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If you’ve heard the news that nursing homes can be lonely places to age apart, and you are a healthy, wealthy, able-bodied person…
…You Must Have Gone To Bed Early, And Risen Early Too, Because You Are Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise Benjamin Franklin Style…
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin Soure: Wikipedia
Since Boomers - our parents for better or worse - are aging in higher numbers than the Michigan eldercare system can viably support with its current limiting resources, we can expect more old and lonely Michiganders from now on.
I’m almost 40 feeling half as sprightly as in my 20s.
I shook down the University of Michigan for some Blue and Maize facts, to find “Most adults want to ‘age in place,’ but few are prepared” [Read it on University of Michigan Website]
“Aging in Place” means you spend your days in your home or apartment while living your best retired lifestyle.
Aging in place indicates no plans to live into an assisted living facility.
Usually how it goes is, if you fail at aging in place, then you’re stuck moving into a facility.
A Whopper 88% of Michiganders believe it’s important to age in place.
But Below 20% of Michiganders are “Very Confident” in their ability to afford personal and home services if needed.
[See the Data and Charts and Stuff on U of M Official Website]
The long and short of leading-to-end-of-life care costs in Michigan: more-wealthy people find it easier to afford in-home care, while less-wealthy people pretty much need to move in with family or move into a non-family care facility.
Furthermore, less-wealthy people are more likely to go bankrupt over the whole thing and lose part of their hope for a better future.
Some pessimistic people living in elder care facilities report feelings like 👎 “I lost my family and my home, and I have no idea what to do”.
More positive people say things like 👍 “I lost my family and home, but I’m working to get my own place.”
That’s an awesome attitude!
It’s good to know… When some less-wealthy people who are living inside a nursing facility not by preference meet these circumstances, they show a willingness to work.
Before I ever got a first-eye glimpse into an assisted living facility to learn a lil about the direct care by watching the pros, I had this idea “they needed someone to save them”.
Now I still see disconnect when loneliness lives inside the building with a room number, and I am a young healthy walker more able to enter the building than loneliness is to exit the building and come over to my house…
But really nobody ever asked you to save them.
Some of them are actively looking for an opportunity to make their new life in a new place, and that seems like a person I could learn from.
I gotta ask him what job he’s doing to get paid to dig himself up into a better position of financial independence.
Bankrupt old people can start from zero and keep a piggy bank.
If he’s doing a job earning $20 a week that he can spend on awesome stuff he likes to have and use while he’s living in the nursing home, then he might not think the nursing home is so bad after all.
When you equip an old Michigander with needed tools, they might achieve their goals.
Maybe this guy I met can't drive.
Maybe this guy can only get so far as his power chair takes him, and his facility managers let him.
This man's READY to WORK.
