When should elderly parents downsize?

[Hogwartsian]

My parents are in their early eighties and still healthy and fit. They have a large 5 bed house with a large garden. They are still managing to maintain it, for now. I'm just wondering if there's a point when they should prepare for the day they can't manage it all anymore, and downsize to something more suitable?

Is anyone else in this situation? Or when did your parents downsize?

Mine downsized mid 70s but my PIL haven’t. Late 80s/90s.

In both DM and PIL’s case, at least 2 years ago. Neither can cope with the house or garden. DM had a bad fall which has meant a sudden change in capability; she has a cleaner and gardener and is near shops so can just about manage. PILs have dementia, refuse to admit there’s a problem, won’t let anyone unknown in and can’t reach any shops or services from where they are. The house is filthy, they hoard terribly and sometimes don’t have food or toilet roll when we arrive. Poor SIL is having to go regularly even though she’s a 90min drive away (we’re further and DH works full time).

TLDR: before they think they need to.

Could I ask what you feel about this?

My late Mum didnt want to be a burden - she said this many times and got upset about it but it didnt stop her calling me or the retirement complex calling me as she had done something worrying. She had just left it too late to move, and just reached out to the only person she could which was me. I remember having to change her like a baby on the bed as she had wet herself. That sight is with me forever. I will be honest - she was OK with it. Someone had to help her and that person was me.

In her younger days she was very sweet natured but old age and panic set in and the last 3 years of her life was very very difficult for all of us including her. I had a upsetting conversation with the GP surgery about End Of Life and whether they could bring her back if she became unconcisious. Dr told me in detail they would have to break her ribs, etc and she would most likely have a very poor life afterwards.

My DF's house was a death trap with a sofa up the stairs and various newspaprs and books. Its often the falls that get them and there has been no prep done to ensure that there is a plan in place that everyone signs up to.

It rarely happens and its almost like the elderly think they are going to live foever with their health how it is now. The other thing to watch for is the performance that is put on for outsiders. My Father threw out the fire brigade when the came in for a welfare check. he also had capacity... Nothing else happened until he realised that he just couldnt cope in his house. That is when I was called in.

I don’t think there should be any expectation on parents to downsize - a large proportion of parents will be in the home that they’ve lived in and lived for many years, and it’s up to them to decide if and when they want to move, providing they’ve still got capacity. We have decided to move at the age of 68 and 72, after living in our current house for 34 years, but we’re moving to a larger house because we love having lots of space. Our current house has got a large garden, which we both love and spend a lot of time maintaining, but the new garden is a bit smaller and will be easier to manage as we get older. I would be really angry if my daughter ever tried to persuade us to downsize!

my mil and father both lived to early 90s and didn't downsize though they lived in modest 3 bedrooms, I'm not going to downsize either. It's more than just a house. Although i guess if parents live in mansions it's different :D

Why would you be really angry @Growlybear83 ?
Do you listen or take on board anything your daughter suggests.
What about friends, we found our parents took on board ideas from friends more easily than from children.

It's an interesting mindset. Perhaps the time to down size is just before you refuse to entertain the idea of change.

I have strong feelings on this based on my own parents decline over the last 5 years and my PIL situation i see now.

Whilst i fully accept that the correct answer is "When they decide" there are things that effect this imo. My DM died 5 years ago to a heart attack. She died way too young and was the fit one compared to my DF. Her death was sudden and left my dad in a right mess trying to cope in an unsuitable house whilst trying to learn to live by himself. His next 5 years were miserable and when he finally passed away it was more of a release from all his pain, loneliness and suffering. He had plenty of money but clung onto his principles that he wanted to keep his unsuitable home even though it meant we couldnt offer the support we wished we could.

Having watched that and now seeing my in laws setting themselves up for an extremely hard time when either of them passes i think there is a good time to sell up whilst you have control. When one of them passes away the one left behind is going to have a completely unsuitable house, garden and way of life that they will have no chance of adjusting if and when the time comes.

Consider this if you were to pass away and leave your 70/80 yr old spouse alone

Location of house - Closer to family links makes it eaiser for them to be consistent and be there in emergencies.
Doing it earlier means is will not be such a shock to the system
Size of house - Easier to maintain. Safer. More suitable
Size of garden - Same as size of house
Transport links to maintain independence
Being able to avoid care home - Having a smaller, purpose built home that allows you to remain in it longer is a huge benefit to older peoples mental health.

This isnt a financial comment. Spend ever last penny on the suitable replacement property. Just make sure its with the intention of the survivor having the best chance of continuing a good standard of living whilst alone.

