RVR,,
If I may further develop on the need of financial security for the parents in old age. The children at the age of starting/building the family, are probably stretched to the limt. The last thing they need is to take care of a financially irresponsible parents who are a drain on their funds.
Having said that, I would like to emphasize that financial planning is no easy matter. People who live on pension would be the hardest hit. There is inflationary pressues and above all big drains on savings are daughters’ marriages.
But it need not always be so. If you have a working daughter, she should pay for her own wedding. To confess, my wife paid for the entire wedding expense 30 years ago, when incomes were not high like today, and she was a personal assistant to an executive. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Continue to work. There is no reason that once retired at 55 or 58, that one should hang up the suit and take it easy. Nowadays life expectancy to the 80s appear to be increasingly the norm in our community. So there is 20 years or more of living and one should atleast give more than a passing thought as to how this should be funded.
The good fact is that whatever one earns post retirement can be direct saving, thus enabling a savings pool to rise rather quickly. On a side note, in Canada, where parents are allowed to immigrate based on relationship to the son/daughter, the happiest seniors are those where the father immediately seeks a job. Due to the dignity of labour, and the fact that this is a new country to live, people take the most mundane of jobs like parking car attendents or security cards, get the minimum wage of $10 per hour and work for 30 hours a week. Which makes it to $300 per week to about $15k per annum, a handsome supplement and pocket money, to be used at discretion and for gift purchases.
The children and grandchildren look forward to grandpa’s gifts during annual gift giving time (xmas or diwali) and unfortunate to say, the constant flow of money and contribution to budget, goes a long way, in greasing out the sticky fit in the gears. The fact of current day life.
I have also found, that it is good to live near the children is better. I see great arrangements in india, with some of my relatives, where the elderly mother lives one floor above and has her own household. Meals are exchanged both ways depending on the convenience, but there is a level of independency which goes a long way in tolerating relationships esp between mil and dil. This living close by has another point in its favour..at a point when more care is needed and one needs to move in with the children, there is no great adjustment or ‘shock’.
I think it is best to think all this through for these are critical life matter. I wish to emphasize I that I am not advocating any system over the other or denigrating the joint family system, especially those with traditional values. Please do whatever suits you. I am talking about some realities of the day that I have faced, and to my surprise, my relatives in india face too.
No matter what old ageing is but a poignant period of our lives. We are aware of the curtains closing, but it is upto us, God willing, to manage our life with ourselves in control as long as possible, on our terms, than being at the mercy of a son or daughter, however kind or affectionate, caring they may be.
