Visualizing my Next Chapter…Again

We all live our lives in patterns. Those patterns might be dictated by the seasons or by our careers and maybe our hobbies or dates on the calendar, times on the clock. We are creatures of habit, we feel better when our lives ebb and tide at regular intervals like Mother Earth has been doing since the beginning of time. Birds fly south in the fall, they return in the spring. Nights follow days. Chickens follow eggs---or is it the other way around? Anyway, winters do follow falls and since my husband died, for me, summer house hunting seems to follow spring more often than not. 

The first summer of my discontent ending with me deciding to stay pull because I couldn’t find the opportunities for socializing in the condo communities on the south end of town that I was looking at. Our senior hall can’t be beat when it comes to offering a smorgasbord of daily activities. (Although, it’s changing character quickly as younger retirees are coming in. It’s like there’s a two-tier class system now that is less friendly than it was when I first started going there. The 55-65 year olds want their cheap entertainment but they’re click-ish, stay in little packs. High school all over again.) Anyway, I still want to be on the south side of 1.02 million people who live in the metropolitan area and the traffic jams they create between where I live now and where my family all lives.

The second summer of my discontent ending with me finding a condo I loved, would have put an offer on but they wanted to meet my dog before they'd accept an offer. Since he was three pounds over their limit he'd need a waver from the condo board and I wasn't willing to put Levi's future into a situation where we'd be subject to the continuing good graces of a condo board and my ability to keep him in diet mode for the rest of his life.

Enter the continuing care retirement community under construction and due to be completed in 2020. I've got an appointment to tour some of their models this week and their other phase that was built a few years back. (You get a lot of perks by signing up early.) I can’t find much not to like on their website. The place sits on 40 wooded acres on a lake with walking and biking trails, a dog park, a community garden, underground parking, concierge services, a bistro, a restaurant, sundries store, transportation options, art studio, lectures and wellness checks just to name a few. It’s not as far south of town as I wish it were, in fact it’s in a very dense part of town but it’s also near a road where I can make an easy escape and it goes all the way to my oldest niece’s house in 28 minutes, and I’d be out of the city in ten. It’s also located close to our Sculpture Park that I love and within a mile of all my medical doctors. Both my nieces come up from the boondocks to shop within a mile or two of this new place so I’m thinking I’ll be able to meet them for lunch once in a while or if I start needing more power-of-attorney kind of oversight, it will be easier for them. 

The way these continuing care places work is you start out in your own apartment but if you need a nursing home at some point you get moved to their onsite nursing facility, then to their Hospice when you need it. And for your buy-in fee they promise that even if you run out of money to pay your monthly fees they won’t turn you out. This place is run by a company that has be in the health care business since 1906, a dot org. They’ve got a good track record that leads me to believe they wouldn’t take the sizable buy-in fees from people then run off to Tahiti leaving everyone high and dry with no place to live but under a bridge. I have trust issues when it comes to money.

Back in 2017 when I was in my annual ‘need to move cycle’ I saw an elder placement guy---think A Place for Mom, sort of adviser---and he went over my income and assets and wrote in an email, “your financial situation looks like you will be able to privately pay for your long term care in nearly every foreseeable scenario.” And I’m thinking that kind of makes those buy-in, continuing care places a bad gamble for me. Why? Because if I died a week after signing the dotted line those big buy-in fees are non-refundable and we’re talking in excess of $250,000 that my heirs won’t get like they would if I bought a condo. On the other hand, if something disastrous happened to Social Security or my pension funds then it would be comforting to know that the continuing care would take care of me, even if I was penniless. Of course if something happens to Social Security I wouldn’t be alone in that basket of heartache. Every street corner would be crowded with panhandlers.

Visualizing my next chapter is filled with scary pit falls, endless questions and what ifs.  What if Levi doesn’t behave himself as he gets older and tries to pee in the hall on the way outside? Answer: buy a doggie buggy to push him in until we get to where he can go. What if Levi gets reported for barking too much? Answer: Have his bark surgically altered---although he’s getting hard of hearing and which means over time he’ll hear less things to bark at. What if I die of a broken heart trying to downsize 1,500 square feet of stuff into 1,057 square feet? Answer: I did it seventeen years ago and lived to tell about but this time I’d take more photos. My biggest worry truly is the dog. If this place has dog walkers or an onsite doggie daycare, you’ll hear my squeals of delight from two states away. After my tour, I’ll no doubt post about it again…. ©