@Growlybear83 hehe this is the problem ! I hate the infantilisation of older adults but i worked too long in healthcare and seen the same problems come up time and time again , with people not planning ahead for future ill health / potential care needs ( alongside people not making wills, making any effort to get their home and finances in order, and not realising that being unmarried to your partner can cause no end of problems including losing your home). I’m interning to downsize as soon as children leave uni provided they don’t come back home again!

Downsize before you need to. Or upgrade the house with wet rooms and stair lifts and age friendly measures. Whatever is most affordable.
Sitting in chaos, unable to use your own bathroom or get upstairs isn't a good place for anyone of any age.

its their decision.

And there lies the thing with retirement flats, yes they can be hard to sell and lose loads of cash , yes service charges can be totally ridiculous and a pain in the arse before it sells but plenty of older people especially if on their own actually do get an upgraded lifestyle and company if wanted , whilst fit and well enough to benefit. I personally think the biggie if buying one is having more than enough left in your reserves to cover off 3 years service charge and council tax without your family having to pay out or being pestered by the managing company and buy one when you hopefully will have 10 years or more use ( hard to predict I know)

@RodgerReading I would be angry because it’s no-one’s decision apart from my husband and I. My daughter lives overseas and it’s very unlikely she will be living anywhere near us when we get to the stage where we need to rely on carers so won’t be in I med in the same way as we were with our mothers. She knows we are buying a bigger house and has been very interested in the properties we’ve been looking at. She agrees that the house we’re hopefully buying is a lovely choice and has never suggested that we should be downsizing to a three bedroom semi. None of our friends are considering moving or downsizing - although most think we’re being quite brave moving at our age. But we have recognised that we can’t really manage a major renovation as we’ve done in the past, and have only really looked at houses that are ready to move into or just need redecoration. We decided to move when we realised that by just moving three or four miles out from where we are in south London, we could get the house of our dreams. If we find it’s too much for us to manage in a few years then we may re-evaluate things, but we’re moving with the intention that this will be our last home as long as we are both able to live independently. The new house (or our current house if the move doesn’t work out) will be big enough to accommodate a live in carer in the future if we need it.

I understand this. We’ve had wills in place for the last 30 years which are updated regularly. I’m in the process of sorting out POA for finance and health, and am in the middle of preparing a document setting out my funeral requirements, where I want my ashes to be buried, and what medical interventions I do/don’t want to happen if I can’t decide for myself (if I have a stroke etc). I’ve got a file with details of every bank account, gas, electricity, insurance and phone accounts, house deeds etc, and I’m in the middle of drawing up a long document with photos and the approximate value of everything of value thst we own. Hopefully that will make it easier for my daughter when she has to sort out our estate in the future. My mum was very organised and did everything she could to plan in advance to make things easy for me when the time came thst she couldn’t manage any more and I’ve realised how helpful thst was to me.

Before they think they should! 😉 I'm all for people making their own decisions and never would have given it another thought until a conversation with an old neighbour. We asked how he and his wife were managing in their very old, four storey house. He said they'd left it too late to move and would have been better to have done it three or four years before. He said that the thing they forgot, 3/4 years ago, was that life wasn't going to get easier from that point and neither would they become younger and more spritley. He said it was better to make positive decisions for your own life rather than get to the point where you weren't coping or people were making decisions for you.

At the moment my mother manages, but I worry. She refuses help that she needs and she is very stubborn. You have to find surreptitious ways of helping. She’s effectively a full time career for my father and my aunt. We have tried to persuade her to let us help more or to get paid help, but she won’t. She has a deep need to look after others. Consequently, I stay and look after my Dad when she is busy supporting my aunt. Last year when my Dad was in hospital for 2 months I ferried her there and back. She was there during every visiting hour. She fed him, washed him, helped him get comfortable, dealt with his toilet ring needs. She became so helpful that the staff let her arrive early and leave late. She’s arthritic and a bit deaf, but otherwise well. However, she is elderly and she refuses to stop. I do worry about burnout.

Well presumably you won't be expecting said daughter to run around facilitating those choices should something go wrong?

That's the problem, isn't it? For all those claiming that no-one should be forced to move are those of us who've had to pick up all the pieces when it goes wrong.

I work for a charity for the elderly and I regularly go through stages of compassion fatigue and into burn out with it, in large part due to having to deal with elderly people smugly proclaiming how independent they are, they won't be moving out of their house, they can look after themselves etc., completely oblivious to the adult daughter standing behind them on the verge of a nervous breakdown, who for the third time this year has had to drop everything - her job, her own children's needs, her entire life - at a moment's notice when her parent has had yet another fall and the resulting injuries. Parent refuses carer for recovery because they pride themselves upon their independence and daughter has to stay weeks before parent can safely be left alone. Due to where we live this is even worse because said parent has chosen to move abroad with no plan in place for these events so adult children can't just hop in the car to get there, they have to take a flight. It's disgustingly selfish and it's one of the most regular scenarios I have to deal with.

