accelerate that death benefit to pay for your aides. If you exhaust the death benefit, an extension of benefits rider kicks in, providing another pool of money specifically for care. If you never need a nurse, your heirs get the death benefit. If you change your mind after five years, you can often get your original premium back. This eliminates the risk of wasting your premiums, but it requires tying up a massive amount of liquidity in a single insurance product.

Annuities Designed Specifically for Nursing Care Expenses

Fixed annuities can also be structured to handle the cost of aging in place. You give an insurance company a lump sum of cash, and they guarantee you a fixed interest rate. If you add a long-term care multiplier rider to the annuity, the math changes drastically when you get sick. If your account value is one hundred thousand dollars, the insurance company might promise to double or triple that amount if you meet the medical requirements for nursing care. You suddenly have a three hundred thousand dollar pool to draw from to pay your home health agency. The Pension Protection Act also allows the payouts from these specific annuity riders to be completely tax-free if they are used strictly for qualified long-term care expenses. It is a highly efficient way to self-insure without leaving your capital exposed to market crashes.

Self-Funding In Home Care Through Real Estate Assets

If you look at your portfolio and realize your insurance coverage is non-existent, you have to look at your hard assets. For most Americans, the bulk of their net worth is locked up in the drywall and shingles of their primary residence. You have spent thirty years paying off a mortgage in the suburbs of Atlanta, and now you have seven hundred thousand dollars of dead equity sitting underneath your feet. You cannot buy groceries with equity, and you certainly cannot pay a registered nurse with it. You have to convert that real estate into cash flow. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs requires looking at your house not just as a place to sleep, but as the ultimate bank account of last resort.

The Mechanics of Home Equity Conversion Mortgages

A reverse mortgage, specifically a federally insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM), is the primary tool for extracting cash from your house without having to sell it or make monthly payments. You borrow against the value of your home. The bank pays you, either in a lump sum, a line of credit, or monthly installments. The loan balance grows over time as interest accrues. You never have to pay the loan back as long as you live in the house, maintain it, and pay your property taxes. When you pass away or move into a nursing facility permanently, your heirs sell the house, pay off the bank, and keep any remaining equity. If the loan balance exceeds the value of the house, the federal insurance covers the difference. It is a non-recourse loan.

Managing Reverse Mortgage Payouts for Monthly Nursing Costs

Setting up a HECM line of credit is a brilliant strategy for funding intermittent in home nursing care needs. You only draw down the money when you actually have a bill from the home care agency. The unused portion of the credit line actually grows over time at the same interest rate as the loan. If you set up a two hundred thousand dollar line of credit at age sixty-five and do not touch it until you are eighty, you might find that you have a four hundred thousand dollar pool of cash waiting for you. You can use that money to pay the thirty-five dollar hourly rate for your home health aide without ever touching your stock portfolio. It is a highly effective way to isolate the massive costs of care and keep them from destroying the rest of your retirement plan.

Veterans Administration Benefits for Wartime Servicemembers

If you served in the armed forces during a period of war, you have access to a pool of benefits that most civilians do not even know exists. The Department of Veterans Affairs offers programs designed specifically to keep aging veterans out of state-run facilities and in their own homes. These are not standard disability claims tied to an injury you sustained while in uniform. These are pension programs designed to assist veterans whose health has failed them in their old age. If you are ignoring your military service while evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs, you are leaving thousands of tax-free dollars on the table every single month. The government owes you this money. You just have to prove you qualify for it.

The Aid and Attendance Pension Eligibility Requirements

The Aid and Attendance benefit is a specialized pension that provides a significant monthly cash payment to veterans, or their surviving spouses, who require the regular attendance of another person to assist with eating, bathing, or dressing. The financial requirements are strict. You must meet specific income and net worth limitations, which currently hover around one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, excluding your primary home and car. However, the VA allows you to deduct all your unreimbursed medical expenses, including the cost of your in home nursing aides, from your income. This means a veteran earning five thousand dollars a month from Social Security and a pension could still qualify if they are spending six thousand dollars a month on home care. The VA will step in and provide a cash supplement to bridge that gap.

