A neighbour of mine died over the weekend. This made me think about the implications of living longer than you thought you would when you planned for your retirement, and the implications of living "past your sell-by date."

I know that most people think they are fit to take care of themselves until they can't and that they will then take themselves off to a care facility.

The reality is that when you retire, you have an income, whether it's from private investments or from a government pension. You have a place where you live and you are a late middle age adult able to go on with dealing with your life.

Then ten years later, when you are in old age, you notice small things that you aren't prepared for: your health is deteriorating, your memory is failing, your possessions that perhaps you replaced when you retired are showing signs of needing replacement, and especially your car, that is now way too expensive to replace is needing replacement.

What do you do. I know that all the people I've spoken to say they are more than capable of living on their own and taking care of themselves and their affairs, until they are really old, and people as old as 90 are still living alone.

But how are they living? The technology of 30 years after they retired is beyond them, they can't figure it out, so they rely on younger people to help them when it doesn't work, or they bother their children with phone calls asking for advice. They might still be driving but are a hazard on the road, and when they shop they become bewildered by the choices, and distressed when the foods they've eaten all their lives aren't available anymore.

Do you get your kids to check on you, empty your fridge of stale food, fix your car, take you to doctors, or do you go to live in a facility where strangers do it for you, at a cost that you possibly can't afford, so you go into a cheaper facility where you don't get the care you deserve.

Are your kids responsible? Should you allow them to take over your finances? Should you ask them to take care of you rather than put you in a facility? I'm interested to hear what other people think.

What happens in your country? Is there a mandated retirement age? Is your government pension enough to live on? Do you get help with accommodation, care, health care, shopping, financial issues and so on?

The general idea in my circle is that people should live independent lives for as long as possible, as much as possible. In order to make this happen we all should help out where we can.

Only one grannie is still around. She's the grandmother of my wife. It's a 93 years old lady and lives in her own home. My father-in-law, who was a statutory auditor before he retired, controls her finances. She has an elevator installed in her home because it's not safe/too difficult for her to walk stairs. I and my mother-in-law do the gardening. My uncle and his son do general maintenance (painting/fixing lights etc). A nurse visits regularly, and there's a seperate help for cleaning the house.

I don't have grandparents left, but my parents are now elderly.

My grandparents moved from a rented 3 bed house to a 1 bed bungalow when they retired. Then when they became older and more frail they demanded to be put into care homes - they would not allow my parents to take them in and look after them - and in fact they decided to go into two different homes because their levels of need were different. Both were council run homes, but they had to give up the money from the purchase of their bungalow to pay for their care (apart from the bit they were able to transfer to my parents beforehand). Council run homes (and indeed private homes) vary greatly in quality, but my grandparents never had any complaints about theirs.

My parents (76 and 81) live in the same home they moved into when they retired, a 2 bed with an upstairs. Their mobility is far less now (mum has had a hip and knee replacement, has broken her femur and her arm and has had a heart attack, my dad is just old and slow with sciatica) and although they live near to my sister she is useless. When they need to go to the doctor they get a taxi (they are lucky enough to be able to afford it) and there also exists a local scheme providing transport for the elderly to take them to and from hospital appointments. They are actually very up on technology (they have a PC, laptops, tablets, smartphones, ereaders - the lot) and order their shopping online as well as my mum's wool for her crocheting, birthday presents and clothes. In the future I want them to come and live with me, and my mum and I have hatched a plan to renovate our house to give them their own living quarters, but my dad doesn't want to come because he doesn't like the North. Also they feel guilty about leaving my sister who has mental health issues on her own. So who knows what will happen there in the end. At the moment I just try not to worry about something I can't control.

Oh, and it's assumed that people here are far more ready to put their elderly relatives into homes when they become unable to look after themselves, but certainly here in the North this isn't always the case, with children considering it their responsibility to look after them. Certainly I think it will be my duty when the time comes.

Well hell this is a depressing thread and it resembles me......

Yes I felt it was my duty when my mum had to be cared for. She lived in a flat on my sister's property after my dad died, but then she and the brother-in-law fell out (which wasn't hard to do, he was a horrible man), and she moved to a flat in a retirement complex, and lived there until she fell and broke the stump that held her prothesis, so she had to use a wheel chair. I wasn't able to travel the 100+ kilometres to visit her more regularly than once a month, so it made sense to bring her to our house once she was let out of hospital and then after she recovered, she took over running my home until I retired. She was amazing, zooting around the house on crutches and taking care of everything, including cooking a meal occasionally. Then in her middle 80s she started becoming a little vague and developed the dementia that finally led to us putting her into a frail care facility where she died six months later.