Having watched my mother struggle to deal with a selfish elderly relative and promise not to do that to us, I then had to force my parents out of their house into something more suitable a few years ago. I'm sure that makes me dreadful in the eyes of many on here who think I should have no right to do that, but how many times do I have to deal with the 3am calls that my father has fallen and she can't get him up? Their needs were starting to impact drastically on my life and were costing me a fortune, almost entirely due to their wholly unsuitable house. It's all very well saying to put in boundaries about what help you can or can't give but when you turn up to find your father stuck on the floor with a broken shoulder, unable to get up, unable to get to a phone to call for help and with no neighbours within shouting distance, what do you do? Do you really just say "no, I warned you about this so I'm not dealing with it" and leave? Of course not. You have to deal with it. When I cracked my parents were by then incapable of handling anything to do with moving by themselves so I had to do all that too. I have a job, children, a life of my own. I had warned them the house was unsuitable when they bought it 15 years earlier but of course, it was none of my business. Until it was when they needed help.

I'm 50 but my husband and I are putting plans into place because there's no way we want to do this to our kids.

Can people really not see how selfish it is to not plan around old age?

What a brillant post! I didnt have it anything like this bad. Dad HAD to go into a care home and he asked to go but there were many years where he created merry hell for all of us.

Mum - well I had to strong arm her out of her house. She wasnt coping, called me a lot about things that I couldnt do anything about via the phone, didnt look after the house, there were rooms with no heating and the hot water was very patchy. I found out later she had been boiling a kettle to have a wash. I also found out she would call on the neighbours at lot and pass around her queries and request for support so it looked like she was coping better than she was. We got a carer in twice a week and she cancelled one day. The carer was hopeless, and didnt really do anything. Mum couldnt manage her anyway and when I made a complaint the carer said Mum had said she could do things herself (and didnt - hence the messy house).

I really dislike the PP saying they can do what they like, look at us. We are going to outliers and be capable of anything we did before and probably even better than before.

Yes, of course you cannot refuse to go when a call comes in saying parent has had another fall. A friend of mine had a call like that just when she was going on holiday and was literally walking out the door to the airport.

It makes me blood boil that people think no one is going to tell me what to do and then the inevitable happens.

I think size of house has a huge bearing on it and location. A 3 bed is what lots of people would down size into.

But its also sad to see huge family houses. Sitting half empty, when young families are struggling in tiny houses.
Yet I only know of one family who logically house sswapped.The mum moved into the daughter's 1 bed flat, giving DD and new DH a 2 bed house.
It made perfect sense for them both.

Realistically young families often cannot afford the large houses at least not straight away and does anyone know anyone who had to sell a late parents house that was really fit for sale. They need clearing, almost always cleaning and sorting plus all sorts of repairs that parent never got round to.

Mum's had no heating in a couple of rooms, a boiler that was over 30 years old, a garden that hadnt been touched for a number of years and some damp. Father's was like something out of a hoarder's doumentary. It took the clearance company with 4 men and various vans nearly 8 working days to clear it.

When I asked Mum how she had planned her life once she hit 80 she just looked at me blankly and said she hoped she died in her sleep. She also said she didnt want to be a burden. In the end although I sound heartless she was. She didnt mean it, she just couldnt help herself.

Unfortunately we DONT get to choose...

My grandparents never did but they did eventually have to live downstairs. We had to put beds in their living room because they refused to move or go into a care home. It was more manageable after that, but still not ideal.

One of my biggest fears is for me to die and leave my partner struggling in a house they cant cope in. I am only 50 but i absolutely guarantee by the time we are in our 70's we will be in a much more suitable home than the one we have now.

Its not a badge of honour. Its not a inheritance issue for my children. It could be the difference between my partner living another 10/15/20 years with full support of family whilst being able to live with a nice standard of living.

Having seen my father suffer in a totally unsuitable house i would suggest the mistake he and my DM made in not moving earlier was borderline torture.

My Mum couldn't wait to downsize. After my father died and my brother and I both moved out she hated being alone in our large 4 bedroom house. She met a new man, they briefly lived in his smaller 3 bed and then they moved to a 2 bed. It is a little awkward as they both have two children each, one of each pair is married and there isn't room for more than one couple visiting at a time.
If they are happy and managing, why downsize, maybe they want the space accomadate the family? It's a shame as I get on well with my Mum's boyfriends daughter and it would be fun to do family things together.

My parents are 88 and 83 and in a large 4 bed detached and have no intention of downsizing.

The answer is, if and when they want to.