D<\/span>id you know that almost twenty percent of baby boomer women don\u2019t have children? That number is near twice the rate of childlessness in all previous generations.<\/p>\n The reasons for this dramatic rise are fairly evident. Over the past 40 years, options for careers and contraception have changed women\u2019s lives dramatically.<\/p>\n Plus, pursuing a career path, never marrying, and not raising kids became socially acceptable.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t have exact numbers for men, but it\u2019s probably fair to assume that their numbers are similar since it takes two to tango.<\/p>\n Now that the baby boomers are the current \u201colder adults,\u201d it means one in five will have no grown children to help them as daily life gets more difficult.<\/p>\n In addition to the unprecedented numbers of boomers who don\u2019t have children, many more have children who live hundreds or thousands of miles away, are estranged from their parents, or are not suitable as trusted caregivers for other reasons. That puts even more boomers in a position where they will have to plan for their aid and care in later life without the safety net of adult children. This fact holds for both single and married people.<\/p>\n Since we don\u2019t have a crystal ball, we have no way of knowing which partner will be widowed in the future, so the idea of taking care of one another only goes halfway.<\/p>\n Your chances of living into that ripe old age are better than ever, thanks to medical science, but so are your chances of needing assistance with the daily physical or mental requirements.<\/p>\n Household relocation, money management, shopping, even personal hygiene are just a few of the myriad chores adult children often take over for their aging parents.<\/p>\n You may expect to age gracefully, healthfully, and without needing this kind of assistance, but health problems of one sort or another begin to afflict people with dramatically higher frequency as the decades mount.<\/p>\n Those of us now in our 60s and 70s, who do not have children, should start to think about our future as \u201cSolo Agers.\u201d We\u2019ve known for some time that friendships and social relationships (i.e., a support system) are critical to staving off feelings of loneliness and isolation at an older age. They are, in fact, more essential than the presence of a spouse. And let\u2019s face the hard, cold fact that even if you are now married, one of you is going to be left alone at some point in the future.<\/p>\n Statistics still tell us that in a heterosexual union, it will be the woman. In fact, 45% of women over 75 report living alone, while only 23% of men report a solo household.<\/p>\n Here are some ideas and recommendations for starting NOW to form the bonds and safety nets you will need as a solo ager:<\/p>\n Find\/join\/start a group of like-minded solo agers. Talk about your issues and individual preferences for aging. Explore ways you might live together (or at least closer) to one another. That will become increasingly important as you become less mobile.<\/p>\n I know one group of four women who, in their 60s, decided to sell their single-family homes and purchase condos in the same complex so they could be close to one another as they age.<\/p>\n One of the members of this group already lived in the complex. So she was on top of it when a unit went on the market. Within six years, all four owned units in the small complex and plan to assist each other as needs arise.<\/p>\n Whether you are committed to aging in place or moving to a retirement community, start exploring and planning now. Learn about the Village Movement, home-sharing, and Co-housing.<\/p>\n Maybe you and your group of like-minded friends will find a community you all can call home. Perhaps you will create your own. Many experiments are taking place already, as you will learn when you research these three phenomena.<\/p>\n Many baby boomers react negatively when faced with the prospect of moving to a retirement community. I think there are several reasons for that.<\/p>\n The primary one is that many boomers\u2019 only experience with \u201csenior living\u201d is visiting a grandparent in a nursing home.<\/p>\n Today, the expanded definition of senior living includes:<\/p>\n I strongly recommend to solo agers that while they are in their 60s and 70s, they start to check out these congregate living communities in their geographic area.<\/p>\n They are all private pay (no, Medicare does NOT cover any assisted living) and each kind of community has a different financial model.<\/p>\n In some of them, you purchase a home or the right to use an apartment. In others, it\u2019s a pay-by-the-month model. They are all very different from one another.<\/p>\n An excellent way to understand senior living a little better is by visiting the consumer-facing page on the website for ASHA, the American Seniors Housing Association – lots of examples and definitions.<\/p>\n For solo agers, having an estate plan is critical. If your thinking runs along the lines of \u201cI don\u2019t have any heirs, so I don\u2019t care what happens when I die,\u201d you are very short-sighted.<\/p>\n Today, a good estate plan encompasses far more than just the instructions about how to dispose of your property and assets after you pass on. It should include a power-of-attorney (POA) for finances, a POA for health care decisions, a will, and in some cases, a trust.<\/p>\n For solo agers, the POAs are especially critical. The legal parameters for how these documents should be written is different in each state, but in all cases, it amounts to:<\/p>\n 1) choosing someone to manage your finances if you cannot do so yourself, for physical or mental reasons;<\/p>\n 2) choosing someone to make health-related decisions for you if you cannot make them for yourself for physical or mental reasons. The POA for healthcare is also known as an \u201cadvance directive for health care.\u201d<\/p>\n Choosing these agents or proxies is often the most challenging part of the estate planning work for solo agers. A good guide is to ask yourself whether the person you are considering meets these qualifications:<\/p>\n Open your heart and your life to younger people. Is there a niece? A younger sibling? The son or daughter of a good friend? You may want a younger person to be part of your life as you age. Eventually, you and your peers will not be able to do for one another what a younger person can.<\/p>\n As a generation, we are already re-inventing the retirement chapter of our lives. Many of us will also need to re-invent older age. It\u2019s time to start thinking about that chapter too!<\/p>\n Solo? Tips for growing older on your own<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2021","category-fall-2021-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11538"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11930,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11538\/revisions\/11930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Who will be there for you if you live into your late 80s, 90s, and 100s?<\/h3>\n
What are the critical obstacles to aging alone?<\/h3>\n
What can we do for ourselves?<\/h3>\n
Collaborate and Conspire with other solo agers<\/h3>\n
Housing<\/h3>\n
\n
Legal Documents<\/h3>\n
\n
Keep the Door Open and the welcome mat out<\/h3>\n
Dr. Sara Zeff Geber, Ph.D., is an author, professional speaker, and blogger on the subject of baby boomer aging, with a strong focus on Solo Aging. She is the author of Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers.<\/em><\/a> For more information: SaraZeffGeber.com.<\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"