Your family love you and want to help you, so let them.
Please downsize before you have to. One day you’re going to wake up and no longer be able to cope. Yes, that two bedroom ground floor flat is a big come-down from the family home and the family home hold precious memories but it’s a lot easier to keep clean and you’ll welcome the lack of stairs in a few years. You’ll also enjoy being so much nearer the grandchildren.
And yes, your stuff is precious to you, but keeping it has a cost, so just keep key items and pass the rest to family.
Now let’s talk about money. Make it easy for yourself now by setting up direct debits and standing orders, because one day you’ll wake up and find it beyond you. Speaking of money, who do you hate less: your family or the taxman? If your assets are more than the Inheritance Tax threshold - which is very low in the UK compared to the US - transferring assets sooner rather than later is pure win. If you live 7 years, there’ll be no IHT to pay.
What? Who? Oh, are you Janet’s boy? I told Janet you’d never amount to anything and now here you are wanting to nose around my money. I’ll bet that floozy you married put you up to it. Where the hell are my slippers? Who took my Metamucil?
Just because you are “old” doesn’t mean you can’t still learn new things. The reason why all these new-fangled gadgets are so popular isn’t because people are silly and are just trying to be cool. It’s because these gadgets are useful and fun. The more you alienate yourself from current technology just because you choose to not “get it”, the more you will alienate yourself from other people and their lives. The faster the world will leave you behind. You can fight this, though. Just buy yourself whatever your grandkid has and have them teach you how to use it. If you don’t have a grandkid, have the neighbor kid show you.
I may have made my preperations a bit too soon, for some preperations and downsizing are not even neccessary. Here is what I did.
2 years before retirement I replaced the roof and all the plumbing on my house, made any foreseable repairs etc.
I bought a late model low mileage used car and truck ( truck was an old project truck that is finished now)
Gave the house to my son and moved into the 1 bedroon guesthouse, with adjoining workshop area.
Maintained good health insurance so I can't run up any debt for sickness.
I have some minor regrets occasionaly for downsizing so soon but overall I am not good at saving so may not have been able to do these things after I retired, now I don't worry about them. For some reason I am able to save more money in retirement than I did when I was working even though I earn quite a bit less, so yes over all I am a happy camper,
Paid off all bills and prepaid my cremation
Great advice and I would add, after witnessing older F&F in their health probs:
If you need that knee/hip replacement DO IT NOW! Waiting til the cows come home isnt going to make it go away and in fact it will only get worse. If your Dr has recommended surgery vs. physiotherapy … DO EET!
Also with the cataracts: its a simple surgery now and you will be amazed at what you are missing. Get it done now while Medicare will still reimburse for it. You can pay a little extra and even have 20/40 vision or better again with a custom lens implant instead of the standard-issue non-prescription one.
Advance Directives - do them, please. And then share them with your family so they can all be on the same page. I don’t care if you’re “want it all” or “if I have hangnail, let me go” or something in between. What I care is that I do what you want, and I can’t know what that is unless you tell me while you can. (This is more like “Advice to everybody,” but a lot of elders haven’t done it yet, and the matter becomes even more pressing with every passing cholesterol test.)
Keep as active as you can as long as you can. The reason the physical therapist doesn’t want you to wear a back brace or the doctor doesn’t want to order a power chair isn’t because they’re money grubbing stingy jerks. It’s because when people rely on adaptive devices before they need truly them, they decline faster and injure themselves more and face higher complication rates. Use it or lose it is even more true at 90 than 19.
On the other hand, there are tons of amazing adaptive devices out there that can make your life easier without turning you into a dependent lump, from sock pullers to weighted spoons to lighted magnifiers. If you’re having trouble getting things done that used to be easy, ask your doctor to refer you to an Occupational Therapist. They have the best toys!
Bowels slow with age. Only going once every other day, or once every three days is not “constipation.” If your stool is well formed and not painful, it’s normal. That being said, fiber is great. Prune are a classic for a reason (they’re selling them as “dried plums” now), but raisins and dried apricots work well, too. And drink more water.
