Are you aged 55 or over?

[Vintagejazz]

Just heard an ad on Smooth FM for retirement homes for people aged 55 or over. . My sister will be 55 in November. She was at a party last night, is flying to Geneva tomorrow for some work meetings, and is meeting me next weekend for lunch and clothes shopping. She and her husband play tennis at least twice a week and work in very high powered jobs. They have barbecues, go to concerts and run marathons.

Seriously, marketing retirement homes at 55 year olds?? In this day and age?? AIBU to think this is absolutely crazy and totally out of touch with reality?

I quite fancy a cottage on a retirement estate with facilities on site for when I need them. Am planning to downsize and move into one when I am still fit enough to do so. The problem many old people have is they don't think of moving somewhere appropriate until they are so frail that they just cant face making the move.

I'm 55 and moving house soon. I actually considered retirement properties as they are MUCH CHEAPER than comparable properties in the same area. Then I came to my senses when I saw the hand rails over the bath etc.

I'd find a handrail over the bath quite handy actually.

Yes, the handrails on pil's loo were a real eye-opener - what I've been missing!

I think people are inclined to think they'll live for ever in fantastic health. As ds's piano teacher said, "You spend the first ten years of retirement wishing you were twenty, and the next ten years wishing you were dead."

The pil should have moved house way before they were forced to. It was all really unsatisfactory when they had to be shoehorned into nursing homes.

As others have said, the 55 thing is a bit of vanity. Like Per Una, really. Or Tena Lady. They never show an 80-year-old doddering along with a leaky bladder, it's always a glamorous younger person in a pair of pale trousers.

There are some really interesting stats on life expectancy and health.

Basically, our life expectancy had increased by around 20 years over the past century.

But our average period of good health has only increased by 2 years over the same period - from 62 years to 64 years.

So we're living longer, but in ill health. It's no wonder people need different types of accommodation at different ages.

Didn't some OECD study show that women could now expect 9.9 years of healthy life after the age of 65 while men could expect 8.something. Which would mean most people would remain healthy until early-mid 70s.

My mother is in her late 50s. She is paraplegic with several related health conditions. She is also quite isolated, often only seeing her carers. So a Macarthy and stone type retirement flat would in theory be good for her, especially now she will be living on her own in a few months. However, from our initial research the flats are tiny, too small for her powered wheelchair to turn in the kitchen. The bathrooms all have baths and the flat management we spoke to seemed dubious that we would be given permission to convert the bathroom to a wheel in wet room.

So you would think that retirement apartments would be good for over 55s in poor health, but actually, maybe not.

My mom went downhill really fast after about age 50, I think she wanted to.
the thing about these retirement communities is that most the new residents will be 65+ but some will have much younger partners; hence the need for a much lower minimum age than the avg.

I wonder if moving into a retirement ghetto actually encourages you to think in an 'elderly' way? I'm in my 70s and would be horrified at being ghettoised in this way, though am making plans to downsize so I can spend less time on a big house and garden and more time gadding about!

There are two factors in ageing
1 Health-often there is little you can do to influence this-some very healthy-living people become ill
2 attitude-you can do a great deal about this.

Unless you develop a debilitating illness 55 is ridiculously young to consider retirement living but do be wary of judging people who seem old for their age-you never know how your own health will hold up. Some people who are dubbed "marvelous" for their age are just fortunate.

Nearly 52 here - with 1 ds aged 12 (ASD to boot), single (never married) worked all my life since 15 (currently self-employed). Obviously I'm a lot more creaky than years before but an awful lot smarter too. Still, I'm pretty poor (but not in a complainy way) and looks like I won't be getting my state pension until I'm 67 (currently 66 but it will go up) and not the 60 when I started working all those years ago. Anything I can get for being 55 is fine by me. Apparently Stakeholder Pensions let you take any money under £18k at 55 so that's a thought for us that lived when work started earlier in life, not later like the current moany lot that are so aggrieved now. Can anyone remember if paid Maternity Leave even existed then?! Jeez loads of them now have got months on full pay and a return on a part-time basis. We grafted and fought for these rights so the current generation at least have a chance - oh well.

I can totally understand some people wanting to move out of large family houses with gardens that require a lot of work when their children have grow up and moved out. It can mean more time and money for enjoying other things.

But healthy 50 somethings shuffling off to retirement homes and complexes just to be organised for when they're elderly and in poor health sounds very sad to me.

Also, having decided I ain't dead yet - have just last week started a business that has a really good chance , and if it fails, I've lost nothing.

Agree with you on that one Vintage but I think these 'retirement villages' are pitched to keep them child-free rules me out. Some of them have great facilities - swimming pools, spas, etc - with homes ranging from independent luxury houses right through to full-on care homes. Keeps couples in the same place as one needs specialist elderly care before the other. But all come with huge monthly maintenance fees. Personally, I have objected to one of these 'villages' being built close to me (well not quite me but another story!) not just for it's location but I don't think that the current elder-generation are ready to go this way. Us 50-57(ish) year olds are going to be less healthy than the current older generation and die sooner, so we might need these 'villages' if they lower their fees.

I think that it is out of touch for many,yes.
People have started mentioning reitrement to me and my DH [we are 53]
Quite frankly, I feel much the same as I did at 25 [on good days]
We both feel like we want to continue what we are doing[we run a business] for decades more[health permitting].