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

[Anonymous]

Well, if you really have no one you could take some roommates, Golden Girls style.

But I agree with PPs that 55+ communities are great -- my ILs are in one and have a vibrant social life there -- plus you can build wonderful friendships through hobbies, travel, and volunteering. My parents have friends all over the country that they met on a Rick Steves tour.

I think you are little unrealistic about having friends of all ages, though. You absolutely can meet a wide range through activities, but in general young people are busy and they don't get a lot out of relationships with the elderly. I feel like you are turning away from more feasible solutions because they are not your ideal, not recognizing they are way better than your status quo where you have not made friends in your current hometown.

[Anonymous]

No guarantees that children will be able to look after you. We are far away from our parents who live alone in another country. We are of no use to them because we cannot go there and they cannot come and live with us.

I am prepared in my mind to continue staying in the house that I live in currently and hopefully die here. It will be great if my kids and I can stay together at some point but it may not happen.

The only family I have seen it work was a multi-generational family where the parents and one adult son and his wife bought a huge house by combining resources. The MIL looked after the house and grandkids (with paid help) and the rest of the family worked in their jobs. Finally, as people got older, frail, with health problems and passed away, the survivors were not left without any people around them. But, things are changing all the time. There are no guarantees in life.

I am in my 50s. My aim has been to continue with my Swedish Death Cleanse that I have started recently and hopefully in 5 more years I will have a minimalistic life. The rest of my life will probably go in being useful as a grandparent to my children's kids and then just pass away. If I had the money, I would certainly go and live in the 55+ community and age in place.

[Anonymous]

Glad to have a name for it: Swedish Death Cleanse. I downsized from 6-bedroom family home, to my alone 4 bedroom home, to my alone 2-bedroom apartment in 5 years. Liberating! Now I'm free to visit people and travel as long as I want without worrying about the huge mortgage or the pipes freezing. Living alone doesn't have to mean being alone.

[Anonymous]

I feel like it is kind of ageist to say that you want friends of all ages and that's why you won't move into a 55+ community.

First of all, there will be a wide range of ages from 55 up to people in their 80s.

And second of all, take a cold hard honest look at yourself. When have you ever had a wide group of friends of people of all different ages? As a teen? A college student? In your thirties? I bet you have always preferred to socialize with people in your age group. I say that b/c know I have and that most people have.

You will be getting old. Older people will be your peers. You need to come too terms with that. That doesn't mean you can't have friends who are different ages, but if you don't now, why do you think you'll be developing that later in life?

Honestly, you sound like a lonely person who has not really developed a community. This is not a criticism, because I think many, many aging Americans find themselves in the same situation. But social skills are like muscles and you need to exercise them and take care of them to have them in the long run.

Honestly a 55+ community is a great choice for you, but if you don't like it here is my big tip: join a faith community.

Temple, church, whatever. If you are not a believer, go to the Unitarians. Start contributing to this faith community through your time, talents and energy and you will find yourself with a caring community within a year. Feed the friendships you make, but don't put pressure on them to fulfill you. As Woody Allen said, showing up is 80 percent of life.

If the idea of joining something, of seeing people on the regular, of being obligated to do good works rankles you and you'd prefer to spend the weekends with your DH watching Netflix then I have news for you, you will have a very lonely old age.

You need to put in the work now to see the benefits later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like it is kind of ageist to say that you want friends of all ages and that's why you won't move into a 55+ community.

First of all, there will be a wide range of ages from 55 up to people in their 80s.

And second of all, take a cold hard honest look at yourself. When have you ever had a wide group of friends of people of all different ages? As a teen? A college student? In your thirties? I bet you have always preferred to socialize with people in your age group. I say that b/c know I have and that most people have.

You will be getting old. Older people will be your peers. You need to come too terms with that. That doesn't mean you can't have friends who are different ages, but if you don't now, why do you think you'll be developing that later in life?

Honestly, you sound like a lonely person who has not really developed a community. This is not a criticism, because I think many, many aging Americans find themselves in the same situation. But social skills are like muscles and you need to exercise them and take care of them to have them in the long run.

Honestly a 55+ community is a great choice for you, but if you don't like it here is my big tip: join a faith community.

Temple, church, whatever. If you are not a believer, go to the Unitarians. Start contributing to this faith community through your time, talents and energy and you will find yourself with a caring community within a year. Feed the friendships you make, but don't put pressure on them to fulfill you. As Woody Allen said, showing up is 80 percent of life.

