Taking Care of Parents and Retiring at the Same Time

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald on 2020-01-16.

Many people my age are trying to figure out how to care for aging parents with retirement staring them in the face. Some of us have already dealt with those issues. Some have it all sorted. Some don’t know where to start.

As this column goes along, I’ll talk more about helping elder parents—or ourselves—stay at home longer and remain more independent while doing so. Today, I just want to introduce myself and say a word or two about my new company, Hearts, Homes, and Hands.

As you can tell from the byline, my name is Ernest Lee Bruns. I’m a junior. I chose to retire from the corporate world several years ago when I was caring for my father, who was in the last stages of cancer.

Dad taught me a lot about perseverance and tenacity. He always said, “Don’t let that old rockin’ chair get you.” He didn’t. He planted and cared for forty acres of corn the year he died. He was 92 years old, and this was his second bought with cancer. When he was in the hospital for the last time, he was more worried about his corn than anything else. The first thing he asked when he came out from his final round of chemo was about the yield.

When the doctors allowed him to go home to die, my nephew Chris and I knew we had more on our hands than we could handle and still do this wonderful man justice—even with the help of hospice and home health. Chris hired a personal assistance service to help with bathing and other needs.

I’m proud to say Dad died at home, surrounded by people who loved him and cared for him. He could look out his bedroom window and see the house where he was born 92 years before.

When Sue Ann and I started planning how we would wind down our final years without putting an undue burden on the kids, we were surprised to find out there wasn’t a state licensed and insured personal assistance service (PAS) around. From where we live, the closest ones were in Bryan/College Station or Temple. Standard has the home health and hospice support covered, but if we needed help staying at home—help with housekeeping, running errands, cooking, bathing, and so on—we’d either have to ask the kids to give up part of their lives or hire someone privately.

When you hire individuals, you’re responsible for their unemployment insurance, for their medical bills if they get hurt in your service, and for finding a replacement if they fail to show up. None of this is something we wanted to do while we were struggling to take care of ourselves or each other. You have enough on your mind at that point without worrying about finding someone to help your loved one get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

We called my niece Kathleen to see if she wanted to help us start a PAS. She had been the administrator of the PAS Chris hired to help take care of Dad and had more than a decade of experience running a successful PAS in Victoria. She and Chris fell in love and got married the year after Dad died, but that’s another story. She came up to Cameron; we came to agreement; and Hearts, Homes, and Hands was born.

Hearts, Homes, and Hands is licensed and regulated by the state of Texas. We are responsible for providing the care you need. We’ll be there for you, even if the person originally scheduled has a “family emergency” or something and can’t show up. We cover their workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance if they get hurt and do everything necessary to ensure your peace of mind—at least with regard to caring for yourself or a loved one.

And the bottom line is this: I’m not just an owner of the company, I’m a client. We take care of you like we take care of our own—in this case, Sue Ann and me.

Up- or Down-: -Sizing, That Is

A Del Webb survey found a smaller percentage of people approaching retirement plan to downsize than previous surveys.

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2019-12-03

And Home

Sings me of sweet things

My life there has it's own wings

To fly over the mountains

Though I'm standing still

— Karla Bonoff

Will your retirement home be smaller or larger than your current home?

The last of my generation—technically (I’m a Baby Boomer, although I often feel closer to Generation X)—is approaching that magical time, retirement. It is a goal many of us have been planning and working a long time to achieve. Others of us never thought we would or planned to “work until I die.” I was in that last camp, so I found more work to do once I “retired.”

One constant throughout our lives, however, is the need for housing. Babies, teenagers, young adults, middle-agers, retirees, and elders all need a place to live. A traditional strategy of the nuclear family has been to downsize their homes at retirement, but a growing number of retirees are upsizing now instead. Del Webb of Sun City (which my naughty fingers always want to spell with two I’s) recently conducted a survey of people in their 50s and 60s who plan to move again sometime. Bucking recent trends, 43% said they plan to move into a house of similar size to their current one while 22% said they planned to upsize.