Cognitive decline is NOT a normal part of aging. You are perfectly capable of learning new things, but you might need different ways of learning, and more time to learn in smaller chunks. If the person showing you how to work an iPad is going too fast, tell them, don’t pretend to understand because they’re getting impatient. Better yet, sign up for a class designed for seniors, taught by someone who knows how senior brains learn best.
In addition, if older folks have one child that is doing all of their caregiving, grocery shopping, driving them to doctors’ appointments, etc., then this adult child deserves most of the inheritance, assuming that the other sibling(s) that live in the area and have the time but refuse to help with the excuse that they are “too busy”. Believe it or not, there are some adult children of elderly parents, that live near them and do absolutely nothing to help their parents. These adult children barely deserve two cents. It is totally different if the adult children live too far away to help. In addition, to the one adult child doing all of the caregiving, etc., this wonderful person has to deal with the frustration and anger of a sibling that will stubbornly not help. Please do not just leave a little more money to the adult child that does the caregiving, give them most of it. They are far more deserving.
Why is that Quartz? I know I know, another thread …
Also, please do get an executor for your estate/will. Dont appoint one of your children to do it unless s/he feels comfortable with it. The family member will just end up having to hire a lawyer to do it anyway (file papers with courts, etc).
Good idea about the automatic payments for utilities, mortgage, etc too. My mom RIP had the foresight to do this, but forgot about paying her taxes for the last year :smack:
I read that it takes about two years for that retirement home to truly feel like “home”. If you wait with moving untill you are too old to make yourself at home in the new place, it will just be a foreign place to be miserable in while you wait to die.
Move in time, while you still feel well enough to make friends and settle in.
Many cities in the USA have “retired in place” programs run by private groups. One is starting up in Portland as I write this. Basically, neighborhoods or parts of the city participate together in a cooperative effort to find plumbers, electricians, gardeners, home cleaners, shoppers, you-name-it, that you can pick and choose from for a fee. If yard work becomes too difficult, you can opt for the gardening service alone. The upside is that if you don’t want to leave the home you’ve made for yourself because you can’t handle the work required, or you just don’t want to live in one of those elephant graveyards, you don’t have to. It’s what I plan to do until they drag me gibbering and drooling out the back door.
The young folks can help us old folks in downsizing by not giving us more stuff. After a certain age – 50? – gifts should be things that can be used up.
If you don’t want to deal with it when I’m dead, don’t give it to me in the first place.
Get one of those medical panic buttons BEFORE you actually need it, or start the mental decline because you have to recognize what it is for if you fall. If you wait until you are crackers, you will not use it because you don’t remember what it is for. Also, if you need timed medications, start a routine - get one of those sort yourpill by the week things that has an alarm on it, always keep it in a specific place [by the chair you always sit in?] and train yourself to always take your medications when the alarm rings. Train yourself to a maintenance routine [get up, brush your teeth/put them in, take a shower, get dressed in clean clothes, take morning meds] it will help you stay reasonably clean and healthy if you can keep to a maintenance routine.
Take advantage of the programs and systems put in place to help you out now instead of waiting until you are sick or injured to try and figure them out. I have the same damn conversation with my 70 year old mother-in-law at least once a month.
MIL: I hate having to haul groceries from the store to my apartment. They are so heavy!
Me: You should sign up online for FreshDirect. They will bring your groceries right to your door at a time that is convenient for you so you don’t have to do any heavy lifting.
MIL: Oh no, that costs too much!
Me: Their prices are basically the same as your local store, maybe a slight bit higher but not noticeably so. Besides, isn’t it worth a few cents extra per item to have a strong young man haul your cat litter and 2 liter sodas across town and up the elevator to your door?
MIL: Oh no, I like getting out and going to the store.
Me: So just get your heavy stuff and your staples from FreshDirect and get your produce and whatnot from your local store.
MIL: Oh no, I don’t want to do that. Too much work!
Me: :rolleyes:
So now we get to wait until she breaks a bone or something and loses mobility, then we’ll get the frantic calls and crying because she doesn’t know what to do, how is she going to get her groceries and please don’t put her in a home, etc.
