Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

The younger you start thinking about, saving for, and planning for retirement the better. Retirement years will then be your golden years, not your beholden years.

There’s more than getting feeble and frail to be worried about as you get older. Of course, there is always the need for food, shelter, and clothing and quality of life to worry about but there is also maintaining your independence, being able to care for yourself and not depend upon the kindness of others for your care, which usually means giving up some or all of your independence. 

 Also, what happens when you fall and break a body part, need knee or hip surgery, develop some type of dementia, become disabled, or have some aliment than prevents you from taking care of yourself and your home. Who will help you get through the short-time tough times or take you in when you are unable to care for yourself ever again.

For many of the silent and baby boom generations, one of the reasons to have children was to have someone to take care of you when you got old and feeble. Many people of these generations thought that since they would be taken care of by their children there was no need to be too concerned about planning for retirement. However, over the years of their lives, family circumstances changed, societal values changed, and the economy changed in ways no one expected. 

Partially due to some many baby boomers reaching their senior years, the youngest are in their 70s, more seniors than ever now live alone, and the numbers are increasing all the time. Reasons for them living alone include:

• Having never married.
• Being a widow or widower.
• Having divorced and never remarried.
• Not wanting to be a burden on anyone.
• Having chosen to live alone.

When you are old and alone and need help, sometimes the ones you thought would be there to take care of you are not there because they:

• Are no longer living.
• Have others they are already taking care of.
• Need help taking care of themselves.
• Aren’t physically, mentally, or emotionally able to take care of you.
• Live too far away.
• Don’t have the money to take care of you and still be able to take care of themselves and their families.
• Aren’t willing to upset their lives and lifestyles to take care of you.
• They simply don’t want to take care of you.

Since you can’t count on there being someone to take care of you when you are old, you need to prepare for having to pay for someone to take care of you. To be able to pay for your care, you need to save as much money as you can throughout your life specifically for this outcome. 

If you have not prepared for retirement and growing old alone and you need someone to care of you, you have some choices, you can:

• Pay for your care until you do not have any more money and then rely on the government to care for you.
• Negotiate for your long-term care with your nieces, nephews, or other relatives.
• Live in a joint household of trusted “extended” family members and friends and share the care.
• Adopt a family you trust that lives nearby and use your will to assign part of your estate to them in return for them taking care of you until you die. Make sure you get advice from an elder law attorney before entering into this type of arrangement. 

If you have prepared for retirement and growing old alone by saving a large nest egg, you have more choices, you can:

• Live at home and pay for your care as it is needed, although you may reach the point where you are unable to make decisions and coordinate your care and will need someone to do it for you. If assisted living or skilled nursing becomes necessary, someone will have to find one of these places for you, move you, sell your home and belongings.
• Pay for a local Continuing Care at Home (CCaH) plan, such as Navigation by Salemtowne in Winston-Salem, NC,\  that will coordinate and pay for your health care needs as you need them.
• Move into a life of luxury amongst likeminded friends in a CCRC/Life Plan Community and be cared for through all level of care until you die.

The choices you have available to you in your later years depends on how well you have prepared for your later years during your earlier years, and, the younger you start preparing, the better off you will be.

New concepts

Some of the new concepts in assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing facilities.

Towne Club Merry Mingle

Salemtowne Retirement Community hosted a Merry Mingle event for Towne Club members yesterday. As with all Towne Club events, it was well-planned and had all the friendly marketing staff available to answer questions. Towne Club members got to socialize with each other and learn about their potential future neighbors. 

I visited 10 CCRCs around central North Carolina, some more than once, before settling on Salemtowne as my final choice. Of all the CCRCs I visited, Salemtowne's residents were the friendliest and most down-to-earth. The staff is always super friendly and helpful, and their behavior appears real, not just because they are required to behave that way. The staff and residents make you feel at home and they seem like people you want to know. Salemtowne’s Moravian inspired architecture is timeless always warm and inviting, especially during the Christmas season. I’m a Scrooge and even I felt Christmassy.

Something new planned for Winston-Salem, NC

A new independent living retirement complex is planned for the south side of Winston Salem.

Towne Club Luncheon

When you pay a deposit and get your name on the waiting list at Salemtown CCRC, you become a member of the Towne Club and receive a lot of benefit from the membership. One of the benefits is periodic luncheons where you get a superb meal, get to meet and talk with other club members, and get updates on Salemtowne's current status and future plans.

I attended a club luncheon this week and it was a very enjoyable experience. Salemtowne is growing fast, building new facilities, and modernizing older facilities. I look forward to the time when an apartment with my floor plan opens and I am ready to move.