My sisters used to visit her, the one who died took her to their home a couple of times for weekends, but mostly she stayed with us. It wasn't a problem because we could leave her with the kids if we wanted a weekend away, or if we took some of them with us, the others were there to see that she didn't fall. It worked really well for us, and my kids adored her, she she them. They learnt about living with old people from her. I really think that she taught them to be more tolerant of the sort of problems that come with advanced age.

We're lucky in that we have a "step-down" facility on this property. So when we feel that we can't take care of ourselves any longer, we can put our names down, and put our house on the market so that we have the cash to support the extra cost of assisted-living and frail care. I would, however, like to in the near future, hand over the management of complicated finances and dealing with bureaucracies to my executors (two of my kids) so they can do the screaming and fighting that goes with getting things done efficiently these days. Otherwise I think we have our very old age well-planned. There aren't any governmental assistant plans here. The only thing the government provides is a pension which they're now going to pay out to everyone over 65 irrespective of how much other income they have. It will help with the inevitable shortfall that comes with "living too long" as the insurance companies call living after your planned retirement funding becomes too little to maintain your lifestyle.

Fallible wrote:
Oh, and it's assumed that people here are far more ready to put their elderly relatives into homes when they become unable to look after themselves, but certainly here in the North this isn't always the case, with children considering it their responsibility to look after them. Certainly I think it will be my duty when the time comes.

I wonder when this started to become the norm for the UK. I watch the news and see people complaining about the cost of private and state care and their parents having to sell their own homes to fund it, and i'm thinking to myself, when did we stop looking after our own families anyway?

I'm guessing much of the problem (if there is seen to be one) is rooted in the fact that we are all so mobile now, kids can go anywhere in the world so that lovely inheritance is going to be enjoyed by a private health company, or retirement home, instead of them.

kennyc wrote:Well hell this is a depressing thread and it resembles me......

Unfortunately old age is very depressing when you realise that your plans aren't working out the way you thought they would.

I'm only becoming aware of that now as I see my neighbours battling with new technology, cars that are too old to run anymore, and no money to replace them, inadequate public transport, and so on. When we're young we think we'll always be as capable as we are, but then it all goes pear-shaped when something horrible happens, like a fall that completely changes your life.

Ironclad wrote:

Fallible wrote:
Oh, and it's assumed that people here are far more ready to put their elderly relatives into homes when they become unable to look after themselves, but certainly here in the North this isn't always the case, with children considering it their responsibility to look after them. Certainly I think it will be my duty when the time comes.

I wonder when this started to become the norm for the UK. I watch the news and see people complaining about the cost of private and state care and their parents having to sell their own homes to fund it, and i'm thinking to myself, when did we stop looking after our own families anyway?

I'm guessing much of the problem (if there is seen to be one) is rooted in the fact that we are all so mobile now, kids can go anywhere in the world so that lovely inheritance is going to be enjoyed by a private health company, or retirement home, instead of them.

Yeah, could be. I actually think there is something else going on too whereby the elderly think of themselves as imposing on their kids if they go to live with them, this idea that we're all so busy now that we don't have the time to take care of each other. I know that's what prompted my grandparents to go into homes, and no amount of pleading or cajoling would talk them out of it.

Ironclad wrote:

Fallible wrote:
Oh, and it's assumed that people here are far more ready to put their elderly relatives into homes when they become unable to look after themselves, but certainly here in the North this isn't always the case, with children considering it their responsibility to look after them. Certainly I think it will be my duty when the time comes.

I wonder when this started to become the norm for the UK. I watch the news and see people complaining about the cost of private and state care and their parents having to sell their own homes to fund it, and i'm thinking to myself, when did we stop looking after our own families anyway?

I'm guessing much of the problem (if there is seen to be one) is rooted in the fact that we are all so mobile now, kids can go anywhere in the world so that lovely inheritance is going to be enjoyed by a private health company, or retirement home, instead of them.

I've always said that my kids didn't choose to be born, so they don't owe me the care that tradition teaches I have a right to expect. But then my neighbours certainly don't owe me the care that I'm prepared to hand out to them when they're in trouble. So whose responsibility is it to see that the car is in working order, that the television is simple to operate, that the light bulbs are changed, that the food in the fridge isn't rotten, that there is food in the fridge? If your kids live far away, fair enough they can't exactly come from Australia to South Africa once a week to do your grocery shopping, or to change the light bulbs. So who is supposed to do this if you don't have the money to pay a professional to do it for you?

