Of course they can. There’s no reason adult children can’t help if that’s what they want to do, like you did. What I was saying is that it should not be considered a duty of any offspring; also that every situation is different. This caught my eye in your narrative:
I don’t know where you live, but that sort of thing is not available everywhere or to everyone. It makes a huge difference to the situation if personal care and nursing are provided by an outside source.
Not to mention more children could mean that each child thinks the others will do it. Or one gets her (usually) life screwed up by eldercare.
My father-in-law lived to almost 101. The last 10 years he lived in an elder community, which was great. He was on assisted living for only a year. My wife is an only child, and we live on the other side of the country. We invited him here, but he preferred to stay near his friends. He also picked up a girlfriend (older than him) at 95 or so.
But it is all easier with decent amounts of money.
I’ve currently been pondering this. I’m in the middle of a 2-month nightmare of mom not being able to walk, and dad landing in the ICU with sepsis and pneumonia. I’m managing ok, thanks to having my own business (so I can’t lose my job) and getting some help from my brother and uncle. But it has been a whirlwind of hard work!
And this is just a precursor of things to come. Thankfully neither parent is dying. They’re 71. This is just a preview of things to come.
Anyway, as a child-free-by-choice person I suddenly find myself thinking “fuck fuck fuck fuck!!”
However I do bring myself back down to earth by saying “having children doesn’t guarantee you care.”
I do try to stay close with my friends’ kids, though. I’ve got $100 worth of candy and books ready to go out to 6 kids for Valentine’s day.
I’ve only known two childless people who ended up needing help - my great-aunt and her brother (neither ever married) . He was not particularly family-focused at any time in my life so didn’t have close relationships with his nieces and nephews and their kids. He was low-income and qualified for Medicaid so he had a home attendant. She was physically in better shape than him and was much closer to various nieces and nephews, particularly the sons of the sibling she had lived with. She didn’t need much care - she went into a nursing home a few months before she died (arranged by a nephew) but prior to that , the help she needed was doing the shopping , help with her finances, that sort of thing which she got from family that lived near her. That wouldn’t have worked if she had needed more help, like bathing and dressing or if it had been dangerous for her to be at home.
Then the fall back is Medicaid. It ain’t pretty, but it’s the way we in the US have chosen to operate, so it’s what you get if you are unable or unwilling to save enough to pay for your care at the end of your life.
Then the people who appeared to have quite a lot of money set aside did not in fact have enough money set aside. These expenses aren’t a state secret. Ask around how much assisted living costs per month, find out what the average stay in assisted living is, and plan on saving a significant amount above and beyond that amount to account for inflation and for the possibility that your stay could be significantly longer. Same goes for skilled nursing. Ask these questions early in your earning years, then if you’re not good with finance/numbers, ask a financial planner what kind of savings/investing plan it will take for you to get there. Reassess periodically as you age so that you can assure you’re staying on target.
To the extent that this advice is not useful for people because they’re already old or they will never be able to save enough money to cover the anticipated costs of elder care, I acknowledge that this is a tough situation, at least here in the US. Which leads me to wonder, how is elder care handled in other developed countries?
When the people who are now in their 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s were early in their earning years, a prediction of actual current medical and assisted care expenses would have appeared utterly absurd.
Anyone now in their 20’s or 30’s trying to predict what they’ll need in their 80’s or 90’s is facing the same problem. We’ve no idea how much they’ll need.
– and, as I think you acknowledge, there were a lot of people who never had the possibility of saving enough to cover their likely current costs; and, as I think you may also acknowledge, relying entirely on Medicare, especially if you have no one who can or no one who will put in many hours acting as your advocate and have the resources to do so well, is all too likely to result in a really unpleasant experience.
I’m also curious as to how this is handled elsewhere. Do countries with good national coverage of medical costs include long-term care in that? Do they cover advocates for people who don’t have any, or perhaps have less need for them? I think some may rely even more heavily on familial help, but I don’t know for certain.
EZPZ. Childfree by choice, married 52 years, we’re still each others’ best friend. Both of us were working professionals, but all the same we never lived above our means. Saved enough $$ to afford nursing care should we ever need it. We’re not there yet but we can see it from here. No worries.
In my mind, anyone one such a facility will get better treatment overall if it’s seen that they have SOMEONE to visit them regularly. Not necessarily that people would be deliberately abused, but “forgetting” to do stuff for the patient is easier if they are not called out on it. We found this to be very true when my MIL was in a rehab facility after her hip replacement: FIL had heart surgery at the same time and could not visit. The staff got chewed out once by SIL when she was there (for not doing what they were supposed to), and when BIL got there a few days after SIL left, things had still not been corrected.
For the OP’s situation, finding that “someone” will be tough. You’re just so much more vulnerable to accidental or deliberate mistreatment.
I don’t honestly know what the answer is. Friends of ours, who are 10-15 years older, have actually let a young couple move into part of their townhouse to provide assistance. They have a son - but he lives a thousand miles away.
With our in-laws, they are likely to be in a Medicaid-funded home sooner rather than later - and we are trying to figure out WHERE (they live a thousand miles away from any family).
Nice work if you can get it. My mother’s nursing home memory care cost 20K a month, and she was there for almost three years.