Jeebus, just go online and learn to work these systems now! Between FreshDirect, Wag.com, Soap.com, and all the other places that will take online orders and deliver necessities straight to your home in less than 48 hours there is no reason to feel like you can’t take care of yourself just because you aren’t able to go shopping.
Whenever my mother comes out with that speech about “how am I supposed to move? Where am I supposed to put my stuff?” I want to throttle her. The biggest items are things she did not want, they’re inheritances from my father’s side which she took on account of “there is no way I am going to let anybody else have MY part!” but which she misses no occasion to say she hates… no, I never claimed she was good at logic.
The part about “a smaller place would cost about as much as I’d get for this one” is true, though.
Hopefully we’ll get to see her in the old folks’ home (or living with my brother and his wife, both of whom suffer from a certain amount of martyrdom syndrome) before I do throttle her.
Yes, my brother does not bring you any heavy shopping. If you purchase more than 20€, delivery from any of the three supermarkets which are within 100yds of your home is free. And the guy who does all three deliveries is one of your neighbors that you like, remember? You go over 20€ any time you buy fish, just use those times to ask for water and milk to be delivered!
At one point, when she was already a widow and all five of her children married, my paternal grandma called all of them and gave 100K Pta to each. They protested. She said “you and you, you work for the Treasury. If I died today and you inherited this, how much would the Treasury claim?” “Uh… 15%.” “And if I give it to you?” “Nothing.” “Allright then! If I ever get to the point where my income is not enough for my needs, I’ll ask you for help. Meanwhile do not tell me what to do with my money.”
Figure out how your financial situation will affect getting into the old folks’ home or the aid programs you’re eligible for. Write a will; see whether it makes more sense to hold onto things or to give them to your children before you die. Depending on the local legal system, you may be able to give them even your house while keeping “full usage and decision rights”, which means it doesn’t count as yours for tax and net worth purposes but your children can’t so much as move the salt shaker without your permission: look into it.
Grandma moved in in May; she will protest about not being in her house until the day she dies, but she’s already got more friends than she’d had in years. Heck, in decades; the woman lived in something very close to total isolation. A lot of the connections had to do with a day trip they took, where she discovered that she knew their hometown better than anybody else. She became and instant authority, and loves it when people ask her about this or that place pictured in the newspaper - something about which she previously hadn’t realized she knew more than most people. She’s a seamstress/clothes designer, but so are several others and they were pretty wary to talk shop under the old adagio of “no designer likes another one’s work”; after someone asked one of them how to fix a blouse, this one asked another one who was close whether she agreed with the solution, and then they asked Grandma (who was a bit further and hadn’t heard it), and all three were in agreement, now they feel a lot more comfortable. Other residents are authorities of Things French, baking, chess…
Be realistic about mortgages. Dont think in 30 years you will “only” be 80, or “anything can happen” by then. If you haven’t started your mortgage by 40, you have to take a hard look at how long you will be paying it. Honestly, will you be able to handle a full time job at 70? It might be nice to think about leaving a house to your children, but do you really want to leave them debt as well?
Another important one: if you are collecting gold, silver, coins, stamps, whatever, never assume it will stay in the family. I’ve been watching a lot of eBay sales and maybe .1% of everything inherited is not sold at a fraction of the value. You have to remember that your most cherished possessions probably will remind your heirs about you, and thus be very painful. The best way to ensure something will stay in your family is to give it while you are still alive, and never give more than 3 at a time. More than that and they become extras. Its better for everyone if the most knowledgable person about the collectible (you), sell it at the best possible price, then have the cash be inherited.
I gave my mom a similar book tailored to the Dutch situation. It was issued by our Dutch consumers magazine, actually. I proofread it before sending it to her.
My mom is 75, single, and not in the best of health, but she still lives on her own and semiannually moves to her second home in a warmer climate. She toys with the idea of selling both houses and moving into a faciltity that offers more care, but I think it will still be a couple years before she does that.
The only immediate thing my mom implemented from the book I gave her, was the idea of ordering meals on wheels. Well, that should help her a lot with healthy eating (she buys a lot of food that goes bad in her fridge), so that’s at least a win right there.