We used to have a home care system here - council employees would come to your home for an hour or two to help with basic tasks such as housework, emptying commodes, getting shopping in, helping an elderly carer to feed/clothe their spouse, etc. I used to work as one such in my holidays from uni. However I very much doubt this is still going in the way it was then, certainly can't see it still being free. The council also used to operate a meals on wheels service so the elderly didn't have to keep lots of food in the fridge or prepare it themselves. Dunno what the situation is there now either. Same with day care centres where you could be taken to do different activities and be fed. My mum used to be the warden of a council run assisted living scheme which used an emergency buzzer system so that the residents could alert her if they had fallen and she lived on site. However you had to be fairly able bodied when you moved in.

Fallible wrote:

Ironclad wrote:

Fallible wrote:
Oh, and it's assumed that people here are far more ready to put their elderly relatives into homes when they become unable to look after themselves, but certainly here in the North this isn't always the case, with children considering it their responsibility to look after them. Certainly I think it will be my duty when the time comes.

I wonder when this started to become the norm for the UK. I watch the news and see people complaining about the cost of private and state care and their parents having to sell their own homes to fund it, and i'm thinking to myself, when did we stop looking after our own families anyway?

I'm guessing much of the problem (if there is seen to be one) is rooted in the fact that we are all so mobile now, kids can go anywhere in the world so that lovely inheritance is going to be enjoyed by a private health company, or retirement home, instead of them.

Yeah, could be. I actually think there is something else going on too whereby the elderly think of themselves as imposing on their kids if they go to live with them, this idea that we're all so busy now that we don't have the time to take care of each other. I know that's what prompted my grandparents to go into homes, and no amount of pleading or cajoling would talk them out of it.

You'll remember that I mentioned that the old lady who died this weekend was more concerned about "bothering" her daughter than about the stress of the loss of her keys was causing her. There was another who used to live here, shortly after we moved in. She used to phone the neighbours to help her when she fell (which happened about once every two weeks), and when I suggested that we phone her daughter she said outright that her daughter, who lives 20 kilometres away, was "too busy in her job" to be bothered with coming to her aid when she was in trouble. I was angry about this because how come my "busyness" is less important than her daughter's? Anyway she's moved in with her sister now, so they take care of each other. Still I think that your kids should be the first people you call if you're in trouble, and certainly if they're only 10 minutes away, unless they have health issues of their own that prevents them from organising for you to be taken care of. Or is that expecting too much?

My DH says that "today's young people have too much going on" to have older family members living with them. We had four children, and a three-bedroomed house. They just doubled-up in one bedroom on bunks until we were able to put together the money to fix the outside buildings into bedrooms for them, when my mum's moving in became an emergency, and they didn't complain. They liked having her there to make snacks for them when they came home from school, and just to be there to talk to when I was still at work. She also used to spoil them with tips when she sent them shopping for something she wanted, and gave them money for special occasions. She was great until she developed dementia, not any trouble at all. She'd go to her room without being asked to when we had people over for dinner, or if she thought we needed privacy in dealing with our own problems. Especially because we were almost newly-weds when she moved in, so when the kids went to their dad, she'd ask to have her meals in her room so we could "be alone." I'd be like that if I lived with my kids. I certainly didn't earn anywhere nearly as much as my kids do, and I had more mouths to feed. So I don't think that's an issue. I just don't want to live with my kids anyway, I'm waaaay too much hard work as a housemate.

I used to work in institution taking care of elderly, specialized in taking care of residents/patients with Alzhemier, Parkinson and similar other conditions. I even wanted to set up my own facility but for various reasons I gave up on this idea. Not sure what to say, the issue is complex and country specific.

Let me bookmark this thread while re-posting these links:

Long-Term Care for Older People: OECD study (2001-2004) - http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/ ... 1-2004.htm

Who Cares? Care coordination and cooperation to enhance quality in elderly care in the European Union - http://www.euro.centre.org/data/1253632621_9637.pdf

Fallible wrote:We used to have a home care system here - council employees would come to your home for an hour or two to help with basic tasks such as housework, emptying commodes, getting shopping in, helping an elderly carer to feed/clothe their spouse, etc. I used to work as one such in my holidays from uni. However I very much doubt this is still going in the way it was then, certainly can't see it still being free. The council also used to operate a meals on wheels service so the elderly didn't have to keep lots of food in the fridge or prepare it themselves. Dunno what the situation is there now either. Same with day care centres where you could be taken to do different activities and be fed. My mum used to be the warden of a council run assisted living scheme which used an emergency buzzer system so that the residents could alert her if they had fallen and she lived on site. However you had to be fairly able bodied when you moved in.

