There are several recognizable stages of grief. Some of those stages include denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance. But one that many of us experience and recognize is anger. While we most often associate grief with the emotions that we feel when a loved one passes away, we can also go through grief over a lot of other things. People go through grief when their house burns down or when they lose a job or a pet. Another loss that we don’t often characterize as grief is the physical decline of aging.
We can detect in ourselves, or in senior citizens we know, by the comments we make, when we are experiencing grief from loss of youth. It is common to talk about looking back with remorse at lost youth and with the loss of functionality and strength that happens when we age. As a senior citizen notices strength decline and perhaps go through one of the many natural ailments of aging, such as arthritis, or problems with elimination, it is not uncommon to see a response of anger as a result of impatience with these problems.
Nobody aims to get old. And I am sure that if we could put it to a vote, aging would lose continuing to be part of our lives. As much as senior citizens themselves hate to grow old, your loved ones also hate to see it happen to you. And while you as senior citizen may not see it happen, your family is grieving the loss of the “young mom or dad” as much as you are.
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There is no simple answer to the question of what is included in the rent. This is because the answer will likely vary from one apartment complex to the next. Some apartment complexes may include a variety of items within their rent while others may charge senior rentals additional fees as needed and still others may require the renters to register directly with individual public utilities and handle these expenses on their own.
Likewise some apartment complexes may include additional features with the price of the rent while others may charge additional fees for these features. A pool, exercise room, meeting room or theater are just a few examples which may be offered by an apartment complex. In most cases the use of these amenities are included in the price of the rent but there are exceptions where the renter is charged an additional fee for the privilege of using these amenities. (more…)
For most of us, our senior citizen years are a time to relax, maybe pursue a hobby, travel or just relax and let life go by. But, for many, retirement isn’t just a time to lay down the goals of life. It is a time to look back over life at the unfinished challenges and then go back and finish them. And for many, an unfinished goal in life is to go back and get that diploma or degree. Whether it is finally graduating from high school, finishing your bachelor’s degree or starting and finishing a masters or PHD, it’s a big challenge to go back to the classroom and get that certificate, especially when you do that as a senior rentals citizen.
So why do we do it? This may be a question your children ask when they see your going after such an ambitious goal so late in life. But when you think about it, we as senior citizens have a right to be a bit offended by the question. Where is it written that we are denied the right to better ourselves just because we are in the later years of life? Implicit in the question is “What is the point of your getting a degree since you are not going to do anything productive in retirement and so close to death?”
The last thing we as senior citizens want is to be seen as people who are just sitting around waiting to die. Many a senior citizen has started an entirely new career and accomplished great things after 60, 70 and 80. With the advances in medical science today, it’s quite likely that we could live 20-30 years or more “in retirement”. That is plenty of time to accomplish great things. And starting out this era of life with a good education makes just as much sense as a youth doing so as they start out at 25 on their 25-year career.
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One of the real joys of retirement and enjoying your senior years may come in the form of travel. Travel is broadening and many senior citizens save for a lifetime to enjoy a lifestyle of travel once they are retired. The image of becoming a world traveler in their senior years is one of those dreams that kept them going when life was tough in their working years so they certainly deserve to hit the road and enjoy the fruit of a lifetime of work. Now that you live in a senior rentals environment, keeping up a home of you own is no longer a tether that keeps you housebound.
If this is the kind of retirement fun that you have in mind, it pays to plan ahead so you travel smart. Being prepared for a long trip makes sense for anybody but if these trips you will be taking are to be the dream trips you want them to be, you don’t want to see those vacations turn into travel nightmares.
A big part of smart traveling is knowing well in advance what you are going to need on the trip. But it may be even more important to know what you are not going to need. By packing light, you make the chore of pulling over-packed luggage through the airport less difficult. And if you are going to be staying in several places on the trip, packing light means less repacking as well.
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Senior rentals life demands a “paradigm shift” when we move from the working world to the world of retirement. A paradigm shift means that the rules we live by and the economy that regulates our lives will change dramatically. Whether we have a large retirement package or we have retirement savings that are going to take some care to stretch out, we will begin to live on a fixed income. Stretching your retirement savings will become a hobby, a passion and a lifestyle that we get good at over time.
Perhaps you have just moved out of your family home and down-sized or relocated to a senior rentals apartment. With all the changes happening, your routine of many years no longer serves to guide you automatically. Senior rentals living forces adaptation to a new lifestyle at a time when change is more challenging but flexibility is mandatory.
If you are just stepping into retirement, learning the ropes from the old pros at the skill of stretching the retirement dollar will serve you well. It will be these old experts that will know how to have a fun evening out on the town for under twenty dollars, when it is the right time to buy at the supermarket, and how to leverage coupons to the best advantage.
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Most people in this day and age consider that they can be totally independent. Modern society is built on the interaction of cooperative exchange of skills and goods so that we can specialize on our strengths and abilities. But that also means we need the goods, services, and skills of others in order to maintain a standard of living that is above subsistence.
As we age we lose some of the capacity to produce or exchange all that we need. However we still maintain the expectation that we can be independent or at least not too dependent on others, especially for the things that we used to be able to do with ease.
Fortunately, hundreds of communities are now operating programs and services to provide aging populations a certain degree of self-reliance and independence that we desire. Senior rentals homes, independent senior living and other assisted living facilities are in high demand. These provide seniors help to live a life on their own, a life that needs no extra assistance from any member of their family.
