How do you prepare for a lonely old age? And how to avoid being lonely when you're old?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I plan to spend it sailing the high seas,, drinking cocktails, flirting with hot women, and enjoying myself until I Cross the Bar. I'll send my kids a postcard. Almost 50, female. I've always been a pirate. Raised my kids to mutiny.

I'm OP. I like your post. What a great attitude!

I re-read my post and it probably comes across as very anxious.
I am usually an independent person with a positive outlook on life but I do suffer from bouts of anxiety - especially night time anxiety which causes sleepless nights.

My late parents were very social people who had a HUGE circle of friends and acquaintances. They were known locally and they would regularly invite a bunch of friends to their home for gourmet dinner parties with great food and fine wines (my mom was an excellent cook).

After my mom died, and my dad was ill for 3 years and then he passed aged 64, no one of their social circle had actually spent any time with him in the 3 years before he died. Fair weather friends ...?

I'm just saying, even if you're the most social and generous person on the planet, there is no guarantee that people will be there when you need them.

[Anonymous]

No, it's not the quantity, it's the quality that counts. For hugely social people like your parents, how many of their connections were in depth and meaningful?

Your posts remind me of Eeyore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, it's not the quantity, it's the quality that counts. For hugely social people like your parents, how many of their connections were in depth and meaningful?

Your posts remind me of Eeyore.

I don't know how many of their connections were in depth and meaningful. A handful of people my dad had known since school so they were long term friendships. The others were people they had met along the way, some people would come and go.

The only one of my parents' friends who I remember came to see my dad when he was ill was the local undertaker - I kid you not. He and my dad had known each other since their early teens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one is actually talking about the hardest questions here.

Potential social isolation can be solved.

But if you are alone and become cognitively impaired, who will administer your finances? If you get physically sick, who will be your advocate in the medical system and potentially make decisions for you?

Finding someone who will do these things and act in what is truly your best interest, with thought and care and competence, is the hard part, imo.

Why is no one talking about this?

OP again.
You hit the nail on the head.

As I stated in my first post, my DH and I are childless. We will never have grandchildren.
DH is 9 years older than me.
Potential social isolation can be solved, as you say. Either we move into a 55+ community later in life (even if we had wanted to age in place) or we hire people to take care of us. But we don't have the financial resources to pay for aides and other helpers 24/7 for years and years.

What happens when one of us dies and the other becomes cognitively impaired? Even in an appropriate facility you would need a trusted person to make all kinds of decisions for you.

And who will be with you to keep you company and hold your hand in your final days? I don't want to die with just medical staff (strangers) around me. The thought alone is hideous.

Yes. I don't know the answer to it, and it is a very, very hard question.

You need a trust and an executor of the trust. Indicate in the trust what you want to happen should you become congnitively impaired. Obviously, it's not going to be easy to find a trusted executor, but find someone you trust as much as possible and have a discussion with them.

As for not having family around.. yes, that is what happens when you are chlidless and don't have close relatives.

Your other option is to join a church, and hope that you can create a community from there.

The bank or a law firm can be the executor.

[Anonymous]

I think you have some romanticized view of death. Having been at the aging parents thing for far too long with far too much burnout I don't really see a benefit to having a child come rescue you every time you have a bad fall and come nurse you after every stroke. I'd rather just die on the floor after the first fall than put my kids through the years of hell I have been through. And then what. Your life has been extended for years, maybe a decade and you get the joy of losing your ability to use the bathroom yourself and you are choking on your food and you can't even die in peace at the hospital because you didn't think to have a detailed enough legal statement about how you want to die. You still suffer greatly, probably far more than if you just died in peace after the first emergency. So what if you are alone. Do you think you will remember it?

If you think it isn't common for adult children to screw eachother and parents over with eldercare and managing money then you are clueless.

Look if you get cancer and die within 4 months, than sure it's great to have family to say your goodbyes and feel loved and to have meaningful visits. If you are meant to linger for decades falling apart and having many emergencies, you might be better off without family to prolong the suffering because they feel guilty if they don't.