I want to add my thanks to @ThelmaLou for sharing your experience. My dad been saying, “in about 5 years”, for at least 2 years and I should probably have the talk with my parents. There’s a new complex which is going through the approval process that would be very good for my parents, at least for location.
I’m definitely interesting in learning more about how to find the right place.
Thank you, @ThelmaLou, for update: including the updated pictures of the cats! They do indeed seem to have settled in well.
Since I don’t drive I would definitely be bringing my friend with me to any place I’m considering. One of the times we were talking she mentioned that she had a place she wanted to check out with me one of the times she comes to visit. Right now she’s planning to come over in a couple of weeks, so we may do it then.
I haven’t started doing any searching because I’ve been busy preparing for a trip this week, after which my friend will be visiting. I may consider starting a thread when/if my search process begins.
@LSLGuy When I retired I sold the huge house in Chicago preparatory to moving down to NC, so I’m familiar with some of the logistics of selling and changing locations. When I first moved down here I rented a condo for a year and half before buying my present house. The difference in house costs between Chicago and where I am now meant that I was able to pay off the new house in just a few years, so my only housing expenses now are utilities and property taxes. Between my pension, IRAs and savings I’m pretty comfortable financially.
We recently signed an agreement with A Home, with a target year of moving in of 2030 (my husband is 70 and I am 63).
The one we chose is a continuing care retirement community (CCRC). Most of these communities want you to move in while you are still able to function independently, and they require a buy-in. You move into a house/condo/apartment on their property, and if you need it later, you move into assisted living or nursing care, all on the same campus.
There are several excellent ones in our general area. The models for these can vary a bit, so if you are interested in that type of community, be sure to check out which one they use.
Some will offer home health services, so if you need help temporarily, or are in an ‘in-between’ situation where you need some help, but not enough to go to assisted living, you can get that on a pay-for-service basis.
Some will require you to pay for a meal plan – a certain number of meals per month in the dining room. Some won’t – the one we chose does not, so we’ll only pay if we eat there.
Make sure they have some type of system set up that will allow you to keep living there, like ThelmaLou’s place does, if you run out of money. For ones that are religiously-based, that fund is often supplemented with donations by the church it’s affiliated with.
Also make sure they can and do accept Medicaid for nursing care if you end up outliving your money and needing that service.
One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is to make sure you look at the place’s financials - you don’t want to move into a place that’s on the verge of bankruptcy. I’ve seen some very sad stories of older folks whose community went belly-up.
Big difference to the residents between a CCRC going bankrupt and an ordinary independent / assisted / SN facility going BM.
Both are inconvenient as hell at a vulnerable time of life. The former is generally financially disastrous to the residents to boot.
such as this story
the residents lost everything…Bankruptcy law dictates that when the owner goes broke, whatever money is left gets distributed first to the lawyers, then to the mortgage banks, and NOTHING has to be given to the residents (who are labelled “unsecured creditors”), and get thrown out on the street, even though they paid their entire life savings for the buy-in.
One tipping point for us was the last repair we had to have done, a plumbing drain problem that ended up costing us about $20K.
Excellent, informative post. 
Note that where I live did not require any buy-in. The organization that managers the property where I live does have a luxury property that demands a buy-in. Mine is strictly month to month with no official contract. I can move out with a month’s notice.
If and when I need it, there are other levels of care within this organization at their other locations-- assisted living, memory care, rehab, skilled nursing… Personally, I would rather a piano just fall out of the sky one day and land on me.
not just one lunch. Check the food service very,very,very carefully.
Here are my observations, based on my parents’ experience after moving to a (very nice) facility:
FOOD IS IMPORTANT! But also a bit of a problem.
When you first move in, of course, you might not use the institution’s cafeteria. You may prefer to cook all your food for yourself, just the way you are used to at home. But one huge reason you are moving into an institution is that you no longer want the hassles of living in your private home–and one of the biggest hassles of life is shopping and cooking. As you age, you really appreciate the easier life in the facility (whether independent, or assisted living) and you will gradually start taking all your meals the easy way….from the cafeteria.
It’s a funny thing about people: when you are in your own house, you don’t mind having a menu which is boring and standard–say, 5 or 6 meals that you make regularly, and repeat over and over again during a month. But if you go out to eat, and you find that you’re limited to only 5 or 6 items on the menu, you get tired of those items real quick.