The independent living senior rentals centers built for the elderly usually offer services that are all designed to provide a degree of independence to those they assist. The good thing about them is that they make these services available with an intent of being customer controlled. This means that to allow the senior adults to live on their own, they offer full authority and responsibilities to those they help. Although members of the facility are there to assist senior rentals occupants, they provide all the services done without breaching any of the seniors’ private lives. They prefer to help adults to realize their own worth and confidence by allowing them to succeed on certain challenges by their own.
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Are you the type of person who never was able live up to stereotypes? When we think of a stereotype, the classic is the image of your standard senior citizen. That image is as a slowly moving Grandma or Grandpa who is long done working at their career and wants nothing more than to sit in their rental apartment and wait for the next holiday to see the grandkids. Well, if you are like a lot of senior citizens of the new century, we look at that stereotype and say – forget it!
We are the kind of people who have had the most amazing and exciting lives because we took chances and lived active lives taking on challenges and winning at those challenges. Probably the most puzzling idea of that sweet stereotype of Grandma and Grandpa is that we all are expected to go into retirement at 65 or 70 and stop working because we couldn’t wait to retire. But everybody isn’t exactly like that.
Some of us are in careers that are the calling of our lives and going to work is as much like play as it is work. You love what we do and the idea of not doing it every day of your life is more like prison than a reward at the end of life. In fact, the very idea of changing how we live because it is “the end of life” seems like surrender as much as it is a long vacation. And we are not the kind to surrender to the inevitability that life will end. The end may come and get you, but it is going to have a fight on its hands. (more…)
When you have a senior parent, the concern for their ability to maintain their lifestyle can be a significant worry. Almost without exception, senior citizens resist the idea of moving out of their house and into an assisted living facility or nursing home. As a child of a senior citizen you may see issues of safety if your aging parent continues to live independently. If their spouse has passed on, there may be issues of loneliness and depression. Hallways and doors of old homes are often not built to accommodate walkers or wheelchairs and the image of your children’s Grandma or Grandpa falling and being unable to reach you for help is frightening. And then there is the financial side of maintaining their home and paying the mortgage if it is still active.
As a transition between leaving their large family home to then move into home care, consider the possibility of a senior rentals apartment. These can take the form of a retirement village, or a independent living community of like-minded and active seniors.
The question is whether you should try to help your aging parent with moving to an assisted care facility or if it can be worked out for them to move to a senior rental apartment. There are some compelling reasons to help them stay in the house they have lived in for so long if there are ways to overcome the problems. Some studies indicate that senior citizens who live in their own homes are happier and healthier. Your parents may have long-lasting friendships in the neighborhood who provide tremendous emotional support and neighbors who can look in on your parent from time to time to assure they are safe. The ability to get out in the yard, feed the birds, keep a pet or tend a small garden has untold health benefits both mentally and physically for a senior citizen.
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When you are raising your kids in your adult years, it seems you will never know a minute’s peace. Each day was another explosion of yelling, running and wild activity in the house from the moment the kids are born until they are grown and moving out. It was when the last one finally made their way into the world that you actually knew what is was to be alone, at least the two of you.
A full life such as this makes the adjustment to senior rentals status, your retirement, and the time alone or time on your hands, a bit of an adjustment. The adjustment is even more profound if you enter your senior years solo and you find yourself alone much of the time. But being alone does not mean being lonely. The problem of loneliness is chronic in senior citizens so it’s good to get out ahead of it so it doesn’t cause serious problems in an ongoing way.
The negatives of loneliness in senior citizens are well known. Excessive loneliness can easily lead to a sense of isolation, desperation and depression. This can result in substance abuse, or worse, if the senior citizen doesn’t find a way to fight back against that feeling of being alone. It is easy to feel abandoned if you are in your house that used to be filled with children, and resentful when your day passes with no human contact. If you have relocated to an assisted living center or nursing home, the problem may be even worse as you don’t have the comfort of familiar surroundings.
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Even as senior citizens, you can probably remember being a child when the most important thing in the world was having fun. Well there are some remarkable similarities between your life as a senior rentals citizen and those carefree days of childhood. For one thing, when you were a child, you didn’t work for a living, you felt secure that you had what you need. Hopefully in your senior years, you too are able to retire with the knowledge that you did a good job preparing for retirement so you have some carefree days to enjoy now too.
Just as the fun is different now as senior citizens, so are the toys. Now, enjoying an afternoon stuffing envelopes for the church is as much a fun as a game of playing checkers as long as you can do it with your friends and yak and share stores as you work. Now, going to a military base to look at their archives is more than just mildly interesting. It’s a trip through your own past and if you can enjoy that with others who fought for their country as you did, each of those guns and pieces of equipment in those display cases bring with them treasured memories that will have you and your senior friends swapping war stories for days after.
Another similarity that your kids may have pointed out to you is that, like it was when you were a child, you occasionally do things that you are not allowed to do. But now it seems to be our kids telling us what is ok for us to do or not do. But every so often, you have to throw caution to the wind and go ahead and party late into the night, go parasailing or go to a concert. And even though it is supposed to be not good for you and you will probably get a lecture for it in the morning, you had a great time taking in the experience. (more…)