Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers. Sara Geber
as we get into our mid to late eighties and beyond. None of us knows in advance how much or what kind of assistance we will need.
Another mystery is how long we will live. Many factors are at play: general health, genetics, lifestyle, habits, stress tolerance, and more. Because of this uncertainty, we can’t know for sure how much money we will need to fund that long life. Planning requires us to make some educated guesses and prepare for uncertain times.
In the following chapters you will meet more child-free people who have taken the reins of their lives and made plans for their future happiness and safety in a variety of ways. Some have chosen to continue working long past the typical retirement age; some have chosen unique lifestyles and living environments; some have chosen new community designs. Indeed, there is no end in sight to the creative ways those of us without children can prepare for our remaining years.
In addition, we will need to give thought and make plans for how to receive care in our oldest years. In later chapters you will meet child-free people who have made those plans—some in conventional ways, others in brave new ways. They have all done their homework and followed their hearts. I found their stories fascinating and encouraging. They spurred me to do the additional research to round out the guidance offered in these pages. If you take the stories and recommendations to heart and plan aggressively for your later years, you will be able to sit back and continue to enjoy the same freedom you have had all your life. Enjoy the ride!
Chapter 3. The Role of Adult Children in the Life of an Elder
“Blood relatives have always been the only source of morally obligated support in later life.”
—Robert Rubenstein, Social Scientist
Let me start this chapter by telling you the story of Fred and Hildy, a couple without children who did not plan for their later years, but got very lucky at the end. My colleague and friend, Andrea Gallagher, shared their story with me and offered to let me use their real names. She and her husband Peter, who do not themselves have children, learned some great lessons from it … and so did I.
Hildy and Fred in their home in 2005
Andrea and Peter had recently moved into a new home and invited a few of their closest neighbors over to introduce themselves. Fred, eighty-six, and Hildy, eighty-nine, were the oldest couple on the block, having lived in their home since the neighborhood was developed, over forty years earlier. They arrived at the party a little early and stayed throughout.
As they got to know Fred and Hildy better, Peter and Andrea started helping them with small chores like putting up holiday decorations. They also learned Fred and Hildy had no children and no close relatives. Early one Saturday morning, about eighteen months later, Hildy called and asked if one of them could take Fred to the hospital for a minor procedure. Hildy did not drive. She was mostly wheelchair-bound because of macular degeneration and crippling arthritis in her legs.
What was to be a quick outpatient surgery for Fred turned into a weeklong stay at the hospital. Frustrated and concerned about the turn of events, Fred asked Andrea and Peter to sleep over at his house so Hildy would not be afraid. How could they say no? Every day they took Hildy to see Fred and either Peter or Andrea stayed with Hildy each night. One of those nights Hildy came down the hall in her motorized chair at three o’clock in the morning, fully dressed, and announced she wanted to “take you kids to breakfast.”
After a week, Fred was able to leave the hospital and return home. At about that point, it became clear to Andrea and Peter that Fred had been acting as a caregiver to Hildy in recent years as she became more and more disabled, both mentally and physically. Many other neighbors shared their relief that Peter and Andrea “came along” when they did. They had all known Fred and Hildy would need help, and no one knew who was going to help them.
Andrea and Peter began to prepare meals, take them to doctor appointments, and over time saw both of them through several more of Fred’s hospital stays. Over the next few years, watching over Hildy and Fred became part of Andrea and Peter’s lives. With the help of an aide, they oversaw all of the older couple’s daily needs.
When Hildy was medically confirmed with dementia, Fred was devastated. They had been married for sixty-three years and his life partner was slipping away before his eyes. A few months later, Fred developed sepsis and ended up in intensive care fighting for his life. Upon recovering from that episode, he recognized that he and Hildy could no longer depend solely on each other for their safety and well-being. He asked Andrea and Peter to be their legal agents, with permission to take over medical and financial decision-making for both of them, and ultimately to be executors of their wills. This was a huge responsibility, yet they felt honored to be able to help these two people they had grown to love.
Hildy died in 2009, and Fred, a year and five days later. Peter and Andrea often tell people of how they “adopted” their elderly neighbors and, though they were often overwhelmed by the work it entailed, they were glad to have been there to help avert a crisis.
Fred and Hildy were extremely lucky to find, at the eleventh hour, two trustworthy and caring people. We can all imagine what might have happened to them had Andrea and Peter not been so charitable and accommodating, or if they had seen their vulnerable neighbors as easy prey and taken advantage of a chance to siphon funds from their accounts or, worse yet, been abusive in their treatment of them.
Thankfully, the story of Hildy and Fred had a happy ending as well as an added bonus: Andrea and Peter learned, through their relationship with Fred and Hildy, that intergenerational relationships are one of the keys to survival for those without children. The experience motivated them to expand their social sphere to include people of many ages, and spurred them to do some additional planning for their own future.
What else can be gleaned from the story of Fred and Hildy? They were “aging in place” and they went into crisis. Their story gets repeated over and over, throughout cities and towns across America. Aging in place is a crapshoot. You may do well for a long time, but things can go downhill very quickly. When the body or mind of an aging parent deteriorates to the point where they endanger themselves by living alone, an adult child usually steps in to help them make a change. Those of us without children need to anticipate the possibility of this kind of trajectory and prepare others to step in when we need help and care.
Having children has never provided a guarantee of emotional and physical support in later life. However, as social scientist Robert Rubinstein and others have concluded from their research, “blood relatives have always been the only source of morally obligated support in later life.”6 That’s a strong and sobering statement. As the baby boomer generation moves into the later decades of life, those of us without children will need to take a hard look at what we might need and who will be there to help us.
Studying what adult children today are doing for their aging parents is an excellent way to better understand our potential needs in later life. Mary’s story gives us a good example of some of the ways adult children are assisting their aging parents, and demonstrates the complicated emotions involved, the creativity required, and the time-consuming nature of the support role:
Mary, who is sixty-three, has a ninety-three-year-old mother, Virginia, who still lives in the two-story house in which Mary grew up. Mary, however, has a good job and many friends in another state and has no plans to uproot her life to move back to her hometown. Although they are on good terms today, Mary and Virginia had a somewhat rocky relationship in the past, and vestiges of the old animosity remain. When Virginia was in her late eighties, Mary tried to convince her to sell the large family home and move into a retirement community, but Virginia was unwilling to move. Mary visits as often as her demanding job will allow, but her trips are still fewer than once a month.
About five years ago, Mary was able to convince her mother to pay for some modifications to her home. Mary and Virginia interviewed contractors together, ultimately hiring a local construction company to enlarge a bathroom, install grab