What would be involved in duplicating an old-folkerie’s amenities in your home? Let’s think about that…
What did my father get at Orangewood, the “Life-Care Community” of his choice?
- two meals a day
- weekly housecleaning (probably emergency cleaning if needed)
- 3 rooms: living/sitting, 2 bedrooms
- 1 bathroom
- public lawn outside living-room slider
- place to park his car
- hired help with his bookkeeping and probably other needs
- 2 (bad) meals a day, served up out of cans and boxes
- on-call availability of a doctor (not a very good one, that I could tell)
- feeling of security/safety in the complex
- sort of a social life
This cost him a sizable chunk of his savings. He used all of his net on sale of the Sun City house to get into the fine institutionalized amenities of Orangewood.
So….how could you provide those in your home?
* Two meals a day
- Precooked meals from Sprouts, other grocers
- Go out for at least one meal a day
- Bring home takeout meals from restaurants
* Weekly housecleaning (probably emergency cleaning if needed)
- Hire a cleaning lady. For what Orangewood cost, he could have had someone come in several times a week
3 rooms: living/sitting, 2 bedrooms
- My house has 1 kitchen, dining, sitting room; 4 bedrooms (one for sleeping, one for guests/TV, one for storage, one as the office)
1 bathroom
- Mine has 2 bathrooms
Public lawn outside living-room slider
- Mine has a private back yard, a private side yard, and two public-facing front yards, plus a walled front courtyard
Place to park his car: in an open space under a roof
- Mine has a private garage with a motorized door that opens and closes at a touch; a motion-sensitive light, and a locking side door.
Driving errands
- Hire Uber or taxicabs to drive you around.
Hired help for his bookkeeping and probably other needs
- Hire a bookkeeper or accountant to deal with that ditz.
2 (bad!) meals a day, served up out of cans and boxes
- I cook like a five-star chef. When I don’t feel like cooking, both AJ’s and Sprouts serve up more than serviceable prepared to-go food. So do most of the restaurants around here.
- Also, in these parts you can order out food and have it delivered to your door.
On-call availability of a doctor (not a very good one, that I could tell)
- Young Dr. Kildare’s office is five minutes up the road. When his place is closed, a major regional hospital with a decent ER is also five minutes away. If it’s not all THAT urgent, the Mayo’s ER is about a ten-minute drive from here.
Feeling of security/safety in the complex
- About that, I would hesitate to opine. No place in a large city is completely safe, unless (maybe) if you’re in a gated community. Since I’m not volunteering to put myself in jail, I take my chances.
Built-in social life
- If you want to schmooze, what’s to stop you from going to church? Or from joining a hobby group or a traveling club?
My guess is, if you’re the sosh’ type, you already have a network of friends and acquaintances. If you’re a natural lone wolf, you don’t worry about that sort of thing.
So…how, really, would consigning yourself to Orangewood — in exchange for most of your life savings! — be better than using those savings to hire people to come to your established, comfortable home and help for you care for it, drive you around, see that decent food goes on your table, and keep you company?