I recently worked with Pat to place Larry in a different assisted living community than where he was currently living. Pat felt Larry wasn't getting the best care he needed to manage his dementia.  To make matters worse, the monthly rent increased by 30% at the beginning of the year, which would make a big difference in how long Pat could keep Larry in an assisted living community if he remained physically healthy.  Instead of starting from scratch and understanding Larry's story from the beginning, I had to begin by asking an entirely different set of questions than those I would ask of a family that was just beginning a search.  There were some very specific care requirements Pat had for Larry, and we also had to be very clear about the financial requirements in order to make Larry's monthly pension and cash reserves last as long as Larry might.  This presented a different set of challenges and required gathering a little more hard data on how the communities we were looking at would manage Larry's dementia. it also took Pat to understand that there would be a trade-off in geography to obtain her financial objectives and keep the monthly rent within Larry's means.  While we achieved both of her objectives, we were able to leverage her dissatisfaction with Larry's current community to improve his dementia support and return the pricing to the level it was before the rate increase. This saved Pat thousands of dollars in moving expenses and hassles with moving Larry.