Putting off retirement planning is common among healthy seniors — to the point where a substantial majority of them would rather think about dying than how to plot out their remaining living years.
Three-quarters of respondents to a survey from Home Instead, Inc., a home health provider, said they felt more comfortable thinking about funeral arrangements than retirement planning.
Additionally, only 13% of those surveyed said they’d taken concrete steps toward covering future long-term care costs.
“Final years planning can be easily misconstrued, and many people think they only need to plan for their final days and after,” Home Instead CEO Jeff Huber said in a statement announcing the results. “Often, we forget about the fact that as we age, we might want or need extra care in the final days, months, or even years of our lives — care so we can stay in our homes.”
According to the long-term care provider surveyed 505 people aged 75 and older, as well as 510 adults between the ages of 45 and 69 who still had living parents. Other key takeaways: Seniors who thought they’d laid out plans hadn’t actually taken firm steps toward paying for future health care costs, with 54% saying they hadn’t because they remained in good health — and 48% responding that they trusted their family members to figure things out when the time came.
There was also a gulf between seniors and their children: While 76% of the senior group said discussing their long-term plans with their kids was a good idea, only 58% of the adult children said they’d spoken about those plans with their parents.
Written by Alex Spanko
