If you or your parent has lived in a house for -- say -- 40 years, it surely contains a lifetime of memories. With the mortgage perhaps paid off a decade ago, there’s likely a great deal of comfort and stability attached to the home. Nobody would blame you, or your mom or dad, for not being interested in any sort of change after planting such firm and longstanding roots.
Roots, however, can hold people down when they’d otherwise soar, and for some older adults, the very powerful emotional feelings surrounding a home can prevent them from considering other lifestyles that could be far more cost effective. Many seniors who do seriously examine retirement communities end up wondering, “Why am I staying in this big, old home when I could be living a better life for less money in a retirement community?”
One of the most popular features on our website at Holiday Retirement is our retirement cost of living calculator, which helps seniors compare the costs of living at home with those of living in one of our communities. Although you may feel like you’re downsizing and giving up some space, in fact, our residents bring their furniture and all their memories with them as they settle into our all-inclusive accommodations.
You’ll want to weigh all of this to make sure you’re considering all your options, rather than dismissing certain options off-the-bat. A huge misconception about moving into senior living communities, like ours at Holiday, is that they cost more than living at home. As always, you won’t want to take every rumor at face value.
Hotels are really the wrong metaphors here
The idea of moving into an all-inclusive community strikes many people as setting up permanent shop in a hotel. That’s really not a very useful or valuable comparison. First, a hotel room will run you somewhere between $100 and $150 a night -- at least! -- in a city, whereas the average retirement community monthly rate is $2,600. That translates to $86 per day.
Not only is the sticker price cheaper in a retirement community than a hotel, but also the offerings are much more extensive than what’s essentially a room with a bed. Our residents don’t need to worry about a variety of amenities, all of which are included in our monthly rates.
Another way that some conceive of retirement is cruise ship living. Snopes.com, the debunker of myths, notes the trend, and a July 2016 CNBC article led with the headline, “Ahoy matey, more folks retiring on a cruise ship.” One senior told CNBC, “You just bring your suitcases and unpack them. It’s like living at home, but I don’t have to worry about renewing my driver’s license.”
But there are many reasons why cruise ships aren’t well equipped for long-term living for older
adults. (See a list of 12 in this U.S. News & World Report article.)
Here’s why your pocket book will thank you for considering a senior living community
When you, or your loved ones, move into a senior living community, the cost of the available amenities can be shared across the entire community. That means that at one of our communities, say one that contains 120 apartments, the costs can be shared communally for meals, transportation, housekeeping, utilities (heat, gas, electricity, air conditioning, etc.), internet access, cable television and a variety of other services.
Cable service can cost $150 per month alone for an individual, and wireless internet could set an individual user back $75 or $80 per month. These are just two of many costs that can add up quickly for an individual homeowner—costs that people don’t tend to weigh when they are comparing the price of living at home or in a living community.
And if seniors are still living in the houses in which they raised their children, those big houses cost quite a bit to heat, cool and maintain. Right around the corner, a roof will need to be replaced, and appliances will need to be updated. If a new air conditioning unit needs to be installed, that will cost a very pretty penny. Houses are like that; they require continual investment and upkeep, and that doesn’t even include real estate tax, which can be sizeable.
How do we do it?
People often ask me and my colleagues how we do it all. How do we provide all of these services, including three meals a day, at such a reasonable monthly rate? (Think again of the gap in cost and offerings between senior living communities and hotels.)
The answer is that there are two parallel benefits to aging in a community -- one that you or your loved one will be aware of on a very regular basis, and the other running beneath the surface and out of sight. Our residents realize many wonderful benefits of being part of a community, from having friends with whom to dine, play cards, go shopping or attend movies. Sure they can shut their doors and retreat to their own private apartments when they want to read a book, or spend some time alone. But when they want to be social, they do live in a sort-of village.
Parallel to those social advantages is the pricing model. We can negotiate with all sorts of vendors, from our food providers, who also work with top-rated hotels, to the utilities. As a community, we can secure discounted rates and 120 people can share collectively what would cost them considerably more as individuals. Food alone would cost you more going to the grocery store and cooking for yourself.
Here’s the main takeaway
It’s always smart to make educated decisions that come from weighing the best options, rather than deciding based on just one choice. We hope that you’ll look into what retirement living is and isn’t in a way that digs deeper than some of the myths that can surround it. One place you might want to start is with an e-book on retirement living, which you can download for free. It is, we think, the perfect balance between an informative read that gets into the important details while remaining very legible without getting too in the weeds. And if you do get the chance to take a look, we’d be very interested to hear your feedback on it!