Planning for old age, do you see it as a luxury or something everyone can and should actively do?

You need to tell your parents now that you will not be their caregivers. When they can no longer can care for themselves, they will need to make the decision to go into senior indepedent living or an AL. There will be no "we want to stay in our home". They can if they can pay for someone to mow their lawn, pay someone to come in and help them. Can afford to pay for upkeep and the bills for the house. If they can't, then they downsize. You will not use your income to keep them in a house they can no longer afford. My mantra: I am here to help people find a way, not be the way.
Don't get me wrong, as a family we should be there for each other. But not to the detriment of the children expected to give up jobs, use their own money to support parents and do 24/7 care. We help them clean out that house. Help them find a new place to live. Give the rides if needed. My DH does not agree with me here but what you do for them, you do in your time. We do not enable our parents and we don't disable them. We are not at their back and call. And if possible we don't live with them or them with us.

It seems like people can not tell a parent NO. Its not disrespect or not honoring a parent to say NO. It surprises me when an OP says they give a parent with Dementia a choice. Sorry, they can no longer make decisions. Thats where the child now becomes the parent and just makes the decision. You don't ask if they want to go to an AL, u will get a No. You don't allow them to tell you they will not go to an AL when you can not care for them. You do not help them so much they think they are independent.

Well, there's the gentle heat exhaustion exit as well for plan B, tho it sounds gruesome to ME. You basically just collapse. We used to have a second little home we built in the country, in Mariposa County. A bit over a year ago a young couple, I think with a one year old child as well, but definitely with a dog, all expired in Mariposa on a hike. Dog as well. Was a mystery because all without any signs violence or problem. Finally just did come down to heat exhaustion.

Happy summer to you, Margaret. And yikes. I hate heat. I would much rather do the cold I think. SF is kind of perfect for me, not a lot of either.

www.kcra.com/article/sheriff-to-announce-what-killed-california-family-hike/380…

Alva, your post really hit me because here the daily max temperature has hovered for a couple of weeks between 100F and 110F, with humidity between 25% and 99%. Enough to make snow and a gentle gas exit almost attractive!

@Margaret,
The problem with plan B is that it cannot be discussed really, being against the law as it is.
To my mind no one can/should post a plan B. That's for your membership in Final Exit, if you know what I mean.
That's the place to discuss it with those of like minds and common interests. Long standing member here.
They have a website. But no one here, I would think, will be posting any list.

But andsoitgoes is correct, that when one is very familiar with researching the subject for whatever reason--I mean they could be writing the next great Agatha Christie (mine takes place in a moldy-smelling kind of haunted inherited cabin at the Russian River)-- it isn't as complicated as people think.
There's a ton of plan Bs to choose from and our literature's full of them.

I would ask you to consider how often in life you-- if you live in the snowy areas-- awaken to a news story about an entire family who passes overnight in their own homes because they came up with a way to heat the house that was creative, if not wise.
Or because they have a faulty furnace and no Co2 alarms (now the law in our state). Or the power went out and the gas generator was brought into an enclosed house.
These folks just went to sleep and didn't get up in the morning, sadly. And you will find this a quite common occurance. No fuss, no muss, no pain, just another Midwest winter tragedy for some people who had no interest in a plan ABorC.

Boy, do I ever have STORIES. It's somewhat a pet subject for me, right down to the Dorothy Parker poem.
Do you remember the girl who went on trial because she kept encouraging her boyfriend to do a plan B? Oh, do ask! Or tune in to my favorite Crime Junkies Podcast.

All take care. And DEFINITELY buy a Co2 alarm. Very cheap on amazon, or your local hardware.

We already downsized. We sold our house and now live in a condo having relocated 3000 miles away to the West Coast to live near our only child. If the family moves from here we will move too. I do miss my long time friends in NYC but I don’t want my daughter having to deal with us being so far away if something happens. My DH is 72 and I’m 68.

We have our wills done and POA and health proxies and living will but I alsonwant to put a trust in place. My husband doesn’t want to do it just yet. My parents did not do a thing and I am living the repercussions of this. Have to pressure him to start thinking about it.

i do not plan to get old because I am watching my parents lingering at the age of 95 in a NH. I don’t want a pacemaker, that’s for sure. No chemo if i have cancer. No lingering around. I don’t want to be a burden to my daughter, I’d rather be dead than this and will avail myself of assisted suicide if necessary. I’ve had a good run, nothing more to be said.

Margaret....I am sure "AndSoItGoes" Plan B would be a medically Assisted Suicide.
That would be my Plan B.
I wish it were legal in my State.
Unfortunately some of the regulations make carrying out "Plan B" almost impossible.
The fact that we can humanly euthanize a beloved pet makes me crazy that I can not chose this potion for myself!

And so it goes: We don’t need to know your Plan B, in fact you might have rejected all the things you researched. However I would be very interested to know what options could have come under that heading. Could you post a list, please?

I really kind of pushed my DH into getting our affairs in order about 7 years ago. He fought me on it, I have no idea why. Perhaps it was the feeling that he feels immortal and invincible--even though he's had some very serious health issues over the years. We ALWAYS had a 'holistic' will, but this was the real deal.

I contacted the atty. Got a list of documents and things we needed to have to establish a trust and I did all the legwork and digging for stuff. Then we had a one hour chat with the Atty. He then put all this stuff in a big binder and organized it. We went back for another hour long meeting and went over everything with a fine tooth comb. Atty had a lot of things to add in, and some stuff we took out. We wouldn't have thought of a lot of these small issues.

