Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers. Sara Geber

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       Intentional Communities

       Continuous Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs)

       Cultural Specialty Communities

       Chapter 16. Stranger in a Strange Land: Moving to a Different Country

       Evaluating Criteria for Living Outside the US

       Chapter 17. Aging in Place

       The Village Movement

       NORCs (Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities)

      Part IV: Ensuring Comfort and Care in Your Oldest Age

       Chapter 18. The Trajectory of Aging

       Chapter 19. What Will We Need?

       Chapter 20. Financing the Care You Need

       Long-Term Care Insurance

       Personal Assets

       Medicaid

       Chapter 21. Options for Receiving Care

       Continuous Care Retirement Community (CCRC)

       Assisted Living Communities

       Board and Care Homes

       Nursing Homes

       Chapter 22. Documenting Your Preferences for Care

       Advance Health Care Directive

       Power of Attorney for Finances

       Last Will and Testament

       Revocable Trust

       Long-Term Care Plan

       Ensuring a Secure Future

       Finding a Younger Support System

       Hiring a Professional

       Creating a Planning Kit

       Avoiding “Elder Abuse”

       Chapter 23. End-of-Life Choices

       Chapter 24. Conclusion

       A Final Checklist and Guide for Your Planning:

       Resources

       References & Recommended Reading

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       Foreword

      This book is for you. Don’t say you’re not a Solo Ager. The truth is, we’re all Solo Agers if we live long enough. Successful Solo Agers have learned how to age alone and they have lessons we all need to learn. This book will give you those lessons.

      WAIT! Before you put down this page and get into the book, think a bit about what I’ve just said and take it seriously.

      I’m a seventy-three-year-old gerontologist who’s moving, by inches, into old age. I wrote a textbook in gerontology, but I learned more from personal example than I ever did from books. I had the great good fortune, with my wife, to spend seven years caring for our dear friend Larry Morris, who moved into our home and later died in our midst at the age of ninety-seven. As Larry approached his nineties, he had outlived two wives and had no children. He was a Solo Ager and his example remains an inspiration to me.

      In the classic novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the hero is a man who has spent his life as a humble teacher at a boys’ school. He’s lying on his deathbed when he overhears friends talking about his life, saying it was a pity he never had any children. Mr. Chips pipes up to say “But you’re wrong. I have! Thousands of ’em, thousands of ’em … and all … boys.”

      Mr. Chips has spent his life as what we might call an investor in social capital: in the “ties that bind” us together and that make our lives meaningful in the end. Successful Solo Agers are those who have done best at cultivating those ties. That’s the lesson I learned from Larry Morris, who spent so many years of his life giving to others and cultivating friends, including younger friends, like me and my wife.

      The Beatles had it down when they sang, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Those lyrics sound like a cliché, but they aren’t. Epidemiologists are now discovering that isolation and loneliness constitute “the new smoking.” The lack of social ties has a devastating impact on mortality and life expectancy. In short, “going it alone” can kill you. Successful Solo Agers are those who are solo only in certain respects. They are the successful investors in social capital, and this book will show you how to learn from what they already know.

      So, whether married or single, childless or with children, we all have to ask the question: Can we learn to be an “investor in social capital?” Yes, we can. Sociological theorists like Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) can tell you how to do it. As with physical health, when it comes to strengthening social ties, it’s never too late to make up for lost time—and in our overly busy world we all have to struggle against that threat of lost time. Prof. Putnam has warned us about the dangers, as a society, of depleting our social capital. It’s up to us to take that warning seriously.

      My wife of forty-eight years and I have two grown children, a son and daughter in their thirties, so perhaps we don’t technically qualify as a “Solo Agers.” But maybe I should say “not yet.” The truth is, as I said earlier, eventually, one member of a couple dies before the other. On a statistical basis, bereavement affects women more than men, but I have more than one close male friend