Surviving the VA Application Process Without Losing Your Mind

The VA is a massive federal bureaucracy. Applying for the Aid and Attendance pension is an exercise in extreme patience. You will need your original discharge papers, detailed medical records, marriage certificates, and an exhaustive accounting of every penny you own and every penny you spend on medical care. The application can take six to nine months to process. Many veterans give up in frustration after receiving a denial letter based on a minor clerical error. Do not do this alone. Find an accredited claims agent or a veterans service organization in your county. They know exactly how the VA wants the forms filled out and they know the specific language the medical professionals need to use on the evaluation forms. They turn a nightmare process into a manageable administrative task.

Creating a Realistic Budget for Around-the-Clock Care

Insurance policies and government benefits are just the funding mechanisms. You still have to know the actual price tag of the service you are buying. You cannot plan a budget based on guesses or national averages. Healthcare is intensely local. The cost of a nurse in rural Alabama is wildly different from the cost of a nurse in downtown Boston. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs requires calling local agencies today and asking for their current rate sheets. You have to run the math on different scenarios. What does it cost to have someone visit for four hours a day to help with morning routines? What happens if you suffer a severe stroke and need someone sitting in a chair next to your bed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?

Hourly Rates for Registered Nurses Versus Home Health Aides

The letters behind the caregiver's name dictate the price. A Registered Nurse (RN) is highly trained medical personnel capable of administering IV medications, managing ventilators, and treating severe wounds. They are expensive. An RN can easily command eighty to one hundred dollars an hour. Most people do not need an RN for daily living. You need a Home Health Aide (HHA) or a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). These professionals provide the heavy lifting of eldercare. They help with bathing, toileting, preparing meals, and preventing falls. Their rates generally run between thirty and forty dollars an hour through an agency. Knowing the difference between these two levels of care prevents you from overpaying for medical expertise when all you really need is physical assistance and supervision.

Factoring in Administrative Costs from Care Agencies

You can try to hire a caregiver directly off a local job board to save money. You might pay them twenty-five dollars an hour directly instead of paying the agency thirty-five. This is a terrible idea for most retirees. When you hire directly, you become an employer. You have to handle payroll taxes, workers' compensation insurance, and background checks. If your caregiver gets sick on a Tuesday morning, you have no backup. A professional home care agency charges a premium because they handle all the administrative headaches. They run the background checks. They manage the payroll taxes. And most importantly, they guarantee coverage. If your regular aide calls in sick, the agency sends a replacement. Evaluating your budget means accepting that this administrative premium is worth every single penny to ensure your care never stops unexpectedly.

Tax Deductions for Unreimbursed Medical Expenses

When you are bleeding cash to pay for in home nursing care, the IRS offers a slight reprieve. The tax code allows you to deduct unreimbursed medical expenses if they exceed a certain percentage of your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). This means that if you are paying out of pocket because your insurance policies failed you, you can at least use those massive bills to drive your federal tax liability down to zero. This does not put cash back in your pocket immediately, but it preserves the cash you have by preventing you from handing it over to the government in April. Evaluating your existing coverage for in home nursing care needs involves looping your CPA into the conversation to map out exactly how your care costs will impact your tax returns over the next decade.

Itemizing Nursing Services on Your Federal Return

To take advantage of this deduction, you must stop taking the standard deduction and start itemizing on Schedule A. According to IRS Publication 502, the cost of an in home nursing attendant qualifies as a medical expense. The threshold is currently set at seven and a half percent of your AGI. If your AGI is one hundred thousand dollars, the first seven thousand five hundred dollars you spend on care is not deductible. But every dollar you spend over that threshold is deductible. If you spend eighty thousand dollars on home health aides in a single year, you get a massive tax write-off that can offset income from IRA withdrawals or capital gains. You must keep pristine records. Save every invoice from the care agency and ensure the contract explicitly states they are providing medical or personal care services.

My Personal Encounter with the Cost of Caregiving

My entire perspective on this subject shifted permanently the day my father-in-law collapsed in his driveway in Ohio. He was a proud man who had spent forty years working in logistics, managing massive supply chains with zero tolerance for error. He managed his money the exact same way. He had solid investments, a clear estate plan, and what he believed was excellent medical insurance. But when a severe neurological issue suddenly robbed him of his ability to walk and manage his own daily needs, we hit a brick wall. His insurance company outright denied coverage for an in home aide. They paid for a few weeks of physical therapy and then sent a letter declaring his condition "chronic." We were entirely on our own.

