Home Planning for Your Later Years, a Review

Home Planning for Your Later Years by William K. Wasch

Book Review

This is a readable and affordable book on how to design a home for your retirement. One of the most import decisions you make will be housing and no matter whether you decide to stay in your present home, move to another area of the country, or stay in the same community with a different home environment there a good many issue to consider.

Chapter One

What to Expect

People are living longer and healthier lives than ever before and 75-75 % of Americans over age 65 are fully able to take care of themselves. So, we are staying home, and with formal retirement between ages 55 and 65, many of us will spend another 30 years in our own homes.
In order to do this some things will need to be done to make your home more responsive to your physical and mental capabilities. With planning, you can look forward to an older age in which you are supported rather than defeated by your home environment.
Consider the variables like health, strength and dexterity, reach and range of motion, mobility, balance and coordination, cognition, your senses.

Chapter Two

Evaluating Your Options
1. Stay home and modify your present home to better suit your needs
2. Stay in the same community but move to a different setting
3. Build a new custom-design home
4. Move to another region of the country where you can choose among several housing options.

A discussion of options concerning your own home, but also investigating other ideas such as shared housing, Age Segregated Programs in the United States, the Mobile Home Option, Elder Cottage Housing opportunity, retirement communities and assisted living opportunities.

Chapter Three

An overview. You will need 80% of what you earn while working to live comfortably when you retire. Getting your home fixed up or making other living arrangements before you retire can help ensure that you have that kind of money. This chapter covers Evaluating Your Resources and various Senior Services that can help.

Chapter Four

Modify Your Present House
This isn’t easy as one might think. Check with a company that specializes in meeting the needs for both older clients and younger people with disabilities. The company and their specialists will work with you to identify needs and help you develop a plan. The National Association of Homebuilders and Remodelers in Washington, D.C. offers programs and information on accessibility modifications and products. Another source is the Center for Universal Design in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Getting Help:
1. Determine your specific needs through a free in-hospital and/or in-home assessment.
2. Recommend and review a list of specific medications to your home that will meet your needs.
3. Develop a program and estimate the costs consistent with your budget.

A special section is included here that discusses common age-related changes and conditions and makes recommendations re: suggested modifications.

Chapter Five

Building a New Home

Building a new home that is smaller and more manageable might be easier than doing a complete remodeling job. You will be considering some of the same ideas and modifications listed under remodeling.

Chapter Six

Probably the most aggressively marketed senior housing options are the adult retirement/leisure communities and the service-oriented retirement communities. You are looking beyond the idea of just staying in your own home and community when you start looking at these more complicated options. Here is a discussion of Leisure Communities, Service-oriented Retirement and Continuing Care Communities.
This book is a thought provoking exploration, with ideas and concepts to consider when planning for your own retirement.

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