Coffee heat rising

Retirement

Old Age: Live Free or Die???

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Is it possible to live independently in your dotage, right up until you die?

* Maybe, depending on how you define “independent.”
* Maybe, depending on how much cash you can fork over to an “independent living” outfit.
* Maybe, depending on how long “right up until you die” is.

Just heard from Semi-Demi-Exboyfriend, who (as you may recall) is living in Sun City, a depressing age-limited, race-limited (de facto) suburb on the west side of the Phoenix metropolitan area.

SDXB is pushing 85. He’s been in excellent health all his life and continues to take care of himself, in his own home all by himself.

New Girlfriend, we’re told, has sold her home out there and moved into an old-folkerie — these days, euphemistically called a “life-care community.” He sees the advantages, and as we speak is considering selling his nice little home in Sun City and imprisoning himself in one of those places, too.

And there are advantages. After my mother died, my father moved himself into one of those places, then called “Orangewood.” That probably was one of the best favors he could have done for himself…and for me.

For me? I didn’t have to take care of him!

  • He did not at any time live in my home.
  • He did as he pleased (more or less); I did as I pleased.
  • Our lifestyles remained independent, to the extent that we did not interfere with each other.
  • When he had his stroke (I was present at the time), medical people were right there, on the grounds, to care for him, and a medical clinic was right there to provide effective, experienced emergency care until an ambulance could carry him off to a hospital.

And that last one? It was HUGE. It meant there was no delay in obtaining experienced, knowledgeable medical care for him: right then and there.

So…is it time for me to start thinking along the Old-Folkerie lines?

Hm.

Well, quite frankly, nothing could strike me more as ANATHEMA.

No. I do not want to live in an institution. As a college student, I loathed living in the dorm. The elbow-to-elbow lifestyle just doesn’t make it for me.

So the question is…Is there a way to extend the time that I can keep living in my home until I’m totally bedridden or until I die?

In today’s America, it’s not at all clear that any such thing is possible. Unless they’re very wealthy, most young and middle-aged Americans have to work, and work full-time. That’s not an option.

This effectively limits care for the elderly either to institutional living or to hiring a full-time care-taker.

Neither of those is a very affordable option.

Nor, really, is it taking care of them yourself a desirable option. How well do you get along with your parents…seriously? How well do they get along with you? Even if you could afford to quit your job and stay h0me to care for an infirm elder (which you probably can’t…), how long do you think you could hang onto your marbles in that circumstance? Or as an old buzzard: how long do figure you can tolerate having your adult kids tell you what to do and when to do it?

Uh huh…you see what I mean, right?…

So I’ve been thinking how can I manage to take care of myself — without inflicting that care on my son — until I’m ready to make the Big Leap into the Other World?

Hmmmmm….

Let us try to explore this matter, in upcoming chapters of Funny about Money.

Duck! Cover! Or something….

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Pour a cup of coffee; prepare to sit down on the back porch to take the morning air; and you get RRR-R-O-O-O-A-A-R-R-RRR!!!!

Cop copter charges over the house. Circles around the ‘Hood,. Roar roar roar….

Meanwhile, twenty miles away, out at Luke Air Force Base, a squadron of fighter jets practices take-off and landing: rrrRRR-O-O-O-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-R-R!!!!!

My mother, who used to take her morning coffee on the back porch of their little Sun City house, professed to love the sound of fighter jets taking off and landing by Dawn’s Early Light. All very patriotic, no doubt…but definitely not my favorite symphony score.

The atmosphere has quieted down a bit now. Whenever it gets to be after 9:00 a.m. — at which hour I can turn left out of the ‘Hood — I’m headed to AJ’s, there to buy some more coffee. And melon. And bread. And dog treats… and… Argha!!!  The endless grocery list!

The Sprouts, which carries far more fake-gourmet items than the Albertson’s supermarket across the street, leaves enough to be desired to make the 20-minute trip to the overpriced AJ’s worth the journey. For one thing, I do NOT like being pounced and panhandled in the parking lot — pretty much inevitable at the neighborhood Sprouts. The Albertson’s has posted an armed, uniformed guard out front, which makes one feel safer there. Now…if only they’d carry a larger array of yuppified products, they’d never get rid of me. 😀

But they don’t. To get the fancy treats and overpriced dog food, I have to travel to the AJ’s. To get the rich black coffee: AJ’s. To get a piece of steak that’s worth the exorbitant prices most stores are now charging for beef: AJ’s.

