Where Will Seniors Live?

Like I say to my wife; “you aren’t growing older, just better”; and she replies “yeah, right!” This little conversation seems to lead us into talking about many things including fears that some of us “over55ers” often think about, such as, where will seniors live?

One answer is to move to an area where the costs of living are lower than where we have lived all these many years. It hurts to think about having to move from this lovely neighborhood where our children grew up and where we still have so many friendly neighbors.

Those of us who are able to care for ourselves wonder about a day that may come when we need to move to a facility where someone would care for both of us. Then comes the worry about how we will pay for this type of living.

Many of us have seen our savings disappear during this financial crisis we are experiencing. How can we afford living in a place that charges several thousand dollars a month? Quick and dirty answer is “we can’t!”

This is one solution we are considering: Renovate our basement by adding a kitchen and enlarging the bath room. We would need to turn the two car garage into a single car garage in order to provide room for the kitchen/bath addition.

This would leave a three bedroom, 2 bath home on the upper level that would provide plenty of living space for a care giver to raise their family, and to be close enough to care for those needs we can’t handle ourselves.

Another use for the upper level would be to use it as a rental instead of for a care giver; using home nurses that spend a few short hours daily or as necessary. As a rental, that money could be used to pay for the outside assistance.