It's always too soon until it's suddenly too late.
We are the first generation in history that can–and indeed must–plan on living to 85 or 90 or 95. What is likely to happen to us? How can we stay healthy? What does it mean to be "healthy" at age 85? What happens when we turn the corner and lose our independence? What sort of financial resources might we need for uncovered expenses (think Long-term care)? Join me as we explore these and other topics.
When people think about their life expectancy, most people remember a number from the US Life Tables. They often remember “life expectancy is 76.1 years for a man and 81.1 years for a woman. That is true for a hypothetical baby born in 2019 and estimating forward using current mortality rates. But you are not a newborn. Take a closer look at …
[Read More...] about Start by learning how long will you live
While writing this blog I have become immersed in end-of-life issues. In my typical learning style, this research is turning into a book. The end-of-life personal questions, legal forms, options for care, gaps in medical explanations and understanding present a quagmire in need of organization and clarification, something I hope to …
In 2014, the Institute of Medicine published "Dying in America, improving quality and honoring individual preferences near the end of life." It's 500 pages long, but the website has excellent powerpoints, summaries, and topic-specific pdfs. Below is a direct copy from their excellently written press release. I have only altered the …
[Read More...] about “Dying in America,” a brief summary of an excellent study
Here is a warning tale that even when state law permits physician-assisted end of life, and when the patient is terminally ill and desires to end her own life, and when two physicians agree that a patient has less than six months to live, and when one physician has written the necessary prescription, even then you still have to get the necessary …
[Read More...] about Even where legal, physician assisted end of life can be difficult
Thirty percent of Americans have signed a healthcare power of attorney (agent) or advance directive. The vast majority were signed as part of hospital admission paperwork or completed in an attorney's office as part of the will and estate planning process—and almost none had a substantive discussion with their actual agent about their …
[Read More...] about LaCrosse leads in end-of-life discussion and care
Susan Jacoby, the author of “Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age,” has an excellent piece in the Dec 6, 2019, NYT entitled, "We are getting old, but not doing anything about it." Her theme—shared by me—is that we need to do much more to prepare for the aging population. We are the first generation in history that can—and …
Want to guess what your health care and medical expenses will cost a 65-year old couple in retirement? Does $285,000 surprise you? That is the bare minimum because it does not include costs of long-term care, nursing home, assisted living, or home health aides. And those are the really big expenses. Fidelity Investments covers this topic and …
When do we start to age? Why do we age as the years pass? What causes aging? The theories below and much of this section come from the book "Borrowed Time, the science of why and how we age" by Sue Armstrong, published in 2019. Aging is most likely a complex interplay of several accumulated biologic errors or accumulated failures normally …
As boomers, we are now entering a new phase of life, one we do not understand and one with an outcome we do not want to contemplate. This future feels foreign because we do not understand it and there is no clear roadmap. Hence this website. Here we will explore getting older, what forks in the road might await us, and how to best plan for and navigate our way forward. My theme is that with some understanding and good planning, we have more control over our future than we might imagine.
A couple of notes of caution. First, I am not giving anyone medical or legal advice. I am providing broad guidelines to help people think about how they want the rest of their life to be lived and how to make those wishes clear to those who need to know. Second, I am certainly not an attorney. State laws vary widely on everything from POLST forms to advance directives to burial requirements. Please contact your personal attorney so you follow the state laws to minimize problems.