****

SDXB on the phone. He and New Girlfriend live in Sun City, directly under the flight path of those Air Force jets. And like my mother, they regard the racket as “The Sound of Freedom.”

No doubt they’re right.

Too bad, though, that Freedom can’t turn down the volume a bit! 😀

SDXB loves living in Sun City, as my mother did when she was holding forth out there. It takes, I think, a certain mentality to like that lifestyle. Personally, I’ll take the sound of kids playing over the melody of F-16 engines blasting. But whatEVER: each to his/her own, eh?

Speaking of the which — sound, that is — the serenade of not one but TWO emergency vehicles wafts in through the screen door…. WTF d’you suppose is goin’ on out there now?

Looks like it was a good thing I dawdled over this blog post and killed time yakking with SDXB before I started out for the store. Fifteen or twenty minutes earlier, and I could’ve been in the middle of whatever that mess is.

***

And I would have missed the beloved Pool Dude, who just showed up at the door to collect his well-earned wages.

What a nice man! Probably a paroled murderer…but what the heck. He does a primo job of murdering pool algae.

Seriously: when a dear friend’s son got in trouble with the law (irrationally: not his fault!) and was thence thrown in the slam, we learned that one job regarded as “good” for paroled convicts is pool maintenance.

And considering what Pool Dude is earning — f’rgodsake, I just paid him $400!!! — if you worked at it and were even moderately competent at handling money and billing, you could in theory make a decent middle-class living at it.

Well, OK: part of the 400 smackers was for a large bucket of chlorine tabs. That stuff is expensive as hell, and if you’re buying a better quality product, it’s even more expensive than that. And the bucket the guy got — presumably from a pool product wholesaler — weighs more than I can pick up. So presumably it will be some months before we have to buy more chlorine.

Welp. I’d better get up and get outta here before the lunch crowd gets on the road.

And so, AWA-A-A-A-Y!

Stop the World…

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i wanna get off!!!!!

This damn place — lovely uptown Phoenix — gets crazier and crazier with each passing day. Accumulated passing days have given us insane cross-streets and neighborhood roads: lunatic drivers, roads that go nowhere, a construction zone at every turn…what a horrible place!

Wait, wait… Whew! A miracle just happened: WordPress let me in to Funny about Money, a maneuver it’s been rejecting all morning.

I could not remember the secret codes…or much of anything else. Apparently the computer’s memory has not yet been consumed by senility: at length, it remembered SOMETHING and let me into FaM’s site.

So this morning I determined to buy a silly dood-dad that I’ve been coveting for some time. So it was off to the gigantic {supermarket} up on Dunlap Road.

They didn’t have it.

Ohhhkayyyyy….

Around the corner to the hardware store:

Noooo…not a chance in Hell.,

Ohhhhhkayyyyy,,,,

Across Main Drag Central, over to the westside shopping area, into another hardware store.

Nope.,

Into another supermarket.

Har har hardy-har har!

Over to the Safeway.

Not a chance in Hell.

Up to the Albertson’s. It may not be Hell, but it doesn’t have a chance of carrying the doo-dad, either.

Driving around & around. Ugh!

Truth to tell, I love to drive. But I am SO-O-O-O SICK of driving in L.A. East!!!!! Gawdlmighty, I hate the homicidal streets of Phoenix. Just a nasty, frustrating, crazy-making place to drive a car.

Driving around gets crazier with each day. People behave like they’re high on meth, wherever they go. Who knows? Maybe in my senilitude, I do the same thing. All I know is…GET OUTTA MY WAY, YA CRAZY FOOLS!

Seriously: that’s how it feels to drive here.

The more Phoenix resembles the L.A. area, the more I hate it.

Seriously: if my son didn’t live here, I would be sooooooooo long gone!

Where would I go?

Hm….

Here in Arizona?

* Sedona
* the Oro Valley area outside of Tucson
* Fountain Hills, an overpriced suburb of Scottsdale
* Prescott (probably not: too cold in the winter)

Uhmmmm…that’s about it.

In California:

* San Francisco
* Certain parts of San Diego
* Carmel/Monterey, if I had all the money in the world

In Nevada?

*Phbbhphttt!

In New Mexico?