There is a service like that here. The ALUs (assisted living units) have it as part of the package. The units are rented, and include a large room with a kitchenette and a loo and shower. There are baths in the passageway between the units where people can be helped to bath by the nurses who come around every day to check if anyone needs help with whatever they need to do. The residents only have to provide their own breakfast because the lunch is a three-course one which they suggest are split up so that they can have a supper from whatever they don't eat at lunch. It's a soup, main course and dessert. It's the same lunch that's available daily in our restaurant, but that you can also have delivered to your house for a small extra fee. If I became too bored with cooking, or if my DH was living alone, it would be easy for him to have meals from the dining room every day.

Our emergency system, which I used when DH was ill early this year, brings a nursing sister and an assistant to the house to check vital signs before calling for an ambulance.

I've never thought my kids should take me in, but I do (or will, don't need it yet) expect a bit of help around the Old Home Place. Well, at least if they want any of it after I pop my clogs. Mrs. Lak is a traditionalist, I'm certain her mum will be living with us at some point in the next 10 years or so. Not a problem, I knew this when we got married. My parents lived in their own home and were independent till they died, which was great. I hope that's what happens to me. Actually, unless I'm too debilitated it will happen exactly like that because I'll take care of my exit.

Mrs. Lak's gran is 90 and still living on her own, up in Geordieland. A nurse or carer comes round once a week but otherwise she's independent. Still gets the bus to Newcastle city market and walks up to the library. She's a tough old bird.

Agrippina wrote:

kennyc wrote:Well hell this is a depressing thread and it resembles me......

Unfortunately old age is very depressing when you realise that your plans aren't working out the way you thought they would.

I'm only becoming aware of that now as I see my neighbours battling with new technology, cars that are too old to run anymore, and no money to replace them, inadequate public transport, and so on. When we're young we think we'll always be as capable as we are, but then it all goes pear-shaped when something horrible happens, like a fall that completely changes your life.

Oh I understand.....just beginning to see the shadows on the wall myself. I live alone and am semi-retired at this point living off of savings from the prior job and trying to build up some income from writing. All my bills are paid off for the moment and I hope to be able to live from my 'early' retirement beginning next year...but it will be dicey...any major expense could throw a wrench in the works.....hell I'm only 62, I can't imagine trying to take care of everything round here in another 20 years.....gawd knows where my kids will be at that point, but I'd rather they not have to be spending their time caring for me.

Fallible wrote:.....
Yeah, could be. I actually think there is something else going on too whereby the elderly think of themselves as imposing on their kids if they go to live with them, this idea that we're all so busy now that we don't have the time to take care of each other. I know that's what prompted my grandparents to go into homes, and no amount of pleading or cajoling would talk them out of it.

Yep, see my previous post.

Even though all their lives I've told them I was going to end up living in their basement cause I have no retirement money. Not totally fictitious.

Agrippina wrote:...

I've always said that my kids didn't choose to be born, so they don't owe me the care that tradition teaches I have a right to expect. But then my neighbours certainly don't owe me the care that I'm prepared to hand out to them when they're in trouble. So whose responsibility is it to see that the car is in working order, that the television is simple to operate, that the light bulbs are changed, that the food in the fridge isn't rotten, that there is food in the fridge? If your kids live far away, fair enough they can't exactly come from Australia to South Africa once a week to do your grocery shopping, or to change the light bulbs. So who is supposed to do this if you don't have the money to pay a professional to do it for you?

There are social services here that handle some of that stuff....delivering hot meals, even painting houses, drop in nurses checking on the elderly etc. But it's far from comprehensive and has to be applied for, managed, etc....

Agrippina wrote:..... I just don't want to live with my kids anyway, I'm waaaay too much hard work as a housemate.

I can only imagine!

and see here's my other issue since we are being so frank with one another. My daughter who is 25 and lives with her mother, my ex. have been having issues with each other and we've been through more history and issues than you really want to know about...but she asked about moving in here and living in the basement -- she makes minimum wage, can't really afford a place on her own and even her employment is sketchy and has been forever. Again I won't go into all the reasons for the issues. But I basically told her I needed to live alone ... which is pretty much true....but I'm also hoping she will get out on her one and begin taking more responsibility......to get back to the point of the thread though.....I thinking that I've ruined any chances of living in her basement in the future should I need to.

laklak wrote:.... My parents lived in their own home and were independent till they died, which was great. I hope that's what happens to me. Actually, unless I'm too debilitated it will happen exactly like that because I'll take care of my exit.

....

I'm with you 100% on that one!

Can provide one fact relevant to discussion. Will not verify with links as they are in Czech but cost of institutional care for elderly in CR is around 25 - 30 000 Kč per bed per month (900-1100 euro). If elderly stays in home care, and 24h care is needed, the state provides around half this amount to those providing care, usually family member, as compensation for loss of job etc.

The way I see it and from my experience, there is lots of talk about respect for old age but the money often are in someone else's mouth, pocket respectively.