Crisp, cool mornings and warm afternoons mean Autumn is here. Rosh Hashanah began last week, and Thanksgiving weekend is coming soon. It’s a time for friends and family to give thanks.

It’s also the perfect time for families with older adults to consider pressing ‘The Plan Button.’ It could be time to start, re-open, or continue family elder planning conversations. And we know it’s not always easy.

You may have tried opening planning conversations without much success. Some older adults will find it challenging to plan for their post-retirement years and not want to discuss planning. However, everyone is different, so consider the insights below before you proceed with the conversation.

As usual, I’ve been visiting clients and their families and prospective clients who are considering our services. Whenever I talk with someone, I am reminded of how essential it is to get their input in person and actively listen to what they have to say.

Go-Go, Slow-Go and the No-Go Years

As adults, we spend a lot of time planning for our education and careers, developing relationships, deciding whether to have children, making career changes, and possibly divorce and remarriage. Then, we prepare for retirement. Mike Drak, who writes about longevity lifestyles, suggests three general stages of planning for retirement costs exist.

1. The Go-Go years in early retirement, when people plan to travel and spend some of their hard-earned resources.
2. The Slow-Go years, when a person’s health may limit their ability to travel and stay closer to home.
3. The No-Go years, when health issues, lack of mobility, or cognitive decline limit a person’s activities.

These are helpful stages for both lifestyle and retirement financial planning. Remember them when you have elder planning conversations.

And here are some additional insights.

1.     People Don’t Think About Retirement in Stages – But They Should

In my conversations, I learned that people don’t think about their lives in various stages after retirement. But perhaps they should. For example, the idea of someone retiring at 65 and moving right into a complacent chair-sitting life is a myth. Most thoughtful estate professionals and planners consider “post-retirement years” as a basket of costs, not definitive lifestyle stages after retirement.

In the quote below, a client hints they understand the lifestyle changes and stages yet admits to having no plan.

“Think of it this way. I left my full-time career at 70. I am in good health, and I could live another 30 years! And I don’t have a plan. It’s not just about costs; it’s about my purpose in life and the freedom to do what I want with my second life.”

If we take longevity planning seriously, we must consider retirement our second life and, with it, plan our lifestyle and purpose for the Go-Go, Slow-Go, and No-Go stages.

Beyond this, we must be prepared to encounter differences when elder planning involves older adults and their adult children. Mom’s capacity, capability, and needs may differ from how her daughter sees them, which can cause strife in the planning conversation.

2.     Perceptions Differ

I gained some critical insights by listening to a family conversation between parents in their 90s and their son in his 60s. The son had invited us to speak with his parents about the importance of getting a lifestyle plan with projected costs in place. Both parents have health and mobility issues that are starting to cause barriers to them staying in their home without some serious modifications. Mom and Dad are fully capable and aware of what they want and need.

However, the issue concerns how the couple believes their son sees them. As Dad put it, the son perceives them as old and needing help. He and his wife don’t see this at all. They know they are getting older, and things are “starting to happen.”

This caused an impasse. The family was unable to move forward with planning conversations because their perceptions about the parents’ health, needs, and future wishes ultimately ended up in a difference of opinion with no resolution.

As an independent third party working with the parents, we have been able to reframe the conversation and talk about the parents’ needs and wants for the next few years rather than what they have lost or cannot do.

The final insight is perhaps the most common barrier to elder planning. Procrastination.

3.     Procrastination or Active Inertia

Many of us procrastinate at some point, whether it is due to anxiety or feelings of helplessness, feeling overwhelmed about a task, perfectionism, or other reasons. Family members may procrastinate and not approach older parents about planning for their second life, fearing that the conversations may cause undue stress or anxiety.

There is also another type of procrastination behaviour I call active inertia—a term I borrowed from the business strategy world. Donald Sull, an MIT Sloan School of Management professor, coined it. He calls a strategy failure active inertia—in other words, spinning your wheels and getting nowhere.

For example, we’ve seen this before when a daughter called on her mother’s behalf. The mother has been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and is quite capable of living in her own home with some targeted assistance. However, the daughter insists on visiting every long-term care and retirement home within 25 km of her mother’s house.

Rather than address the current situation and take steps to plan and support her mother, the daughter uses her energy to become an expert on every possible accommodation choice which is currently not needed. It’s action, but it’s action that isn’t serving the immediate need.

What to Listen For and What to Ask

As you gather around the table this Autumn, listen to the older adults in your life. How do they see their second life or retirement journey? What stage are they in? How do you perceive them versus how do they perceive themselves? Is nothing happening – or perhaps something that doesn’t need to be done right now?

We hope that all these insights will give you different ways to see the situation and other ways to engage in conversation about elder planning. We all want the best for our loved ones, so give them the dignity to lead planning conversations about their future.