* Santa Fe: again, if I had all the money in the world

****

Welp! Since “All the money in the world” doesn’t apply here. it looks like I’m stuck. And the more I live in Central Arizona, the less I like it.

****

Advice to the unwary: think one helluva lot more carefully than I did about where you’d like to spend your dotage!

Lost Times, Lost Friends, Lost Family…

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Phoenix…ugh! The place gets more and more like L.A. as the days pass!

I was reminded of this, fairly vividly, when I drove through a tract just to the south of the ‘Hood, probably built out in the late 1950s or the 1960s. The houses there remind me so much of my mother’s best friend, Anna. The Long Beach, California, neighborhood where Anna lived could have been built by same developer — the houses practically clone Anna’s little place.

It was a nice little place. Her husband, Capt Ellison, was a sea captain just like my father, and he made a pretty good living, for a blue-collar guy.

And their house was nice enough: a sweet little place in a blah, faceless Southern California tract. Every shack looked the same as the next one, really. If you didn’t know Anna’s address and didn’t know where you were going, you’d never find her place.

The two men were coming on to the end of their careers, along about 1960 or ’62. They both planned to retire soon.

Capt. Ellison was on the last inbound leg of his last sea voyage. We were all looking forward to the great retirement and all the fun the friends would have and maybe talking Anna and Capt. Ellison into moving to Sun City, where my parents had already decided to retreat.

And damned if he didn’t drop dead on the ship’s deck.

No exaggeration: he had a heart attack and literally fell down dead. As the ship was heading in to harbor.

Well, the Ellisons’ house in Long Beach, a pleasant little place, was paid for. Their only child, a daughter who had some mental problems that seemed to entail a shortage of IQ points, was married and had two kids. And she had an appropriately mindless job on a factory assembly line, also in Long Beach. The son-in-law was a decent man who had reached the apogee of his career in a similar job.

That, of course, was the end of any inchoate schemes to inveigle Anna into moving to Arizona.

So there was something kind of heart-rending about driving through a neighborhood that looked so much like the one where Anna and Fred had lived. Absurdly, I wondered if my parents would have moved into town if Anna and Fred had bought a place over here, in that tract.

They might have. But probably not. My father, who was not fond of kids, thought Sun City was the greatest innovation since gin & tonic. The child-free appeal of Sun City, for him, was just huge. One rather doubts that Anna and Fred, who had grandchildren, would have thought the same way.

Also, Anna was massively overweight: so much that a good-quality bathroom scale could not measure how much she weighed. The ensuing health problems would have made it difficult for them to move. Plus their daughter, who was not overly endowed in the compos mentis department, was happily ensconced in that assembly-line job and a stable marriage. And Anna’s grand-daughter, who seemed to have developed a normal contingent of IQ points, was in high school and no doubt needed her grandmother to keep her more or less on track.

So…it’s reasonable to doubt that Anna and Fred could ever have been talked into coming over here, even after Fred retired.

Too bad. They’ve been missed over the years.

Aging in Place…by Damn!

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Why in heaven’s name did I never think of this?  It’s so obvious!

Hire someone to come to the house and provide the services you’d get in an old-folkerie.

  • What would be the advantages?
  • What would be the disadvantages?
  • What would be the effect on M’hito?
  • What be the effect on me?

Y’know, my father checked himself into one of the first and most prominent “life-care communities” in Arizona. (Don’tcha just LOVE that marketing euphemism?) The place was called Orangewood…and it was within walking distance of my house in North Central Phoenix.

My mother had refused to go, so he was stuck in their house in Sun City until she croaked over — which she did promptly enough, thanks to her suicidal tobacco habit.

You need to know that he had gone to sea all his adult life, living on naval vessels and commercial tankers. So he was deeply accustomed to living in an institutional environment.

  • He didn’t mind close quarters.
  • He didn’t mind having to behave like he was in jail.
  • He didn’t mind bad food.
  • He didn’t mind other people telling him what to do and when to do it.

Personally, I loathe that lifestyle. Hated living in the dormitory.  And I would — truly — take a flying leap off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon if I were forced to move into one of those nursing-home knock-offs.

Turns out that some alternatives do exist, even though they’re not obvious.

Bear in mind: moving into one of those awful “life-care communities” will take ALL of your life savings.

So…uhmmmm…. If you decline any such move, will you not then still have your sticky little hands on said life savings?

