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This week, I’m starting a series called Finding Senior Care Living in Our Challenging Final Years. This week, we are exploring the question: How do you know it’s time…to move, to make a change, to make adjustments. Since I have been through this process recently, I thought I would share with you some of the considerations for when to move to a place with more supportive care. Your decision right now, may not be as extreme as ours. I’m just passing on some of the considerations you will need to think about. You may have many others as well.
Personally, I highly recommend living near at least one of your children if you have a good relationship with them. Speaking as the child of parents who wanted to live in Florida, away from their kids, it was very difficult to keep up with what was happening with them. Then, when they ran into problems, we had to fly in. If one of us lived nearby, we could have seen things happening and addressed them earlier before they got quite so bad. People who don’t know your parents, don’t see the subtle changes in them like their kids do. That is one reason, we chose to move near one of our kids once we were fully retired. As it happened, it was the daughter who also had a medical background as well. That isn’t always the best decision for everyone. It has worked well for us. I hope there has been mutual benefit as well.
The decision to move from the family home is often the first in a series of moves like it has been for us. We moved from one state to another. Then to different housing, often down-sizing along the way. For others, it is not like that. They move right from the family home to a senior living option when one or both of them are in bad health. How has it been for you or those you love?
There are a variety of reasons to make this move.
- You and/or your spouse’s health is failing.
- Your spouse recently passed away or managing your home is too much for you both.
- You have been caregiver to your spouse and it is getting to be more than you can manage alone. There are a variety of options you can consider such as paying others to come into your home to assist with care and household help or moving into a simpler (for you) living situation.
Here are some considerations you need to make:
- Your actual financial situation. You may need help figuring this out.
- How much care is needed for the weakest of you (if you are a couple.)
- How much care is needed for the stronger of you, or if the stronger one is able to help with the care of the weaker one.
- Whether there are available family members who can help and in what ways they are able to help such as financial, emotional support, physical support, etc.
Here are a number of options available:
- Move to condo or townhouse with no lawncare and other people who care for the building.
- Living with family members and consider the demands on the family you move in with. Is there space for you? Can they manage 2 more members in their home? Don’t minimize the demands that will be made on the wife of the family. Is she up to it? Are you able to help them financially for their help?
- Living in senior living apartments with meals, cleaning, activities provided along with extra safety measures. such as emergency call strings to pull in each room, daily check in button to assure you are ok each morning. There is a range of places. Some are straight rentals, others are part of life care communities where you deposit money that is often the size of the cost of a home plus you pay a rental fee for your apartment as well. In some communities, you get some of that deposit money back depending on the number of years you are there. In others, there is no refund at all but there is some tax benefit. The range of financial benefits is quite large as well as the range of living conditions. They are moderate to luxury style. The menus also reflect the range in lifestyle.
- Living in assisted care or memory care for more assistance with taking medication, assistance with personal care, or monitoring more closely in a safe environment,
- Having one member move to a nursing home where they will receive skilled nursing care and deciding what is best for the other family member in terms of where to live.
- Discussing with family members what you can afford and for how long. Hospitalizations often precipitate these discussions when social workers are involved with discharge planning. They are aware of costs and placement information and can give you information. **Placement in skilled care especially, is much easier when done from the hospital. Don’t turn down this help when your loved one is in the hospital because it is much more difficult when you are trying to work it out when they aren’t in the hospital. I didn’t design the system. I can just tell you that is how the system works.**
Depending on where you live, you may not have all of these options available in your particular town. Of course, not all these options are available to everyone due to their financial situation.
**In the end, it may not be a totally logical decision. You may not be ready right now to go to a senior living situation. Or your spouse may not be ready right now. But you aren’t wasting your time by getting all your information together. Sometimes, you may even know where you want to know where you want to go when you are ready. There may also be a financial benefit to get on a waiting list so that when you are ready, you will be able to pay today’s price for what you want. Ask lots of questions. Look into details so you can find out what special options are available. In the end, after you get all the information, pray and everything, you may find you will go with your gut. It will be an informed gut, but it will feel like you are going with your gut. God uses even those feelings to guide you. Think about what happened when you got married!
Bathing your decisions in prayer. God knows better than you do, what you will need. He will guide you.
Naturally these decisions get bathed in prayer. They are big decisions. Often, with the rental plans, if people can afford to do so, they move in and give it a try before selling their home. Then, after a month or two, they get their house on the market and sell their things. It all depends on which choice you make.
