According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, slightly over 5 percent of the 65+ population occupy nursing homes, congregate care, assisted living, and board-and-care homes, and about 4.2 percent are in nursing homes at any given time. The rate of nursing home use increases with age from 1.4 percent of the young-old to 24.5 percent of the oldest-old. Almost 50 percent of those 95 and older live in nursing homes.

To complete the sentence–I’m not expecting life to turn out exactly as I would desire.

So, I’m reluctant to plan in too much detail for my life at 80 or 85–too many things can happen, on both individual and global levels, to make that a useful exercise. I’m suspicious of long term goals!

I’ll do what I can to make the future easier, but I’m not expecting

My dad, who has dementia and has never regained the ability to walk after breaking a hip, is in a nursing home. Really (to be fair, due in part to his own lack of planning) there is no alternative. He needs around-the-clock care available in a setting where there is always someone available who is strong enough safely to lift a 200# man from his wheelchair to a bed, or to a toilet, or to change his diaper. I’ll never be a 200# man (and hope never to hit 200# myself, which would be quite overweight for me), but securing safe living arrangements for my dad have helped me understand just how difficult (and expensive) this can be.

If it reassures you, though, I’ll add that DH and I have remodeled 50% of our single-level home and have plans to remodel eventually) the other half. I have insisted that we do so with an eye to accessibility issues, and have considered things like the availability of accessible public transportation (we haz it). So I am planning ahead to try to reduce the probability of this need, as well as to be prepared for it.

It seems we always put that type thing on hold until we get there. One can only play games and watch TV for a time and then we must get out and be more physical each day. I’d like to suggest that you start thinking about some constructive things you would like to do when you reach retirement. Maybe it will be to build bird houses or carve usefull woden items or grow the greatest garden in your area. Just have a few things in mind so that when you do retire you have a sense of direction for the next steps.

I am enjoying my semi retirement at age 70. I don’t think I will ever fully retire and since I like to stay active. I still run my business from my home office and I enjoy the work. I just pared down my client list so that I’m not working just for the money.

Bogart at #3 – Why think you will spend your last days in a nursing home? I plan to stay in my present home for many more years and I don’t even think about nursing homes as an alternative. You shouldn’t either – just stay active and you might find that you don’t need that type of care.

But 5-10 years out – I have a better handle on what I want to be doing. I have a better idea of the relationship I want to have with my son when he’s 9, rather than trying to look in my crystal ball and figure out where he’ll be when he’s 30. I know what I want my career to look like 5-10 years out.

I mean, planning for the long term future is good – and necessary – but it isn’t always the best frame of mind to approach things. I wouldn’t necessarily ask a 5 year old where he’s going to college, but I would ask him if he wants to be on the competitive little league when he’s 10.

Expect the best, plan for the worst, life’s a play and we’re unrehearsed. :)

I’ll quaintly admit that (a) I want to retire at some point in my life and (b) — this is the quaint part — I am convinced that it is not logically possible to (need to) work in retirement. That is, all the pop media pieces about how people are now “working in retirement” because those “retirees” need the money are, in my book, completely missing the point and/or misleading us. Not to say that I’m opposed to down-scaling, working in a paid profession for reasons other than the income, etc., but if I’m working because I need the income … I’m not retired.

So, at some point I need to reach a stage where not only do I have enough passive income to live on in my then-current condition, but also to last long enough and be able to cover my time in the nursing home. That’s my long-term.

I’ve tried to take care of my energy-requiring goals early on (like vacations involving hiking). But how long will my corrected vision be good enough for things? My hearing? My fine motor coordination? My gross motor coordination?

I do make sure that some things I do focus on balance (yoga, ballroom dance, putting on socks while standing up)–you hear about old people falling and breaking a hip.

I do remember deciding to try never to become too weak to get out of a chair, but it turns out that some people who look like they are too weak to easily get out of a chair are actually in too much pain to easily get out of a chair. So, there’s no telling.

Still, I’m saving video games for later.