My father-in-law looked at the stack of denial letters from his insurance provider and simply shook his head. The quotes we received from local home health agencies were terrifying. We were looking at a burn rate of over seven thousand dollars a month just to keep him safe in his own house during the day. The math was brutal. Watching a man who had planned perfectly for retirement suddenly watch his net worth evaporate to pay for basic human assistance was a bitter pill. We ended up navigating the VA Aid and Attendance process on his behalf. It took eight months of relentless paperwork, tracking down old military records, and arguing with bureaucrats. When the approval finally came through, it was a massive relief, but the delay forced us to liquidate assets we had planned to hold for years.

That experience taught me that the numbers on a spreadsheet are meaningless if they are not protected by specific, legally binding contracts. The insurance companies are not your friends. They are profit centers. If you do not force them to explicitly cover in home nursing care in writing, they will walk away from you the moment you get sick. Evaluating coverage is not an academic exercise. It is a matter of basic survival for your portfolio. I realized then that almost nobody is actually prepared for the reality of paying a stranger thirty-five dollars an hour to help them stand up from a chair.

The Ongoing Mission Behind Derhems

That frustrating year dealing with my father-in-law's care needs was the catalyst for my own work. I was already deeply involved in the digital publishing space, specifically focusing on SEO strategies and content creation. But I realized there was a massive void in the market for straightforward, unvarnished truth about retirement planning. People were looking for answers, and they were getting generic fluff written by insurance company marketing departments. I was building a brand called Derhems to address these exact gaps in retirement planning for the United States market. I wanted to build a platform that did not pull punches when discussing the terrifying costs of aging.

Reviewing my GA4 analytics for Derhems showed me how many thousands of Americans search for this same problem every night at 2 AM. They type frantic queries into Google, trying to figure out how to pay for their mother's care without going bankrupt. They are looking for the exact information I had to learn the hard way. Building Derhems became an exercise in translating complex insurance jargon into actionable strategies. I focused heavily on covering the financial mechanisms that actually work, from reverse mortgages to hybrid life insurance policies. The traffic data confirmed my suspicions; the middle class is desperate for a roadmap to navigate the cost of long-term care.

My focus remains on tearing down the myths surrounding retirement. Standard medical insurance will not save you. Government programs will force you into poverty before they help you. You have to take control of this problem while you are still healthy and your mind is sharp. You have to sit down with your policies, read the exclusions, and buy the coverage you actually need. Waiting until you have a stroke to figure out how you will pay for an aide is a guaranteed disaster. The mission is simple: force people to look at the ugly math of aging in place and give them the tools to build a wall around their wealth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does standard Medicare pay for a full-time nurse at my house?
No. Standard Medicare only pays for short-term, part-time medical care prescribed by a doctor for recovery from an illness or injury. It strictly excludes long-term custodial care and around-the-clock nursing supervision.

Can I deduct the cost of a home health aide on my taxes?
Yes, the IRS allows you to deduct unreimbursed medical expenses, including the cost of in home nursing care, if the total expenses exceed 7.5 percent of your Adjusted Gross Income. You must itemize your deductions to claim this benefit.

What is an elimination period in a long-term care policy?
The elimination period is a waiting period before your insurance policy begins paying for your care. A typical period is 90 days, meaning you must pay for all in home nursing expenses entirely out of pocket for the first three months of your care.

How much money can I have and still qualify for Medicaid home care?
In most states, an individual applicant cannot hold more than two thousand dollars in countable assets. Certain assets, like your primary residence and a vehicle, are generally exempt, but the strict cash limits force most applicants to spend down their life savings first.

Will a Medicare Supplement (Medigap) policy pay for my daily home care?
No. Medigap policies are designed to cover the deductibles and copayments of standard Medicare. Since standard Medicare does not cover long-term custodial care, the supplement policy will not cover it either.

Can I use a reverse mortgage to pay for my nursing aides?
Yes, a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage allows you to draw cash from the equity in your primary residence tax-free. You can use a line of credit option to pay your monthly home health agency bills while continuing to live in the house.

Is it cheaper to hire an independent caregiver instead of using an agency?
While the hourly rate for an independent caregiver is often lower, you take on significant risks and administrative burdens as their employer, including handling payroll taxes, workers' compensation, and finding replacement coverage if they call in sick.

Legal Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal, or tax advice. Evaluating insurance policies and retirement planning strategies involves significant financial risk. You should consult with a qualified financial advisor, CPA, or elder law attorney before making any major decisions regarding your healthcare coverage, tax strategy, or estate plan. The author is not responsible for any financial losses incurred as a result of using the strategies discussed herein.