Are Many Americans Making “Aging at Home” a Fetish?

In the Washington Post, Columnist Michelle Singletary warns that “Reverse Mortgages Must be Understood to Avoid Regrets.”  One of the points of her column is that reverse mortgages may not be the most cost-effective plan for aging.

I’ve begun to worry that the problem is bigger than just mortgages.  I worry that too many Americans are making aging at home a fetish, rather than a plan.  While heading our Elder Protection Clinic at Penn State Dickinson Law for more than ten years, I often had opportunities to work with my students and their clients on various financial issues related to aging, including reverse mortgages.  While I have certainly seen reverse mortgages alleviate specific needs for older adults, I’ve more often seen that the struggle to stay in the home is, arguably, misguided.  What the older person is really hoping for is “not to age any more than necessary.”  In other words, not to “need” care.  Hoping is different than planning.

Some of the wisest people I’ve known have made “aging in place” a fluid concept, rather than “home”-based.  I’m thinking of one of my long influences, Mrs. Parker, who was a salty cowgirl.  She’d grown up on horses in the Southwest and married the foreman of one of the biggest cattle ranches in Arizona.  One of my favorite stories was about the Parkers’ honeymoon, when they rode a string of fresh horses from northern to southern Arizona, breaking the colts along the way.   

When ranching was no longer a way of life, the Parkers ran a riding school.  Mrs. Parker nominally taught children how to ride horses — but really she was constantly teaching about life.  How well you actually rode the horses was often incidental to her lessons. 

One of the things I noticed was that Mrs. Parker planned “aging” for herself and her husband, who was several years older.  She knew he was very tied to place, and so they stayed in their home, a modern, but narrow “mobile home” (a/k/a “trailer”) for many years beyond what their riding school income required.  After his passing, she downsized, from the trailer on 10+ acres of horse-property complete with barns, pastures and riding arenas, to an easy-care home, with a small pasture for a few “old friends.”  

And then she did the most amazing thing of all.  She carefully chose a distant relative as the most trustworthy person from among her large circle of friends and family to serve as her “agent.” Mrs. Parker granted this individual Power of Attorney, with an express paragraph authorizing her agent the power to choose a personal care home or other long-term care setting if that became necessary.  Which it did.  Mrs. Parker lived a very long time as a widow.  On one of my last visits with her, she said, poignantly, “I think I remember that I used to know you.” 

Mrs. Parker’s transition from phase to phase was financed by downsizing and by selling their property and her “retirement” home in an orderly way, without a loss of dignity and without a crisis.