14 - retirement home for millennials

Content warning for dementia, assisted suicide

For MicroBlogVember

Will they even exist 40 years from now? Millennials clearly don't have the money to pay for them, do you think our kids or grandkids somehow could? Can't wait for The Last Boomer to write the thinkpiece about how "Millennials are Killing the Retirement Home Business" because we're eating too many free-range eggs or what have you.

My only real experience with retirement homes involves my grandfather, who had Alzheimer's the entire time I knew him. When my grandmother passed, we had him moved from their home in the desert to a retirement home a few minutes away from where my uncle lives, where he lasted about five years or so. My uncle checked in on him daily, and we visited 3-5 times a year. Their dining room had decent food and I only got shouted at by an old person I didn't know one time. It seemed like a nice enough place.

(Aside: If you ever want to suddenly think that maybe physician-assisted suicide is an alright idea, know somebody with Alzheimer's. I noted in an earlier blog that the entire second floor of the house I grew up in was built by my grandfather, and by the last few years of his life he could not move or speak under his own power and was clearly unaware of his surroundings. It was just depressing.)

I'm not entirely sure how they paid for it, since retirement homes apparently cost as much or more than a sizeable monthly rent in the same city. My uncle lives in a wealthy neighborhood, but more by virtue of getting in early on a housing development and working 60-80 hours a week for decades (he is well into his 70s and still trucking). Perhaps my other uncle - a shitty right wing real estate CEO whose daughter literally got married at the Ronald Reagan ranch - contributed, but I don't actually know one way or the other.

If my mother ends up in the same position (she's pretty absent-minded and scatter-brained as it is, though I've come to understand based on my own experiences this is most likely because she has undiagnosed ADHD and possibly autism), I would have no real recourse other than becoming a home caretaker, and I can barely take care of myself as it is. I couldn't afford a retirement home unless I got some kind of sudden massive windfall. My brother probably couldn't either.

Well, that was cheery! I hope material circumstances for my generation improve over the next couple decades!