FREE NEWSLETTER
My wife asked me yesterday “did you know that 93% of seniors age in place?”. Really? That didn’t sound right. Where we live on Mercer Island (next to Seattle) there are many retirement communities, including a large one on the lake called Covenant Shores that was converted from Shorewood Apartments where I delivered newspapers more than 50 years ago. Folks in my yacht club live there, I see constant advertising for the Aegis Living, a higher end one from Era called Aljoya, and I always assumed we would end up there. On this forum the discussion is how SOON to move into one of these communities – or how MANY to get on the waiting list for. So 93%?
Some additional context: my wife is working on a MPH (Masters in Public Health) and this was for a paper she was working on, and the source is Pew Research. And that number is indeed the percentage who are aging in place. But the vast majority want to age in place.
My wife definitely doesn’t want to be in any kind of facility, my dad who passed about 6 years ago at 93 ended up in a nursing home at the end but was desperate to get back to his home where he passed under hospice care. I could go either way – I could deal with a facility and make friends easily – but…yeah…I’d prefer to stay in my home too. And at least three of my neighbors in our 17 home HOA have mentioned wanting to age in place, and perhaps we could work together to help each other?
And then my wife asked if I knew about the “villages movement” – and I’d never heard of it. Here’s the village movement page for our county.We do not have an organization for Mercer Island (yet!), but there is one next door in Bellevue and their mission is to help other communities grow their own.
So now I’m feeling the entire retirement community thing might just be a very successful real estate development / marketing scheme targeting the anxieties of seniors.
My wife and I retired in our early 50s, and we are now in our early 60s. We are currently going through some assisted living issues with her 87 year old dad. He had been “aging in place” fairly well, basically by himself but with semi daily check-ins by my wife and sometimes by me. He is in his own home in our same town, and it’s only about 10 minutes away, so it was not a huge deal while we were in town. When we were out of town on a trip he had a smallish stroke that impaired his movement a bit and caused some confusion, and from then on it became apparent that he needed more help than she/we could provide him at his house.
My wife moved him into an assisted living facility four months ago at a cost of $5800 per month, but while we were away on a trip he had another stroke and has now lost his ability to speak, and he can’t walk very well anymore, so we are afraid he might get kicked out because he can’t “self evacuate” in case of a fire (one of their requirements). My wife is now scrambling around trying to figure out where he can go if they do kick him out. She considered 24 hour care back at his house, but that will be much more than the $5800 he currently pays (more like $15000 per month), and his funds would only last him around 7 months or so at that spending rate. She thought about splitting his house with another person who needed 24 hour care, but that seems like a lot of hands on management for her as well as possible liability concerns for us.
All this is to say that this experience with her dad has opened my eyes to OUR possible future problem with long term care. We retired pretty early, and ridiculously we never thought much about “getting old” and needing this level of care. I’ve always been healthy super focused on investing for our retirement, and we’ve done a good job planning for that and we live on around 2% of the portfolio, but the extreme expense of aging in place and the possible need for 24 hour care is not something I’ve planned for well enough I’m now realizing.
Thanks for all the info on CCRCs, which I’m finally researching now. 🤦♂️
https://humbledollar.com/forum/percentage-that-age-in-place/#comment-2093256
Thanks for sharing all of the information about available services for seniors. I live in the community you describe. I’m still young and healthy but it’s great to know there’s options.
I read all the comments to date and I appreciate this thoughtful discussion, as well as Keith’s thoughtful launch of the topic. Having now made three placements for two people in 3 categories (cottage care, assisted living, and memory care) and visited about 20 sites in our area, I can agree with both sides of this discussion. (There are now hundreds of sites in our area!)
First, running these facilities can be a passion project, but more typically it is a big business with a lot of marketing involved and healthy profit margins. The first person you see is usually a pure and simple salesperson who comes across as caring and empathetic, but is focused on doing their job of signing people up for an expensive service operated by a rich person or group whom you will never see. Often this is called something along the lines of a “community care representative.”
Regarding cost, in a larger community like ours, just under a million, but serving a larger catchment area that adds another 50%, in a desirable lifestyle area, there is a complete range of options from those who take medicaid (or do after a period of time) to those over $10k per month and only private pay. The CCRC’s are just moving in.
And I know for a fact that buying what you don’t yet need in advance always comes at a premium, so yes the market plays to the needs, fantasies, fears, and anxieties of people in the target audience.
BTW, if there is a waiting list and it is not a CCRC, usually you can get a place on it for a refundable deposit, typically a check not cashed. This gives you priority on the list when you do need a spot. Also, while some communities may always be full, more typically the flow is rough–people do not die or otherwise leave on a schedule, so a facility with 40 units might be full in December, but have 5 units available in early February. (That also speaks to the unevenness of when people are looking to enter, and yes, we moved our mom into a secure unit mid-February.)
Finally, the two factors that I leaned on the most are proximity to family and quality of staff. Every other factor ends up being more sizzle than steak. I didn’t figure this out myself, I had to be told and then also experience it. I also learned that facilities (and teams) dedicated to memory care do a better job than ones that just include it–if 80% of the residents are in assisted living, that’s where the focus of management and facility will be, same if most of the residents are in independent living.