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

[OptimismvsRealism]

We are all going to end up in a bad way unless we're lucky enough to drop down dead unexpectedly

Why do most people live in denial?

Maybe because they can barely make ends meet in the present?

This

what sort of plans? Not everyone is in a position for example able to plan ahead esp financially. Many people just exist from paycheck to paycheck.

A lot of people live hand to mouth and can't realistically make any plan that will truly support them.

There's also an issue that people have become overly reliant on 'someone else' doing it for them, whether that's family or the state. Giving so many typical, working people top-up benefits doesn't help. Like debt, we get very used to it.

What sort of a plan? Most of us try for whatever pension we can manage, aim to have paid off the mortgage, have life insurance, some savings and maybe some funeral insurance, and try to stay relatively healthy. What else do you do?

What else are they supposed to do?

I haven't made a plan for old age. I can't afford to save much into a private pension as I'm a single parent. I do save into my workplace pension but I'll only have around £100k for retirement as it stands right now. Hopefully this will change as I've still got years of working left ahead of me but right now I can only live for today.

I can't even plan for next week, I'm disabled and I'm a carer for my daughter.

Be angry all you like, I can't pull money out of my arsehole.

Affordability I guess and wanting to have everything now, the perfect house and car. People are not taught how to save and wait for what they want.
I have an NHS pension because I've worked there for 45 years and a couple of private pensions because retirement is going to be more expensive for a single person.
Plus I save £500 of my salary every month into an ISA which means no luxuries now unless I save up for them.
It takes discipline and you have to think ahead. I couldn't afford to save anything when I was a single mum so I started when DS left home, luckily I was still quite young then because I had him young.
I don't know how people think they are going to manage unless they have a plan.

I have a plan, a fucking great plan, actually.
I just have no money spare at all to make that plan come to fruition.

What kind of planning do you mean?
Suitable home for aging? Will? Care home and levels of intervention selection? Funeral arrangements?
or healthy lifestyle?

My work pensions which I’ve always paid into are worth tuppence ha’penny. Sometimes they’re worth less than the year before! I save monthly into a LISA but what I can save each month is nowhere what I’d need to live on.

And if you do make a plan and have the necessary savings then you are accused of hoarding and being stingy

And when exactly should you implement this plan? Before you become old and infirm - you could be hit by a bus tomorrow and become infirm or you could be my nana who was going strong at 90

I had a plan.

School, college, good job, earn well, make it to 55, retire with a nestegg and property.

Someone decided to fuck me up and over and knackered my brain though.

So now I'm 45, unemployed, broken and penniless living in social housing. If I make 55 I'd be fucking amazed

Start work at c.23- buy first home early 30s, have your babies by late 30s- have to buy a bigger home- when the hell can we save for retirement??? And this is all if lucky to do by these ages.

What kind of plan do you want us all to be making?

I’m paying into a pension and a mortgage (so equity release if it comes to it) but I’m lucky I can afford to.

I’ve also written a letter to my children saying that if my care at home becomes difficult and I’m guilt tripping them about sticking me in a home, that I am writing to them now - in my 50s - to say, lose the guilt. Do what you have to. My husband is struggling with MIL over this now.

What planning do you mean?

What plan are you thinking.

I've thought about this a lot since I nursed a bedbound DH for a year before he died. I have some savings to pay for care, but my experience with DH is that money is the least of the problems. The state will pay for care (of sorts) if you can't.

What you really need is an advocate to deal with neglectful hospitals or carers, discuss treatment, fight for your rights etc. Some of what I saw was truly shocking, but I was at least able to try and support DH, I came away from some visits traumatised by the treatment I'd seen patients without support get. E.g. a man without the use of his hands not being helped to drink. I helped him, but was shouted at by a nurse when I asked if there was someone else who could help him.

So I have money to take care of me in my old age, but I don't know how I can use it to get the kind of support I'm most likely to need.

I know what you mean. I think it’s because people think it won’t ever happen to them.

I look at my MIL in particular. Lives in a totally unsuitable house with really steep steps up to it. We all suggested she moved into a bungalow about 15 years ago and she could have done quite easily. Even staying in the same road as lots have come up. But she put it off again and again. And had an unrealistic list of wants so made it impossible to find one that matched her list.

She also kept putting off sorting out power of attorney stuff. And her will and she is making that so complicated too.

She is now in a care home. Funding it herself currently. Wants to go home. Or maybe sell her house and find something else. But she is now mid eighties. If she does go home she will be trapped in the house due to the steps. Although she talks about getting a lift built.

Life is what happens whilst you make other plans.

It doesn't matter if you have planned it down to the last detail, then successfully executed that plan, it doesn't make you morally superior to anyone else, it just fell in your favour. Poverty, divorce, disability, redundancy, death of spouse, so many things can disrupt the best laid retirement intentions. And of course, you may not make it to retirement, or want to retire.

Save what you can. If you can't save that's understandable.

Have a plan for when you can't look after yourself. I don't accept "something will turn up" as a plan.

It would be easier if euthanasia were available on demand and I really hope it soon is.

Just checking you definitely don't mean those who can't take care of themselves should be euthanised on demand?

Save up or kill yourself?

Fantastic plan.

Yes on their demand, of course I think that.

I agree, I don't want to rot in a nursing home I want to end my life when I choose.

Guys, you do know a lot of us will be sitting developing bed sores in nappies for years? Why are you all fine with this?

Er.....my first thought on this was what the fuck, but...could you clarify what you mean? Because I understand it from an "I'm atrophying from cancer and the pain is too severe and I would rather choose my death rather than waste away from it", but not from a "might as well just kill myself because I'm old" point of view...