To feel angry at how few people make a plan for their own old age

Why are you angry though ? You don't need to plan if you're happy on the pension from your national insurance payments

Top-up benefits are part of the welfare state for the rich i.e. they allow low wages to be paid. I object to them. Slight rant over (till end)! Sorry about that!
Most people are in no position to plan for the future. Unless they have a profession rather than a job (most people) pensions are not provided for or are not generous, and people are relying on the state pension. Even those in a profession can come a'cropper, because they lose their job and their pension is then frozen. Poverty in old age is now much rarer, but there will still be e.g. women eking out a reduced state pension, and made really miserable because the retirement age (originally set so that husband and wife retired roughly together, a 5 year age gap being the average) has risen, so the retirement they thought they would have with their DP does not come and they are widowed before they retire and his pension dies with him.
Solution? Everyone have more children. Train people for proper jobs and target immigration, bearing in mind immigration is not cost-free to the country (though it is to the employer - another welfare state benefit for the well-off!) as it requires additional infrastructure.

If all you have is your state pension, the difference between attendance allowance and the cost will be paid by the state. But lots of people do pay the full cost themselves.

DD and her partner are in their late 30s - they have reasonably paid jobs 🤞but still can't afford to buy their own home and have just had (an unplanned but most welcome) healthy baby. So I'm not sure how or why they should be planning for their old age! They can only live from day to day.

I agree there is a lack of suitable properties. It is why people end up being ripped off by those service apartments.
The choice where I live is largely expensive detached houses, or social housing warden aided or private warden apartments, both with high service charges. Those with no income except benefits get the warden aided social housing paid for them by the state. Most other people just struggle on in their terraced house or semi. ;pts of people live downstairs.

Higher rate attendance allowance is £108 pw.

The care will be a lot more than that.

And it’s tax payers that fund attendance allowance anyway.

I do know what I’m talking about as it’s my field of work. But I’m going to bow out now as I suspect we could disagree all night.

This.

It's hard to plan when so much is stacked against you, for example the lack of affordable housing for older people to downsize into.
As per pps, a good plan requires enough money, and the people at the top are hoarding it all.

@Tombero If you need carers visiting four times a day you will not be working. You will be claiming attendance allowance that you use to help pay for carers. I suspect you are talking about younger disabled people.

I don't think it's just about money though. It's about making sure you live in appropriate accommodation, that you have a decent support system, that you live in an area with decent links and amenities etc. There are plenty of people who seem to think that their children will just have to deal with them in their old age which is unfair and unsustainable.

Actually yes I agree 100% . Like moving to some idyllic remote rural area when in their 70s say. Then being surprised one sadly gets a greriatric condition. Yes this really annoys me as well .

Everyone should make a will when they buy a house anyway. You do not appoint power of attorney. You legally make your wishes known, and this is then submitted to the court when power of attorney is needed. I did that. I appointed my partner and a friend. It looks like my friend is going to die of cancer though.

An astonishing number of people haven’t / can’t save up enough to fund this in old age. I have worked in CHC finance, I see how many people have to be paid for from social care.
I know that if you have funds you must contribute. But many live pay cheque to pay cheque.

Sometimes treatments are given to ease suffering, even if they also prolong life. No one wants to leave someone in agony for months.

Furious? OK.

I agree OP. My parents are doing a lot to prepare for any illness or their inevitable deaths and I admire them for it because it's much easier not to write the will, or clear out 50 years of photos, or move to a smaller place with access for wheelchairs, or get POA sorted, but they've done all that because they care for us and know that it's very hard to lose parents anyway, but all the worse if they are disabled or dead and their affairs and their housing are completely chaotic through not thinking ahead.

I've told my son not to let them put me in a morgue drawer and he's to keep my body in a basket with a sheet over at his house till I'm cremated

Making a will and appointing power of attorney is a good idea.

My dad always said he didn’t want to get to the state he is now in. But, even if assisted dying became law, noe he’s got there I don’t believe he could now give informed consent.

instead he is confined to a bed, doubly incontinent, fed his meals and sometimes knows who I am.

He had a brain haemorrhage one day. Had a DNR in hospital and we asked them to be very light touch in their intervention. They still decided to give him 4 courses of antibiotics as they felt it was clinically appropriate to do so and I respect that decision.

However, every day I feel that we wouldn’t treat a beloved pet this way and it feels cruel to see him as he is.

But in answer to the OP, he has funds to pay for his nursing home so he was prepared in that way. I hate to see him like this but I’m not sure what plan he could have made to avoid it.

Yes. Which is why I said she has a DNAR AND a sympathetic GP. Who would still prescribe antibiotics or any other medication if warranted - the GP has said that any decision on treatment would be taken based on whatever the situation is at the time based on discussion with mum and us and what we all felt was in mums best interests. Any situation that required 999, other than heart stopping, would be out of our hands though so we can only hope in that situation we’d get a pragmatic doctor and not a “where there’s life there’s hope” type.

Because I can't bloody afford to.

I was a carer for years and unable to work until I was 42......I'm still a carer. Albeit one who now has a pension which will give me an extra fiver a week if I'm lucky (( can only afford to put in the minimum of £50 a month which my employer matches. ))

I know I'm going to be skint when I'm old, but unless .y fairy godmother makes an appearance to change the previous 25 years of my life and improve the next 25 there isn't a thing I can do about it.

Yeah, this. It's not always the case that people have money to put aside.

You're absolutely right OP but unless you've seen it up close, in front of you, watching the suffering first hand and the utter degradation, people just won't understand. Easier to keep drinking the wine and living in lala land. No one wants to focus on the inevitable exit. Perhaps it's for the best. Ignorance is bliss.

it's an absolute fucking horror shit show in the world of terminal slow illness decline to death, though. I don't want to retire in the UK, that's how bad I thought it was. I don't want to die here. This place is utterly utterly fucked and cruel.

People saying they hope they die quickly and it'll be painless. Leaves me speechless. You got no idea people, no idea what the suffering is like!!! No idea at all.

And plenty of people are not well enough to make it to the current state pension age.

There will always have to be a pension age. Unless sickness benefit becomes the de facto pension. Even in the past we had workhouses for people too old to work and parish relief that paid small pensions. We have always had pensions since we have moved beyond basic survival as a society.