Smart, frugal parents equal a longer life!
INDEPENDENT PARENTS approaching 80. Father passes of covid, mom suffers a stroke not long afterwards rendering her incapable of living alone. Talk about a sudden life change. Decent AL, (no shared tiny rm with bathroom down the hall) minimum $3,500 a month. She falls in her AL breaking lower vertebrae. Options now; nursing home or bringing in private care to her AL 💰💰. A beautiful, 80 yr old, vibrant, 100% coherent woman in a nursing home??? I think not. My parents were very frugal and saved and saved for a rainy day and guess what? It’s pouring! My mom has the money now for private care at her AL which is literally KEEPING HER ALIVE. She’s happy, healthy overall and has made wonderful friends. I know 100% if she didn’t have the money she’d be gone by now. I’m so proud of both my parents for being frugal during their life because it’s giving my mom the quality of care she NEEDS to stay with us for hopefully many more years. I feel so stupid now for telling my parents to take those trips to Europe. My mom said why, we can watch National Geographic. Moral of the story. Save plan and save for your old age.
However, loving travelling we never regret spending, what what we both regret already is not travelling more.
My husband and I took over 40 trips in 20 years of marriage.
we had to cancel at least 2 because of Covid. Sadly, as my husband is facing progression of Parkinson I know we cannot do anything adventuresome.
We spent 2 months in Mexico this winter, but staying in condo and siting mostly by the pool, no more walks on the beach together.
I miss driving thru 5 or so countries in Europe and trip to Asia or Middle East, I still want to go to Australia and Africa, South America, even though I already visited some countries in last two continents.
As somebody once said on death bed people don’t say: I wish I travelled less and saved more money. But hey we all have our priorities and saving for retirement is prudent, As I live in Canada we have free medical, lots of boomers spent their money and rely on home equity, which is one way of doing it as in big cities prices are skyrocketed for real estate.
Right or wrong, their choices.
Too many people rely on SS for income. Thats not how it was set up. By retirement you should not have a Mortgage. Your kids are gone, hopefully, so should not be supporting them. But you need another source of income. Pensions helped with this but they are going by the wayside. During my years of working 401ks were brought into the picture in addition to pensions. Those who are my age getting all 3 are probably not doing to bad. But those only receiving SS needed to put money aside. If the man had made more than his wife, if he dies before her she loses her SS getting his. (There is a formula but this is how SS explained it to me) She loses about 1/3 of their SS income. Hard to live on that if you have no other income.
Wrong.
My folks never dreamed a nursing home or memory care would be in their future largely because neitiher of them ever had to do much caregiving for their parents. My grandmothers both died of cancer (one the day after she was diagnosed), and my grandfather had a 30-years younger second wife to care for him.
Nevertheless, my folks were children of the Depression and saved their money, and Dad was very good at investing. When Dad died just six weeks after his own cancer diagnosis, Mom needed to go to a nursing home, then memory care. She died last year after 2 1/2 years in that living situation, and I'll be eternally grateful that I only had to write a check from her account each month to pay for it.
I paid a total of $212,000 for those couple of years, and I'm sure very few people imagine those kinds of numbers will be in their future. I'm very grateful for the lessons they gave me, and you'd better believe that a large percentage of my inheritance is tucked away for my own needs in the not-so-distant future.
My mother became very tight with money as she aged, to a point where she refused to bring in caregivers mostly thinking she didn't need anyone helping her plus it would cost too much. On the other hand, my Dad welcomed caregivers and used them once my Mom had passed, as that was what the rainy day fund was for. Later Dad moved into senior living and was happy as a clam with the facility. He even was able to bring along his favorite 1st shift caregiver to help him out in the mornings, thus he had "routine".
My "rainy day" fund is all set for whenever my battery runs down. I just wished we could instill that into the younger generation, but they tend to turn a blind eye.
I think there's a balance between living your life and also saving for your old age. It was NOT stupid for you to encourage your parents to travel to Europe. Watching NatGeo is NOT the same.