Boomers: You gotta fight for your right to prepare

Baby boomers, think about who we were.

We were the generation that walked onto the national stage and said, “We’ll take it from here.”

We challenged authority. We questioned the establishment.

We marched, protested, innovated, disrupted and rebuilt the world around us — whether the world was ready for us or not.

We went from hippies to entrepreneurs. From Woodstock to smartphones. From color TV to artificial intelligence.

We watched technology transform virtually every part of our lives. We pushed medicine forward. We lived longer. We stayed healthier. We redefined what “old” was supposed to look like.

And then we moved south, bought RVs, discovered pickleball and decided we weren’t quite ready for the rocking chair.

And we weren’t.

But here’s the thing about our generation: We don’t stop fighting. We just find a new fight. And today, the fight isn’t against age. It’s against unpreparedness.

Getting older isn’t the real threat

At 80, we’re not necessarily the same people our parents were at 80.

We’re more active. More informed. More independent. And many of us have accumulated something our parents didn’t have to the same degree: Choices.

But choices only matter if we can preserve the ability to make them.

Where will you live?

Who will care for you if you need help?

Who will make decisions if you can’t?

How will you pay for care without unnecessarily sacrificing the assets you’ve spent a lifetime building?

And perhaps the most important question: Who will be in control?

That’s where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Because most of us have planned for retirement. We’ve planned for investments. We’ve planned for Social Security. We’ve planned for travel, grandchildren and the things we’ve waited decades to enjoy.

But how many of us have planned for the possibility that one day we may need significant help with everyday life?\

Not “we’ve thought about it.” Not “my kids will figure it out.” Not “Medicare will take care of it.”

A real plan. A plan for where we’ll live, who will help us, what that help could cost and where the money will come from.

This isn’t about long-term care. That’s an important distinction. This isn’t really about insurance. It’s not about nursing homes. It’s not even about aging.

It’s about independence.

Real independence at 80, 85 or 90 isn’t pretending we’re 30. It’s having enough foresight, resources and structure to preserve our choices when circumstances change.

Maybe you want to stay at home. Maybe you eventually want to move to a community.

Maybe you want professional care. Maybe you want your children nearby — or nowhere near your daily decisions.\

The point is that the choice should be yours for as long as possible. That’s not defeat. That’s taking command.

The next evolution

The 1960s were about changing society. The decades that followed changed technology, business, medicine and virtually every other aspect of American life.

Now there’s another frontier: changing the way we prepare for aging.

And who better to do it than the generation that has spent a lifetime challenging the conventional way of doing things? We’ve never been particularly good at accepting “that’s just the way things are.” So why start now?

We don’t have to accept a future where our children suddenly become our caregivers. We don’t have to assume our lifetime of savings will simply disappear paying for care. We don’t have to wait for a health crisis to discover what our options are. And we certainly don’t have to leave the decisions to someone else.

We can plan before we need the plan.

What does a future independence plan look like? It starts with four simple questions:

1. What do I want?

Where would I want to live and what kind of life would I want if I needed assistance? 

2. Who do I want involved?

Who should help me — and who should make decisions if I can’t?

3. What could it cost?

What resources do I have, and how can they be positioned to support the life I want?

4. How do I preserve control?

What legal, financial and care-planning decisions need to be made now rather than during a crisis?\

These aren’t depressing questions. They’re empowering questions. Because the earlier you ask them, the more choices you generally have.

Don’t make your children your plan

Our children love us, but love isn’t a care plan. They have careers, spouses, children, homes and responsibilities of their own. The last thing many of us want is to force them into the position of suddenly becoming our financial managers, healthcare advocates and caregivers because we never had the conversation.

There’s a better alternative.

Give children a plan instead of a problem. Tell them what you want. Tell them how you intend to pay for it. Tell them who should be involved. And make sure the legal and financial structure supports those decisions.

That’s not just planning for yourself. It’s planning for the people you love.

We planned our whole lives. Why stop now?

We planned our careers. We planned our children’s education. We planned our retirements. We planned our vacations. We planned our investments. We planned for the things we wanted to happen.

Now it’s time to plan for the things that might happen.

Not because we’re afraid. Because we’re smart enough to know that independence shouldn’t be left to chance.

The revolution isn’t over. It simply moved to a new front.

From hippies to pickleball, we’ve already proven that we know how to evolve.

Now let’s evolve the way we think about aging. Let’s stop thinking of future care as something that happens to us.

Let’s start thinking about it as something we can prepare for, influence and plan around.

Your next move

You don’t need to solve everything today. But you need to start the conversation and look at your situation.

Identify what you want. Understand the risks. Explore the resources available to you and determine whether your current financial and legal arrangements support the future you say you want.

Because someday, the question may not be: “Can I afford care?” It may be: “Can I afford to have choices?”

That’s what future independence is really about. We’ve spent a lifetime fighting for the freedom to live life on our terms. Why would we surrender that freedom simply because we’re getting older?

We didn’t change the world just to let the world decide our future for us.

We’re still fighters. We’re still planners. We’re still in the game.

From hippies to pickleball. And now — from retirement planning to future independence.

The next move is ours.

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Chuck Greenblott, MHA, CRPC, CLTC, is the founder of Power10 Financial and creator of the Future Independence Planning framework. Contact him at [email protected].