If the idea of joining something, of seeing people on the regular, of being obligated to do good works rankles you and you'd prefer to spend the weekends with your DH watching Netflix then I have news for you, you will have a very lonely old age.

You need to put in the work now to see the benefits later.

All of this. Real talk, OP. Are you taking care of your more elderly friends right now? Why do people fantasize that unrelated younger people will be eager to befriend them and take on serious long-term caregiving responsibility? Does that sound fun to you, right now? It's unrealistic. It's sad that childless seniors are so isolated but you need to get serious now about putting down roots in a community if you want to have one in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No guarantees that children will be able to look after you. We are far away from our parents who live alone in another country. We are of no use to them because we cannot go there and they cannot come and live with us.

I am prepared in my mind to continue staying in the house that I live in currently and hopefully die here. It will be great if my kids and I can stay together at some point but it may not happen.

The only family I have seen it work was a multi-generational family where the parents and one adult son and his wife bought a huge house by combining resources. The MIL looked after the house and grandkids (with paid help) and the rest of the family worked in their jobs. Finally, as people got older, frail, with health problems and passed away, the survivors were not left without any people around them. But, things are changing all the time. There are no guarantees in life.

I am in my 50s. My aim has been to continue with my Swedish Death Cleanse that I have started recently and hopefully in 5 more years I will have a minimalistic life. The rest of my life will probably go in being useful as a grandparent to my children's kids and then just pass away. If I had the money, I would certainly go and live in the 55+ community and age in place.

This is something my elderly mother cannot fathom. I stay connected, but have stopped doing so much for because all she is a drain on an incredibly stressful life. She has buckets of money and hasn't worked in decades and everything is "me, me,me", guilt trips, pity parties for herself, etc. She tries to make me feel guilty talking about her neighbors and acquaintances who see their adult children and grandchildren all time and it's downright comical. Every person she mentions is the giving tree type. They are the type who take the grandchildren for a week or even a month. They prepare meals for the family when there is a new baby, work stress, someone ill. They are always contributing to the family system and building their daughters and sons up not stomping on them, manipulating them and guilt tripping them.

My MIL actually would rant about how much more gracious Asian adult children are and all of them (because all Asians are alike) do it right. My husband and I have plenty of 1st generation friends. Their parents who live with them clean, cook and provide childcare. My MIL would have been shamed for being a lazy alcoholic.

If you want support you have to be a support, but here's the kicker. You have to create friendships and give out of love in your heart, not with all sorts of expectations and just be grateful if it is reciprocated. My great-grandma was very giving. Some of her kids appreciated it and helped her in old age and others didn't.

Also, as someone said, you cannot sit at home feeling sorry for yourself watching netflix and expect community to appear. You also can't make new friends and join more things and expect those people to be there to wait on you. Over the years I have become friends with 2 ladies who didn't have many friends and over time it became clear their motivation was to have a community to be at their beckon call if they became ill or needed someone. One had a minor surgery and I helped her some. She complained endlessly about those who didn't help and also made it clear she expected more from me. I drifted. I already have an entitled mother. My husband and kids come first and I don't need lack of appreciation.

[Anonymous]

For those of you that do not like 55+ community, who do you realistically expect to be hanging out with when you are old? Younger people have jobs and children to look after - they barely have times to keep up with their existing friends and family; definitely no bandwidth for random old retired people.

My parents voluntarily moved into a nice over 55+ community, and it’s been great. They didn’t do much “community” stuff in their 60’s - they have/had a busy social life and my dad actually still works part time - but now in their 70’s, mom is showing more interest. Also nice having a medical clinic in the community and a place to call for house maintenance stuff.

[Anonymous]

If you want "friends of all ages" then you should be having those friends NOW.

You need to find a house you can live in, where you can easily age in place, in a functioning town with strong social connections. Become a strong, active member of the community. Join a church, get involved with town council, help with elections, volunteer with the Girl Scouts/Boy Scouts. Be active and involved with the younger generation of parents with teens. It helps if it is a community where people don't tend to move away once their kids are grown.

[Anonymous]

This is OP again. Thank you for your comments and feedback.

An over 55 community is not for us at the moment but we may consider it later in life. We were planning to retire in place but we'll have to wait and see how that goes.
We live in a small community and most of the town's amenities are a 10-minute walk away. We don't even need to drive, except to the big stores.

My husband is taking retirement this year, at the age of 63. I, on the other hand, am still working. I work as a freelance tour guide and I take tour groups all over the country.
The majority of the people in my groups are retired seniors.
I love my job and I hope I can keep doing this for a long time to come.