Before I go on, a couple of caveats. A single survey should never be used as a market indicator. I also suspect that Del Webb’s choice of a sample population may have significantly influenced their results. Del Webb markets to very affluent retirees. If their sample was exclusively from their target audience, it would be like using the population of Clute, Texas to predict the results of the next election cycle. There probably isn’t enough diversity to represent the general population.

That said, let’s look at some reasons why people might choose to up- or down-size.

Downsizing

A good view can be an important consideration in selecting a retirement home, regardless of up- or down-sizing. Photo by Suna

Using the equity in your existing home

For many people, the equity accumulated in their homes is their retirement plan. That’s why home equity loans used for anything other than home improvement is a bad debt. When people look to downsize in retirement, they often use their home equity to pay cash for a smaller home and the rest to maintain their lifestyle in retirement.

Maintenance

Smaller homes are cheaper and easier to maintain than bigger ones. The costs of everything from painting to flooring to a new roof are proportional to the number of square feet in the home. And there is simply less to sweep, dust, and mop, giving you more time to enjoy your retirement—unless you look forward to those chores. Then maybe you should upsize.

Upsizing

Moving to a less expensive area

If you’re moving from NYC to Florida, LA to Houston, or Austin to Cameron, you can buy more house for the same price in your new city. While tax laws don’t currently encourage or discourage this behavior, having the ability to buy a bigger house can be its own excuse.

Room for visitors

Many retirees hope their children and friends will spend time with them. Some even move to resort areas to encourage visits. If so, you’ll need a place to put those folks, and a bigger home can be just the ticket.

I wish everyone could be as independent and active as my dad. In this picture he is experimenting with a new grass varietal for his cattle. He is 88 and undergoing treatment for the cancer that would eventually claim him.

Parents

Many boomers and Gen-X’ers have parents to take care of. This move toward a more traditional extended family is awesome. My mom and dad lived in their own house until they died. They refused any offer of cohabitation until near the end. But not all of our parents have the means or the health to maintain their independence so long. I firmly believe we should help our elders stay at home or move in with us—whatever they choose.

Parents

Helping elders stay independent at home is why Sue Ann, Kathleen, and I co-founded Hearts, Homes, and Hands to provide non-medical personal assistance. Suna and I will eventually be clients as well as principals of that company. Our goal is to provide the services and care our clients want and to uphold the inherent worth and dignity of all our elders.

Lungs

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands website on 2019-10-22.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed my lungs, which were never that healthy, have become a lot more sensitive to environmental factors: pollen, scented oils, dust, household cleaners, and so on. I started thinking about this topic because of something that happened the other night.

I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, when I noticed an uninvited guest. It was some kind of insect. Since we have the house treated for pests regularly, I didn’t have a can of insecticide nearby. Or at all. So I grabbed the first thing at hand, a spray bottle of Scrubbing Bubbles that I keep in the shower.

It was like I turned off that bug’s switch. It didn’t kick or spasm. It just stopped, literally dead in its tracks.

I didn’t think a lot about this at the time because I’ve also killed insects with hair spray.

A couple of nights later, I killed a spider with the Scrubbing Bubbles, which really do a great job on the shower. It was really irritated and hid under a rug. I found it a couple of feet away the next morning.

For once I was glad that growing up near a chemical plant damaged my lungs enough that I instinctively hold my breath whenever I use a spray product. That’s also when I really started thinking.

What is it in this common cleaner that kills so effectively?

When I googled “scrubbing bubbles and lungs,” the top hit was a scary page called “10 of the Most Toxic Cleaning Supplies.” Turns out my favorite cleaner contains some really nasty chemicals (not really a big surprise), including one that is banned in the EU at concentrations of more than 3% for its effects on human lungs.

I’m going to continue using my spray-bottle helper. But I’m going to be even more careful about holding my breath.