12 February 2018
Far too few of us understand our likely needs in old age, or have considered how we might pay for them. To help increase understanding, we’ve produced a guide giving the low-down on making provision for the future.
In the results of the survey on priorities for retirement housing run by Retirement Homesearch in late 2017, a failure to understand our care needs in old age was evident. So the UK’s largest specialist retirement estate agency decided to explore how we might understand it and how we might better plan for our future.
And what do you know? Housing turns out to be key!
Too few of us realise that we are each likely to have to pay for our own care needs in old age in their entirety – so most of us make no provision.
Purpose-built retirement housing can be part of the solution, extending the time we can live independently, helping to manage the labour and costs of home maintenance, and providing an asset that can be sold to help with costs when care needs grow more acute.
But the potential benefits of this are no better understood than the issues around our physical decline with age, state provision of care, or financing of private care.
Perhaps we are lulled into a sense of security by a lifetime of NHS use. Or perhaps we are just unwilling to consider such issues until it becomes unavoidable.
The latest Retirement Homesearch Quarterly provides a guide to help those planning for retirement, as well as for policy-makers and those in the retirement housing industry.