I mentioned that we don't really have close friends where we live. We have a lot of friendly acquaintances.
It's not that we haven't tried to form closer friendships with people here. We find that a lot of people are in established friendship circles and it's kind of hard to break into these circles. I regularly text a couple of women I know and I invite them to catch up over coffee or lunch, but it rarely happens. When I try and set a date for the meet up, a lot of the time I get some vague answers or even radio silence ...

I don't befriend people in the hope that they will take care of me in later life. I like the idea of having friends of all ages and a good social life, now and in years to come. My late parents had a social life and a friends circle to be jealous of. People of different generations.

The difference between us and my parents is that my parents never moved away from the town they grew up in. Their friends were people they'd known since childhood or from school, or from sports activities, or from the local community. My dad was a local businessman and my mom worked for local authorities.

[Anonymous]

Friends can be your family. Set aside a substantial portion of $ to meeting-up w/friends around the country. Make it regular thing. If you don't have a number of friends now, work on making them.

[Anonymous]

My parents voluntarily moved into a nice over 55+ community, and it’s been great.

pp, new here ... where did they move?

[Anonymous]

I plan to move back to my hometown someday where my three siblings still live It was a great place to grow up but not to make a career. I never felt like I fit in the city where we have lived and worked for 35 years. My best friends (college) live in other places and we are lucky to see each other in person once a year. I plan to join the neighborhood church, volunteer, and just live a simple life. My siblings and I are close in age so I don’t expect we will be able to care for each other in our old age. However, there are many private board and care homes in the neighborhood and we can pay for in-home help.

I was shocked to hear a sad story of a childless cousin and his wife had no one to care for them in their old age even though he had inherited a substantial sum of money from his mother. Cousin was battling cancer and wife was struggling with cognitive impairment herself but was the only one around to care for him. She would forget to give him medicine and feed him. She was not competent to take care of herself, let alone care for him. Apparently, no one stepped in until both were in terrible condition yet many came out of the woodwork to get a piece of the estate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I plan to move back to my hometown someday where my three siblings still live It was a great place to grow up but not to make a career. I never felt like I fit in the city where we have lived and worked for 35 years. My best friends (college) live in other places and we are lucky to see each other in person once a year. I plan to join the neighborhood church, volunteer, and just live a simple life. My siblings and I are close in age so I don’t expect we will be able to care for each other in our old age. However, there are many private board and care homes in the neighborhood and we can pay for in-home help.

I was shocked to hear a sad story of a childless cousin and his wife had no one to care for them in their old age even though he had inherited a substantial sum of money from his mother. Cousin was battling cancer and wife was struggling with cognitive impairment herself but was the only one around to care for him. She would forget to give him medicine and feed him. She was not competent to take care of herself, let alone care for him. Apparently, no one stepped in until both were in terrible condition yet many came out of the woodwork to get a piece of the estate.

The coming out of the woodwork for money is gross, but you seem to not understand people have jobs, spouses who may be ill and children. We have limited leave. You burn up all your leave on family issues and elderly parents and then maybe you finally one year have some vacation days that aren't burned with care-giving and you want to go on vacation. With all their money they could have hired a team of caregivers. They could have moved to continued care before there were issues. They had options, but they chose to keep their heads in the sand until it was too late. Expecting others to step in is incredibly selfish and myopic. My friend had 2 strokes over the course of 4 years dealing with eldercare hell and not even in her own home.

[Anonymous]

Irresponsible elders were often irresponsible in their earlier adult lives. Didn't plan. But what they expect of others is difficult to assess and judge from the outside looking in. Just sayin' unless something is specifically asked of you, and you think it's outlandish, no reason to judge.

[Anonymous]

This is OP again.

I wish I had a closer bond with my remaining relatives in my hometown. As I mentioned before, they live a 6 to 7 hour drive away, except for some cousins who live overseas.

I visit my hometown about every 3 to 4 months and I always try and meet up with relatives and old friends there.

When I'm there I usually see my aunts and uncles and also an elderly cousin of my late father. She's 90 and she lives in a care home now.
She lost her 93-year old husband to Covid last year and she couldn't live at home on her own anymore because she's frail and not very mobile.
She and her late husband were childless and she's feeling very lonely now. They'd been married for 65 years.

I don't want to end up like her. I wish I had a closer bond with my cousins and their kids. My cousins are all younger than me and they never get in touch with me and my husband. If I don't reach out first I never from them.

It almost feels like my extended family have forgotten about me since my parents died 14 and 23 years ago. I'm always the one to initiate contact. Is this normal?