Dealing with details surrounding your parent’s retirement don’t have to be as painful as they often end up being. And at the center of this equation is going to be how well you communicate the options to each other. There are certain retirement years where they’ll be fully functional, and then there’ll be later years when they may need some help or assistance.
So before it’s too late, talk to them about things like assisted living, whether they want to move in with you, what the home-care possibilities are, which retirement communities seem to make the most sense, and if they’ll be able to make independent decisions at that point in their lives.
Assisted Living
For post-retirement years, one of the biggest quality-of-life decisions you can make collectively is to put your parents in an assisted living facility. Find out which ones your parents are interested in, and go talk to some people there. Find out about activities. Learn about costs, and hours, and those details. The more you communicate about this early on during retirement years, the more logical of a decision you can make.
Moving In With You
There’s always the option to have your parents move in with you as well, depending on your personal schedule and work hours. Generations of families living in a single home can create a great support system for both younger children and older adults. As long as everyone is good with the arrangement, a tremendous number of resources can be saved in the process as well, from rent, to food, to transportation and babysitting. If the personality riddle can work, it’s a great way to ease pressure from a number of different directions.
Home-Care Possibilities
If your elderly parents don’t necessarily need round-the-clock care, but just need help occasionally with things like cooking, cleaning, or getting yard work done, there are many different ways to hire a home-care assistant. This is often a more economically feasible way to approach the situation of getting care for older people as well.
Retirement Communities
Retirement communities exist in their own category. Groups of retirees get together who have similar interest or know they plan on taking care of each other as a community, and having their homes together allows them to operate with a certain degree of consistency and lifestyle.
Independent Decisions
There’s a big difference between trying to get a living situation set up for elderly parents that can take care of themselves and make independent decisions, and getting a living situation set up for a senior that has Alzheimer’s or some other degenerative condition. Be sure to try to have options open while discussions can still be worked through regarding later-life details.