As Senior Real Estate Specialist’s (SRES), we are often asked by adult children of seniors, “how do you know when it’s time to move mom or dad or both into assisted living?” It can be a tough question but the answer might become a little easier if you can try to remove a bit of the emotion from the situation and also find a qualified and experienced Senior Placement Advisor. A good Senior Placement Advisor is worth their weight in gold and they are generally free!
10 years ago, my siblings and I didn’t know where to turn for help and direction. If you’re like Terry and me and our two sisters, we felt so bad about even considering mov
ing mom that we decided to bury our heads in the sand and just ignore it. “She’ll be fine” we said. “She’s doing ok on her own”. It still aches at our hearts today but it turns out that delaying that decision was about the least caring thing we could have done. Not our intention at all!!
Well, the day came when we were forced to make decisions and they were frantic. All of the decisions had to be made in a matter of a few days. We were hit with: Where do we start? Where should we look to move her? Nursing home? Independent Living (IL), Assisted Living (AL) Continuous Care Retirement Community (CCRC), Memory Care (MC), How much can we afford? What do we do with everything in the house? Do we need to have an estate sale? How do we tell her she can no longer drive? What do we do with the car? What do we do with the house? Do we need a lawyer? Does mom need a Power of Attorney (POA)? etc. etc. We did find a tiny bit of solace in knowing that 1000’s of people deal with this identical scenario every day.
In case you’re wondering, this is the primary reason that today, our real estate business has such a emphasis on the 55+, seniors, and adult children of seniors segment. We refer to it as the….Baby Boomers and Senior Sellers market. We are certainly no choir boys and yes, we are still trying to sell homes but please believe us when we say that we genuinely care deeply about our clients. That is why we have built up a network of resources to address helping with everything from referring compassionate and caring Senior Advisors to moving and declutter specialists to Elder Law Attorneys. It might also be because we know that trauma of the situation so intimately … or maybe because we are in our mid 50’s and don’t know if we can trust out kids when it’s our time! (HaHa)
If you, a loved one, or someone you know is in this situation, please give us a call to see if we can help in some way. No obligation at all. Our loved ones deserve a thoughtful transition to another living situaiton.