The food service at your institution may be very good.. It may resemble a nice little cafe, or a restaurant chain like Panera. But try to imagine eating at Panera 3 meals a day, every day, for 10 years. You’d get real tired of it, wouldn’t you? (Seriously–try this as an experiment: For a week, pick a nice restaurant that you like , and eat there every single day. You will get tired of it, trust me.)
So when checking out potential places to move, don’t just enjoy one nice lunch while the sales guide chats you up. Eat there more than once. Or, if that gets awkward (after all, they are not a restaurant open to the public, and they won’t welcome you to eat there multiple times) then check out the food very thoroughly, to see that it matches your tastes.
On the day that you take the tour and eat there, don’t just look at the hamburger or salad that you ordered; look at each and every item on the menu. Even if that means walking back and forth along the cafeteria line several times looking like an idiot, or peeking rudely over the shoulders of complete strangers to see what they are eating. Look at all the items on the menu, and which items you would want to eat—every day for the rest of your life.
Then ask for a printed copy of the menu for the entire week, and read it very very carefully. Check the items which change every day, or are only offered once a week, etc. Take a pen and make a list of which items you like. List any other dishes that you currently eat at home but are not on the menu–things that you would miss.
My point is that food service affects your mood. If you find it boring, and even a bit unpleasant to walk into the cafeteria; If you say to yourself, “oh, shit, once again, there’s nothing here that appeals to me right now” –then you get irritated, and you start to regret that you moved into the facility.
Of course, that happened to you all the time at home, before you moved, right? 
I do it all the time–open my refrigerator and wonder, “Geez., what is there in here that I want to eat? Nothin’ really… Should I heat up the leftover meal from last night? naw…too boring. Maybe make a nice salad, slice up lettuce and carrots and onions and tomatoes, grate some cheese? naw..too much work. Hell, I’ll just make a lousy sandwich, just spread some mayonaise on a slice of bread and dump can of tuna on it…yeah, that’s easy, I’ll do that.”
My point is that when you have control over your meals, and you make your own choices–then you feel in control of your life, and you don’t mind eating a poorly-prepared tuna sandwich. But when somebody else controls your meals, and serves you a poorly-prepared item….you get angry, and feel that you are being forced to eat something you don’t want, and you do not have control over your life.
So check out the food service very carefully, and compare each institution you visit.
Well, yes! But since that probably isn’t going to be an option :), we decided to be clear-eyed about it. Both my grandmothers and both my parents had dementia at the end of their lives (neither of my grandfathers lived long enough to get to that point). Not a good ancestral track record for me. Maybe I will get lucky and something else will take me out first.
Also, since there are two of us, and one of us could end up needing a different level of care than the other, having all of it in one place was a consideration for us. At least we’d be in the same place.
Brilliant post! And every word is true. When I first moved here, the novelty of having somebody else plan, cook, and clean up after meals was pretty cool. That did wear off. And of course now that I cook a lot of things for myself, I wind up cooking the same things over and over again. But somehow when the dining room serves the same things over and over again, you feel kind of abused. And to further extend the irony, when I go to certain restaurants I always order the same thing there!
But you are right about the food. The food has to be good.
And the coffee! The coffee must be good. Fortunately, coffee is available here all the time, around the clock, and it is excellent.
That was the case here for several couples. The wife in each case was here at Independent living, and the husband in each case was at one of the sister facilities. The couples were under the same large roof, as it were. All three of the husbands died within the last 6 months. It was helpful to the women that they were already established here in their own community.
When my husband passed away 25 years ago, since I’m an only child and we had no children (he was also an only child), I was really all on my own. And of course by the time I get dementia, since I don’t have any family, I won’t be aware of who visits me or who doesn’t. I guess that’ll be okay. I’d rather have the piano…
Six years ago we sold our house of 47 years and bought into a condo. The move was a wrench and we got rid of a lot of stuff including a lot of books. But we took a lot with us. Now six years, I am facing the fact that my wife has growing memory problems and I am doing more and more of the cooking. Last spring, one of our sons visited and arranged for us to see an assisted living facility about two miles away. You pay a basic rent and pay for whatever additional services are required. They had several different size apartments, but the one I found attractive was about 2/3 of our condo. We could fit much, but not all of our furniture there, but would have to lost a lot of books (there are several boxes that have not left our storage space in the basement) and there will be no 2nd BR (or bath) for visitors.. Still I would do it if I could simply pay someone to move us.