Then the trust was drawn up and notarized. It's on the shelf in the office. My executor (OD) knows where everything is, there's even a check drawn up so when we go, she can access our funds immediately.

We moved into a 'smaller' home (I laugh because it's actually 1000 sf bigger than our first home!) I need to call the atty again and get together with him to update the trust.

I'm doing this for ME, DH and our kids. I don't want them to have to deal with ANYTHING weird or unusual--and certainly not having us die intestate and the nightmare that is.

I absolutely DO NOT want my kids to take care of me in my dotage. We've been to Hades and back with MIL and I am so burned out--and I don't DO ANYTHING!
She did draw up a trust, thank goodness, but if she ever dies, DH has the knowledge of what she wants. (Probably for him & his sibs to throw themselves into her grave with her...) (OK, that was not nice....but the whole last year they have practically breathed for her. Crazy town.)

I think what hold most people back from making these trusts/wills is that you have to face your own mortality. That's scary for many people. But it's also a great gift to those who get left behind.

If you don't make your EOL wishes made known, then whatever happens, happens. I've seen enough in-family squabbling to know that NOT leaving final wishes almost always ends in a fight. Even with my mom's very detailed will, my YB went crazy and cleaned out her entire apartment by himself and disposed of everything. A few tchotchkes were left, but all her clothes, books & DVD's and such were thrown away. This was NOT what she wanted, but he used the excuse that he was her POA---finally we opted to simply forgive and forget. It could have gotten very ugly, very fast.

Even if someone is not financially well-off, they can still find some pro bono help and create a Power of Attorney; they can still download free documents (like 5 Wishes or an Advance Healthcare Directive) so that their desires can be made known. They can still assign a Medical Representative (if they go to a regular physician, not the ER, as their primary care). Be in contact with social services; tell your spouse, kids, trusted family and neighbors, church staff, and near family what your desires are (and put it in writing). Notarizing paperwork is free at banks. The strategy is to start early and not wait for a crisis to figure this out.

The reason why people leave things to chance or live in denial is because they've probably never done a day of caregiving in their lives so they have no idea what a poop show they can create. The poop show is so traumatizing that those of us on the receiving end make blood-pacts to never do that to people we care about.

There is a legal document called a Pre-need Guardianship that allows you to name your own guardian, should it come to that. All important documents need to go to someone they trust, or into an organized file in their home. At this point I'm not sure digital copies of anything are accepted by every institution, but that could change in the future.

I think the biggest problem is that most people do not plan on becoming demented first. They plan for physical and financial problems, but not cognitive/memory ones. I just had this conversation with a close friend of mine. She's single and in her 70's and a good planner. She was telling me about her Blue File (that is her competent self talking to her incompetent self, sort of like in the movie, Still Alice). But dementia and memory loss don't work like that since one can forget something within minutes, so leaving yourself a file is probably not gonna work. Another problem is the illogic, lack of reasoning skills and poor judgment, plus paranoia, that comes with dementias. I'm not sure there's a perfect solution. The most anyone can do is do the most they can, given their resources and circumstances.

One consideration is that even enormous wealth cannot turn an institutional setting into "home." That said, I've occasionally seen movies in which multi-millionaires enjoyed fairly nice long-term care arrangements in an institutional setting (one studiously made _not_ to appear institutional).

My own plan is to decline life-extending treatments that are most likely to extend the bad years -- in other words, death prolongation rather than life prolongation.

But I recognize that these calls get trickier when they are directly before us.

I do worry about the current direction of the U.S. Supreme Court. I'm in a state with MAID, but who knows. (And it's irritating to have to go to doctors with outstretched palm.) I also worry about how often DNR/DNI documents go missing in hospitals. In my experience, this happens pretty much every single time.

So I have a Plan B, discussion of which probably violates some forum rule or other. I'll just say that people make Plan B sound much more complicated than it actually is. When I finally found time to do the research, I was reassured by the options available, many of them fairly straightforward. And these methods are at least as reliable as some of the wild surgeries that are routinely performed (really, much more reliable in terms of avoiding fate-worse-than-death outcomes).

But I could have a massive stroke this afternoon and my whole control fantasy would go "poof." :-P

Yes, Stone. As you say, much of this depends upon luck of not being in poverty.
Poverty changes everything.

One is robbed of choice when steeped lifelong in poverty.
Their lives are ones of struggle no matter their age.

Those who are NOT in poverty almost always DO take measures, I think, for their aging. Just my guess. I wonder what the statistics would show.

It is expensive but you and your husband may both qualify for Long Term Care Insurance. Check it out. It is one of the most expensive items I pay for each year but if I have to use it it is there, if I don't I have listed beneficiaries that will get a nice little surprise!
I have no intention of expecting family to care for me if I need it.
I have preplanned my funeral and am paying that off.
I have recently updated my Will.

My Husband never wanted to talk about things like this. I had planned on having him cremated but his sister told me he had said he wanted to be next to his mom.

I guess some people just do not want to face the fact that everyone dies.
It might be a generational thing, or a cultural thing. And since no one knows really what happens many just leave the subject alone.

Just like anything the more you talk about it the more "normal" it becomes and that takes some of the fear and the unknown out of the process.