And if that’s the case, couldn’t YOU decide how said L.S.’s will be spent, on whom, and when?

  • Why could you not sic your financial representative on the agencies and organizations you’d need to hire? Have him ride herd on them, see that they’re paid, that they do the job, and they don’t cheat you.
  • Helle’s belles, hire a second financial rep — or a lawyer — to ride herd on the first one.
  • It would be complicated as Hell and you’d need to have honest, reliable representatives…but…it could be done. Couldn’t it?

See the gist of what I’m saying here? You could hire your own people to provide the services you get from a “life-care community.”

You’d need more than one person. Taking care of an ailing oldster is no easy task…and it is, as a practical matter, a 24-hour job. You’d probably need at least three people, to cover three eight-hour shifts.

Hiring three people to hang around and watch over you 24 hours a day would, indeed, cost an arm and a leg and then some. But remember: when you move into one of those life-care outfits, they take everything you have.

To move to Orangewood, my father had to fork over his entire life savings, including the funds he got from the sale of his paid-off house. And though he wasn’t John D. Rockefeller, as an inveterate cheapskate he had piled up quite a mound of cash to see him and my mother through their dotage.

Okay. So: what are we looking at, if instead we hire private staff to babysit us in our own dotage?

  • What would be the advantages?

* They would be my employees, not beholden to some company acting as a holding pen to store my body while we wait for me to die.

* Therefore, I could hire and fire at will. If I were dissatisfied, I could find someone else to come in.

  • What would be the disadvantages?

* I or my son would have to ride herd on them.

* This would mean we not only would have to be sure they were paid fairly and on time, but also that income-tax documents were filed and that the employees understood their responsibilities for paying their taxes.

* Any dishonesty or shiftiness on their part could have painful consequences for us.

* Any loss of marbles on my part could also have painful consequences, for everyone involved.

* And of course, having someone in your face every day would be, for a loner like me, quite the little adjustment…

  • What would be the effect on M’jito?

* It would foist an untoward responsibility on him, one that could be quite a burden.

* If tax reports were incorrectly filed through no fault of his or mine, the government could harass us.

* It would free up large amounts of time for him, during which he would not have to ride herd on me.

  • What would be the effect on me?

* No doubt I would be less than perfectly pleased to have someone underfoot all the time — at least 8 hours a day, and maybe more than that.

* On the other hand, if it would keep me out of an old-folkerie, no doubt I could somehow make myself adjust…

In some ways, it’s a toss-up, isn’t it….

Home or Old Folkerie?

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Sittin’ around the house thinking….

Am I gonna be able to stay in my home until I croak over?

Or will I be forced to sell this place and lock myself up in one of those prisons for old folks?

You know whereof we speak: “life care communities.” All the rage for keeping elderly delinquents off the streets these days.

Welp, y’know… Those institutions had just come into vogue as my parents entered their dotage. My father, having gone to sea all his life, was not the slightest bit daunted at the prospect of selling their little home in Sun City and consigning himself to the care of an institution.

But…my mother would have none of it! NO WAY in hell was she going to put herself in a nursing home before she needed it!

Little did she know how soon she would need it. She died on my birthday in her 65th year.

The cancer so generously gifted to her by the world’s tobacco companies killed her….less than a month after her 65th birthday. The nursing home was rolling her, in her hospital bed, down to the Medicare ward when she passed.

She was decently cared for in the nursing home…probably because my father drove in from Sun City every day. walked in the door when they opened at 7 a.m., and sat there beside her bed, watching, until they threw him out at 11 p.m.

But…

Frankly, I think my father was right: They should have imprisoned themselves in Orangewood, the “life-care community” of my father’s choice, before she got sick. He had discovered the existence of such places about eight months or a year before she fell ill, and he’d tried to persuade her to move into one. She would have none of it.

And…

Well, I don’t blame her. Personally, I loathe institutional living. Truly, truly hated living in the dorm. And that is why I don’t want to move into one of them. Too much like living in prison…

After she died, he promptly sold the little house in Sun City and forked over most of his net worth to move into Orangewood. And I can assure you that he liked it there. Well: except that he made a key and unreconcilable mistake: he married a horrible dragon lady who, once she had him trapped with a wedding ring, made his life miserable.

