A boomer retirement reality today is serving as the filling in a sandwich of your adult kids on one side and your aged parents on the other.
Providing continuing financial support to adult children is a familiar concept to boomers – such is parenting these days. The surprise is retiring and still having at least one of your parents with you.
Lots of retired boomers have already lost parents, me among them. My dad died at 69, but my mom celebrated her 97th birthday this summer. I also have in-laws in their 80s. I’m happy to report that all three are still vital parts of the family, and we support them in a variety of ways.
Aged parents are a Top Four topic of conversation with other boomers my age these days, along with kids, trips and Trump. Facing retirement with old parents feels unexpected. We haven’t seen a lot of it before in our own families and elsewhere.
The aging of the parents of boomers – known as the silent generation – offers a multifaceted lesson in retirement planning for younger cohorts. Thinking about how you’ll fill your days when you retire? Be prepared to include time for helping aged parents with personal care and likely their finances and home maintenance as well.
Be mindful as well of the glaring discrepancy between lifespan and healthspan, which is the number of years you’re in good health. Experience with aging parents has taught me the importance of planning both financially and psychologically for a long life with progressively more intense health challenges that require support from others.
Let me give you an example of parental support based on my own experience as someone who left the full-time work force recently. My mom currently resides in a retirement home where she lives independently while receiving care and support from staff and both my sister and me.
Plan on acting as an advocate for a parent in a retirement home while also partnering with staff at the facility. Parents will often talk to their kids about what ails or bothers them, not to retirement home personnel. Your diplomatic skills may be tested.
There will also be a need to co-ordinate other care with the retirement home – managing medical appointments, prescriptions and visits from outside personal support workers, for example. Expect to invest hours in phone calls, e-mails and online research.
Seniors aging in their family homes have similar requirements, but you can add home maintenance to the list of duties boomer kids may have to tackle. Finding tradespeople, getting quotes and providing oversight to ensure the work is done properly and at a fair price are part of the deal.
A properly drafted Letter of Wishes can be helpful for your family and estate planning
Naturally, given my personal finance experience, I’m helping seniors in our family with their money decisions. I am co-account holder on some accounts, I have trading authority for some investments and power of attorney for financial matters. I pay my mom’s bills and look after her investments.
I’ve been looking after some of these tasks for a while, so they feel familiar. But it’s almost surreal to still be doing them after retiring myself. Gen Xers, millennials and Gen Z, get used to the idea of retiring into a caregiving role.
Globe and Mail contributor Fred Vettese recently noted that average life expectancy from birth or from age 65 has plateaued for now, but he expects a slow upward trend in years to come. Meantime, life expectancy gains of previous decades have already cleared the way for a wave of boomers to join their parents in retirement.
Statistics Canada numbers tell us that for the silent generation, born between 1928 and 1945, average life expectancy at birth for women and men was between 60 and 66 years.
Advances in health care help explain why some members of the silent generation are adding decades to those numbers. Results of the 2021 census found that people aged 85 and up were among the fastest growing cohorts in the population.
Longer lifespans can drain retirement accounts, a problem that boomers need to consider as they plan their retirement and evaluate how well their parents’ savings are holding up. Fortunately, the silent generation was a model of prudence with money – averse to debt and strong on saving. We’ll never see their likes again.