I think her savings covered the first year, and then Medicare kicked in. We were very careful when we picked the nursing home, we picked the best one we could find that took Medicare at all. It was a good place, they didn’t have a lot of Medicare beds and it would’ve been almost impossible to get in as a Medicare patient, but if you were already there as a self-pay patient they would accept Medicare and wouldn’t kick you out. We did this on advice that we had gotten when we were selecting the nursing home.
If you are in the situation where putting your parent in a nursing home is imminent, contact an attorney that specializes in elder care sooner rather than later. You should definitely do so before you start liquidating assets to pay for a nursing home……it may be advisable to go on Medicaid instead of selling their house. They will also need to be careful about giving large gifts to their children, as those can have an effect on Medicaid eligibility.
This. As I have no children, this is a big fear of mine that I have been dwelling on lately.
I am genuinely glad that your lives have been so successful, personally and financially. I hope this continues for you. I also hope that you recognize that many peoples’ lives have not been so “EZPZ”, for a wide variety of reasons, many of which many of them were not in control of.
This is something I think about almost constantly. 
I have no family at all,
not even a cousin.
Facebook has groups like “Aging alone” and “Elder Orphans,” but I think it comes down to having at least one person in your life whom you can trust as an advocate. And to avoid a crisis, you should get yourself situated with care (whether at home or a facility) before you need it.
I went through this with my parents who always denied they needed help. I assume the State would have taken over if I hadn’t been in the picture.
It was a mess.
Child free widow here who hopes to have a healthy old age. Also the youngest sibling of my generation, and I’ve outlived two of the next generation already. So I have concerns.
I try to stay as healthy and active as possible. Granted, this is no guarantee but there are no guarantees. I eat a healthy diet. I am currently visiting a gym 3 days a week for cardio work outs in addition to all the other walking/bicycling/etc I can fit in. I get check ups and so far have avoided chronic illnesses other than allergies (which I’ve had all my life) and some osteoarthritis.
I make an effort to socialize and make friendships with people of all ages, including people younger than me. This helps keep me healthy and engaged, and increases the odds of someone giving a damn when I get older.
Several other friends and I are planning to retire together. All of us are childless and have a good chance of outliving our siblings. The plan is for us to look out for each other as if we were siblings/family. We also are making plans to retire to a residence that is age-in-place friendly.
At present, although I am not particularly old, I have medical power of attorney, financial power of attorney, living will, and dead will set up.
There is absolutely NO chance, short of winning a lottery jackpot (exceedingly unlikely - I almost never play) that I will ever have sufficient funds for an extended stay in a care facility. Just not happening. Sorry. It was unlikely enough in the early '00’s but then the Great Recession hit and to keep us from being homeless our savings had to be liquidated to pay for housing and food. Then the spouse got terminally ill and died. I am currently rebuilding my retirement (great fun, starting over with that in your 50’s) so as long as I stay healthy and can live on my own, managing my own affairs I will have a moderately comfortable retirement.
If things go south I wind up in a Medicaid hell-hole. Because that’s what happens in our society to people who aren’t wealthy and don’t have a lot of relatives willing to take them in and/or watch over them.
Correction: I believe you mean Medicaid, not Medicare.
Medicare does not cover nursing home care at all.
We are looking at having to cough up several months of the fees for the in-laws when we do make that move, just to get in the door. This is money none of the adult kids have to spare.
So what? The question wasn’t about “varieties of reasons”, it was specifically about childless old people, and I answered it.
(Nitpicky) correction to the correction: Medicare will pay for limited amounts of nursing home care for purposes of rehabilitation, when somebody has a realistic chance of being able to return to the community and just needs some physical therapy or something of that sort to recover after an illness or injury. Medicare will not pay for long-term nursing home care for somebody who isn’t going to recover and needs primarily custodial care.
My mom has a friend who is a widow with no children. She was fortunate in that her husband left her well off. She bought into a retirement/nursing/long-term-care community. As her health declines she’ll move from an apartment to assisted care to whatever she may require.
No clue what a person of lesser means would do - die alone?
Yes, basically.
If you can’t get help and can’t afford a nice retirement home (or whatever) you muddle along in whatever situation you are in until Something Bad happens. Maybe you fall and can’t get up and die of thirst on the floor of your home. Maybe suffer some sort of medical episode and die your bed, just not immediately. It can be an ugly way to go.
I’m speaking from ignorance here: has the cost of eldercare greatly exceeded the cost of inflation?
In any event, a projection is all one has to go on for planning purposes. To the extent that cost projections increase wildly as a person ages, that’s why mentioned the need to reassess periodically throughout one’s earning years.
Bottom line, the OP asked what people without any helpful adult children do to take care of themselves as their physical and mental health declines. I stand by my advice: formulate a financial target for a portion of your nest egg dedicated to the time in your life when you’ll need help with daily living, do what you can to save toward that target, and reassess periodically to see whether you need to adjust your target. Hopefully you’ll have saved enough when the time comes, but if you haven’t, Medicaid will assure you don’t end up homeless. With no family member to advocate for you, you may not enjoy the same level of comfort and professional attention as your peers who do have a family advocate - and that’ll be true whether you’re paying your own way or relying on Medicaid.
Yes, you are right…I meant to say Medicaid.