No, he wouldn’t divorce her, because

a) He was afraid she would “get all my money” in divorce proceedings; and
b) He was afraid of the gossip a divorce would create among the other prison inmates.

Dragon Lady was outgoing and busy: she was extremely popular with the Orangewood natives. And he probably was right: if he did divorce her, he no doubt would want — if not need — to move out of that place. But…those “life-care communities” glom ALL YOUR CAPITAL. He probably wouldn’t have had enough money to get himself into some other place, plus all the money he had given to Orangewood was basically disappeared.

Result of that: he lived out the last few years of his life in utter misery.

***

Would my father have been better off if, instead of institutionalizing himself, he had hired people to come in and take care of him at his place in Sun City?

Putting aside the fact that he was too tight to do that…let us think about it:

* Here, Pool Dude keeps the drink pristine. My father’s Sun City palace had no pool. However, because it was so poorly built (basically uninsulated), its AC bills were far higher than mine. So one might regard SC power bills, compared to my house, as a wash…in the pool.

* Wonder-Cleaning Lady comes in every two weeks and renders the house spotless. Because there are no kids or cats here, the place stays reasonably clean between visits.

* Gerardo wrangles the landscaping — which, because it’s xeric, doesn’t demand much. It has an automatic watering system: I don’t even have to do a hose-drag to maintain the place.

* I have no problem caring for a small dog. Ruby is basically effortless, as roommates go.

Given that my father’s house was paid for, to have stayed in Sun City and hired a yard guy and a cleaning lady wouldn’t have cost him anything LIKE what Orangewood cost. Not even if he hired someone to come into the house daily, check on him, take him to the grocery store, maybe prepare a week’s worth of meals for him.

Zillow estimates my house’s current value at $484,100. Borrowing against that would buy a WHOLE lot of service from Pool Dude, Lawn Dude, and the Cleaning Lady from Heaven. Years’ worth.

And again, let’s remember, he didn’t need either a pool dude or a lawn dude…

Now, what did my father get at the honored old-folkerie?

At Orangewood: a two-bedroom apt.  They refuse to tell you the cost on their website…which ought to tellya something….  As I recall, it took the entire proceeds of the sale of his house to get him into that place. The apartment was tiny: I would describe it as an elaborate studio apt. It didn’t have a real kitchen — just a counter with a minimal stove and a sink. The living room, dining area (if you could call it that), and kitchen occupied one (count it: 1) room.

Median monthly cost of “independent living” in Arizona is $2,738.

He couldn’t have afforded that. ONE YEAR would consume almost a third of his life savings. That’s $32,856/year, bare minimum. Without maintaining your car, without going anywhere, without even buying clothes. Basically what was happening was that he was forking over ALL of his Social Security, plus a substantial chunk of his savings.

It certainly would not cost $35,000+ a year to hire someone to come in and take care of my house. The total cost of everything — maintenance, car, groceries, utilities, pool care, and general living expenses — may come to something like that. Or not…. just now I’m not drawing anything like that out of savings, but I get a decent amount of SS. Not enough to live in middle-class grandeur, but certainly not so little that I would starve.

What that suggests, IMHO, is that moving into one of those places would cost as much as — or more than! — I would have to spend to stay here and hire people to come in and help me. The money I take out of savings, in most years, is recovered because the remainder stays in professionally managed investments.

I would be better off — and my son would be better off — if I can manage to stay in this place until I die, or at least until a few months before that happens. Proceeds from the sale of this house would nicely plump up his retirement savings. Or he could sell his place, invest any profit from that, then move into this place and invest the monthly amount he’s been forking over to his mortgage company.

Speaking of the value of a shack, my parents’ house in Sun City last sold for $255,000: two and a half times the amount of my father’s life savings. Lest you think that was bargain, the place was about the size of the first apartment DXH and I moved into. I think they paid about $8,000 for that house.

Indeed, that first apartment may have been bigger than the SC house…it certainly was no smaller.

Our apartment:

dining area
living room
2 bedrooms
kitchen
Walk-in storage closet in kitchen
2 bathrooms????? Can’t recall…maybe not, though

SC house

dining area
living room
2 bedrooms
kitchen
2 bathrooms
Don’t recall a storage closet, but think there was space behind carport
Lots of wasted space in hallway

The SC house last sold for $255,000!!!!!  2 1/2 times the total nest egg that my father saved for his retirement!