An article I saw in The Wall Street Journal before the holidays really hit home with me on issues around aging, health and lifestyle. More Than Ever, Americans Age Alone, published two weeks before Christmas, profiles several baby boomers to illustrate a larger trend of aging alone, and the risk that doing so poses to health and happiness. The article claims that loneliness “is as closely linked to early mortality as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day or consuming more than six alcoholic drinks a day, and goes on to say that eight million Americans that have no close kin, a figure that is expected to rise. The author attributes this statistic to the fact that “[t]he baby boomers prized individuality and generally had fewer children and ended marriages in greater numbers than previous generations.” Isolated adults “are at an increased risk of depression, cognitive decline and dementia, and...social relationships influence their blood pressure and immune functioning, as well as whether people take their medications.”

Photo Source: MorningStar Senior Living

The First Email

The first step on my senior living learning journey happened in January of this year. I was surprised to find myself bcc’d on an email from my client, Mrs. Li, to her daughter in law. The email read:

Dear Heather,

I looked in Atria New York City you mentioned now I heard that you will stay in New York after retirement. It starts from the active living then goes to assisted living and then "memory care." It sounds good. I asked for more info. It does not seem to require to put down a million dollars (like the one I just visited, [a community in Maryland], that they say they will return it at the end). It starts with a rental money of the smallest unit for $7,101/month. When I read the info they will send me, I will know more. It must have a catch to reserve.

Coming to me as it did without any context of the conversation that preceded it, this message triggered a flurry of questions in my mind. Is Mrs. Li thinking of moving to a retirement home? Where did this idea come from? Is she going to ask me to come up with a million dollars in cash sometime soon? Is she instead going to need $7,101 per month, plus annual rent increases, for the rest of her life? The biggest question to me, though, was why on earth Mrs. Li was worried about any of this.

After sharing A Senior Living Learning Journey with you, I really wanted to quickly deliver a series of short, highly readable, informative articles and stories to help you understand and navigate the senior living landscape as I come to understand it. My perspective is shaped by dual roles: as an investment manager for seniors and their adult children, and as a son of divorced, remarried parents with a personal interest in the end-of-life care of four family members in their mid-seventies and older. As I deepen my research, however, I am finding that even some of the more basic senior living questions defy quick, breezy explanations. Treating the subject and the issues fairly and usefully simply requires more time, space, and depth of research than I first imagined. As time consuming as it can get, every hour I spend on the topic and every interaction I have with clients, family, friends and readers, I find myself increasingly convinced of its importance. Meanwhile, I also find myself feeling more surprised, confused and puzzled by the complexity of the industry. I am turning into two selves - an investment manager self and a concerned son self.