Salemtowne's new health care center

On 8 June 2017, I attended the ribbon cutting and tour of Salemtowne’s new eight-acre, 127,000 square foot, $41.9 million, Babcock Health Care Center. It is a fantastic place that is over three football fields long.

There are sky lights everywhere and large, tall windows throughout. There are high ceilings in the rooms and the main corridors are two stories high. All the flooring, walls, and décor are light pastel colors that have a “beachy” feel. The whole building is so open and bright that you feel as though you are outside on a sunny day. The exterior design of the facility has a Moravian influence that blends well with other buildings on the campus.

At the west entrance of the facility, the lower level contains a 20-bed secure memory care unit named Westerly Place. It will use the “Best Friends” approach where staff members are encouraged to learn the residents’ backgrounds to deepen their relationships in hopes of stimulating activity and enhancing residents’ feelings of security.

One section of the main level contains 40 short-term resident rooms for rehabilitation patients, each with a view of a courtyard, and a very large rehab physical training room that is very bright and airy. Off the training room is a room with all the major appliances one would find in a home, which are used to train rehab patients to use them again. There is also a bathroom with a tub so patients can practice getting in and out of it.

The core of the facility has an open-concept cafeteria, a large beauty shop, and a very large, bright multipurpose room for special events.

The periphery of the building contains three skilled nursing neighborhoods: Salem Square, Mill Place, and Garden Court, each with a historic decorative feel. Each neighborhood is similar to a small, individual self-contained nursing facility. Each neighborhood forms a large square around a large central courtyard. The entrance side of the square has a large living room and lounge area and a large open dining room with a fully equipped chef’s kitchen where meals may be prepared to fit each patient’s wants and needs, and a spa. Each neighborhood has its own staff that caters to the needs of the small group of patients.

The other three sides of a neighborhood square contain 20 large, private rooms, each with a large closet, a fully adjustable bed, a lockable night stand, a chest of drawers, and a lounge chair. There are sliding barn style doors into a bathroom that has a shower that is level with the floor, a sink in a built-in dresser that has many drawers, and a vertical storage unit with many drawers. Instead of medication carts being wheeled around the neighborhood, each room has a nurse’s station with a lock-box that contains the patient’s medications in pre-prepared blister packs.

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center provides medical care at Salemtowne and has worked with the community in developing wellness programs for residents and in developing the new health care facility.  The cost for a skilled nursing bed at the new facility is $305 a day. Residents of Salemtowne independent living receive a 20% discount on any higher levels of care they require.

Gallery of images of the new facility.

My CCRC Choices

I have been researching and visiting CCRCs in the Triad region of North Carolina for the last four years. These are my top contenders for a CCRC for myself:

• Arbor Acres in Winston-Salem, NC. I'm on their priority list.
• Salemtowne in Winston-Salem, NC. I'm on their priority list.
• Windsor Run in Matthews, NC. I'm on their priority list.

For the winner and how I selected it, see My final choice.

Winsor Run is under construction.

Winsor Run, a new state-of-the-art Erickson Living CCRC is under construction in Matthews, NC, just south of Charlotte.

Located on 60 acres of rolling farm land only a couple of miles from downtown Matthews, the complex is within walking distance of shopping, restaurants, doctors, dentist, etc. and near all the things Charlotte has to offer. The visitor center is open and accepting applications for the priority list.

The apartment buildings and main complex are due to open in the spring of 2018 with the assisted living and skilled nursing centers due to open in 2019.

Salemtowne expansion underway

Salemtowne, a CCRC in Winston-Salem, NC is expanding.

New villas, due to open in mid-to-late 2018, will have open-concept floor plans with light coming in from two or three sides, large patios or balconies, covered parking, and shorter hallways to access your home from parking. 

A new health care community is due to open in mid-2017. This state-of-the-art, 120-bed, nearly 127,000 square feet facility will provide healthcare services for both Salemtowne residents and the larger community. Sixty beds will offer long-term skilled nursing services, forty beds will be dedicated to short-term rehab service, and twenty beds will provide memory care assisted living services. The skilled nursing facility and the memory care assisted living facility are designed in the household or neighborhood models of care where beds will be divided into households of twenty beds each. 

Once the new healthcare community is open, the existing Phillips Healthcare Center will be renovated into a 46-bed assisted living community, opening in mid-2018.

CCRC Guide is online

The CCRC Guide blog is online as of today. I will try to keep it updated with posts about Triad CCRCs and I will add new CCRC general information to the topics as I find it. And of course, I will be tweaking the design since I am also a recovering perfectionist.