One other thing on shrinking budgets....

Prior to her death, my mother lived in a nursing home facility.

Her small room ran, $6,000 a month, and that was 10 years ago.

There were many residents in that facility and it didn't take much calculation to figure out that that facility generated $$$ millions of dollars a year.

However, they refused to pay for any entertainment. "We have no budget for that" I would hear from the activities director.

Truth is, that business...and that's what it was a business, was generating big income for it's investors.

And that income was what was most important. To pay a few entertainers each month a $100 or so would have been such a small part of the monthly budget(I estimated once about .001% of
their monthly budget) that no one would have missed it.

Many of these places are big business and big business likes big returns.

That said, there are a number of places in our area where I live now that find entertainment important enough to have a budget for it.

It's a place like that that 'cares' that I'm going to choose to live in when the time comes.