Retirement is a daunting – and often unwelcome – life change because it is accompanied by deteriorating health, diminishing wealth, and a curtailment of lifestyle and living conditions.  This adjustment can be very difficult, and it affects not just the retiree but their children and extended family too.

As your parents get older, you will play a vital role to play in preparing them for retirement. To help you navigate this terrain, we’ve compiled a list of concerns that come up frequently in discussion with our clients and their children.

Move house, or stay put?

When it comes to deciding on where to settle, your parents can either stay where they are, sell up and downsize, or move in with family.

If your parents don’t want to move, you’ll need to discuss the practical and financial implications of continuing to live independently. Cooking, cleaning, and gardening get harder as we age, and keeping up with home maintenance can be both onerous and costly. Many people think that staying put is the most cost-effective way to retire, but the costs of maintaining a property – both financial and otherwise – can become debilitating.

Vulnerability to crime

You’ll also need to tackle the issue of crime and violence. Burglaries, home invasions, and hijackings are an unfortunate reality in South Africa today, and retirees living in large free-standing homes are often considered soft targets. Many retirees land up spending considerable sums of money on insurance, home security, and armed response. The emotional toll of living in fear of crime and violence can significantly erode one’s quality of life and even reduce life expectancy.

Access to good healthcare

No matter how fit your parents are now, there’s no getting away from the fact that they’ll become more susceptible to illness, accidents, sudden falls, and broken bones as they age.  Being able to access medical care quickly and easily, while not breaking the bank, will become a priority in the future, so having healthcare facilities and trained professionals close at hand means that they’ll be able to enjoy retirement without worrying unduly about these unforeseen eventualities.

Aging in place

Moving home is exhausting at the best of times, which is why we advise our clients to choose a home that will accommodate their changing needs over time.  Staying put in the family home may be fine while they’re fit and healthy, but what happens if they suddenly become ill, impaired or incapacitated?  Having to relocate under these circumstances can be particularly traumatic – both for the retiree and their families.

Evergreen’s retirement villages allow residents to live independently in a freestanding home while they are able to, with the option of transferring to an apartment, assisted living suite, or even a frail-care unit, within the same village, should their health deteriorate.

Home-based care

Becoming reliant on strangers later in life can be embarrassing and disheartening, which is why retirees often prefer to move in with their adult children. This is not a decision to be taken lightly, particularly if you’re still working, have young children, or are financially constrained.  Taking care of an elderly parent with dementia or a disability takes specialised 24hour care, and can be both physically exhausting and emotionally draining. This kind of care is better left to trained professionals, like those at Evergreen’s state-of-the-art healthcare centres.

Loneliness and isolation

Deteriorating health can be debilitating, but so too can loneliness, boredom, and social isolation – particularly for those stuck behind high walls in the suburbs, nursing a spouse, or no longer able to drive.  When considering options, be mindful of their need for friendship and human interaction, and of the impact that this can have on their emotional and physical well-being.

Fear of outliving their retirement funds

Thanks to modern medicine, today’s retirees can live anything up to 30 years past the point at which they stop working, which is why they often worry about the prospect of outliving their retirement savings.

At Evergreen Lifestyle, we know that a happy retirement lifestyle goes hand in hand with financial peace-of-mind which is why we adopted the Life Right purchase model when we launched the business 16 years ago. An Evergreen Life Right alleviates a lot of the finance-related stress in later life because it allows retirees to accurately plan for their financial future. There is no transfer duty, VAT, registration fees or capital gains tax, our levies are both affordable and transparent, and there are no special levies.

Lean on a trusted brand

If you are in the process of helping an aging relative or parent to retire, why not drop us a call. Our caring and experienced consultants have taken thousands of retirees, and their families, through the phases of transitioning into retirement, and understand how daunting the process can be. They are acutely aware of the fears and concerns that retirees and their families grapple with, and are uniquely positioned to offer sound advice, industry knowledge and expertise, and solutions to problems that you may think are insurmountable.

To book a no-strings attached consultation with an Evergreen Lifestyle advisor – either for yourself or a family member – please call 087 808 7000, email info@evergreenlifestyle.co.za, or click on the link below.