The facility itself is very nice and seems well managed. The manager who took us through make an extremely soft sell.
The other thing is that when I asked the manager if there was a bridge club, she said there was, but it was in French. I guess that means that French is the language for the majority of occupants. The older I get the more of a downer that will be.
That has been the most excruciating loss of my last two moves.
Yep. I am also an only child, and didn’t have kids. Our closest relatives are my husband’s brother and his wife, who also didn’t have kids. They’re 500 miles away. We were not going to be able to rely on relatives for anything.
Another thing I should mention is that if you are in your 60s and are thinking that A Home is something you will be wanting or needing to do, don’t put off looking around for one that might suit.
Many of the highest rated ones have waiting lists, often long ones. Don’t expect to be able to move in next week, next month, or in many cases next year. The one here that was at the top of our list had a 10-year waiting list 5 years ago when I first looked into it, and it’s grown to 10-15 years, with only the smallest apartments available on the 10-year list. The one we ended up choosing has a 2-5 year wait, again depending on what type unit you are looking to move into. This facility is larger and has more room, and the individual living units are larger*, so that’s all good. The one minus is that it’s about 30 minutes from where we currently live, and I would have liked to be closer.
*Some of their living spaces are larger than what we live in now - so moving to these places doesn’t always mean smaller accommodations.
Thanks to everyone for sharing your experiences
Very true.
Also true. When I moved here the place was not full, because it had reopened a couple of years prior after being closed for a few years to reconfigure everything. Now every apartment is full and there is a waiting list.
My house was $1,100 ft², and this apartment is about 840, So it’s only slightly smaller. Just about everything fit in here. The bedroom here is bigger than my bedroom at the house. What I don’t have in the apartment is a separate dining room and that accounts for the difference in square footage. Also here I don’t have any kind of a porch or balcony or any direct access to the outside. My front door opens into a hallway on the second floor with an elevator and a stairway. So if my cats did show any interest in going out the front door of my apartment they wouldn’t be able to get very far. Unless one stood on the other one’s shoulders to reach the elevator button. And frankly, they don’t get along well enough to even assist each other in a jailbreak.
The largest units at the place we chose are 2,200 sq. feet, 3 bedrooms. We’ll be downsizing a little bit from 3 bedrooms/1,880 sq. feet. to 2 bedrooms and about 1,600 sq. feet, with a 300 sq. foot storage space. And a lot less land, but I expect at the point we move we won’t miss that part much, since it’s a lot of work.
I’m already going through stuff to see what we can do without.
I did a search for options that might be available in a 25 mile radius.
I did find one place just opening and got excited but it has income limits which I do not fit into.
That seems to be the trouble for someone like me.
Not wealthy enough to afford the retirement communities and above the income guidelines for what seems to be available.
There doesn’t seem to be anything for us middle of the road folks in my area.
I’ll keep looking.
Speaking just to this bit …
I have long been of the opinion it is silly to move into a place and deliberately provision a guest bedroom. How many nights a year will it be occupied for how much additional rent or mortgage you’re paying? Good bet you could put your years’-worth of guests up in a nearby fancy hotel for less money. So either get a place with one less bedroom, or at least set that room up as something you can use every day, not something they can use 3 days per year.
Guest rooms make some sense as a natural outgrowth of having a house full of children who grow up and move out, leaving unused bedroom(s) behind. But deliberately designing one into your next residence? Folly IMO.
Sez the not-so-social dude with zero extended family.
You’ve mentioned that idea before, and I remember being struck by how conflicted it made me feel. It makes so much sense financially, yet it seems to tangle some deep-rooted conventions for me. Hosting guests in ones home entails some sort of emotional generosity that is part of the deal. Having a friend or family member advise me that they’re coming to town would hardly ever be an occasion for me to say “Great, I’ll put you up in a deluxe hotel.”
How do you imagine that working (or, how do you do it)?