Welcome to the AG Well Podcast, where we explore the science,
stories and strategies behind living a longer, healthier, and
more purposeful life. In this episode, I'm joined by
Doctor Corinne Ahmed, author, aging expert, and founder of
Choice Care Navigators, a company helping families
navigate the complex journey of growing older with clarity and
compassion. Corinne is on a mission to shift
the way we think about aging. In her ground breaking book,
Teenagers, she redefines ages 55 to 80 not as a time of decline,
but is a vibrant and extended middle adulthood full of
potential, purpose, and growth. With a background in psychology
and real world experience managing a team of care
professionals, Corinne brings a dual perspective that bridges
academic insight with practical solutions.
In this conversation, we explore ageism in our society and
healthcare systems, how to rethink retirement, and how to
plan not just financially, but emotionally and spiritually for
the decades ahead. Whether you're aging yourself,
caring for an older loved one, we're simply curious about what
it means to thrive in later life.
This episode is packed with wisdom and inspiration to help
you and those you love age well. Corinne, welcome to the Aging
Wall podcast. Let's begin by just having you
tell us about yourself and Choice Care Navigators.
So I am a developmental psychologist, and my specialty
area is adulthood and aging. When I went to school years and
years ago, there was really no gerontology programs.
Gerontology is the study of older adults, and so that's how
I kind of got into the world sideways.
Now you can find gerontology programs lots of different
places, but I knew I wanted to work with older adults, and I
did that. I got my degree, and then I
taught in academia for a number of years.
And about 12 years ago, I looked at my husband and I said, you
know how I always wanted to start a business where you help
people, like, navigate caring for their aging loved ones?
It's only getting more complicated.
If I'm ever going to do it, I need to do it now, right?
So I've made the leap into care management back in 2012.
And have been doing that ever since.
So Choice Care Navigators is a geriatric care management
agency. So we help people navigate
caring for their aging loved ones.
It's usually an adult child or a spouse who hires us to just kind
of give them expert advice and help them, you know, navigate
and avoid pitfalls for caring for that person that they love.
You don't really realize what you don't know about the senior
Care World and how things get paid and what the different
options are until you get thrown into it.
And then all of a sudden you're kind of like a deer in
headlights. What do you mean Medicare
doesn't pay for this? What do you mean?
These are my options? And and that's where we come in.
And it seems like it's constantly changing too, that
somebody needs to be able to keep up on this.
Stuff, Yeah, we try, we try to keep up.
But you know, we are learning all the time too.
It's continuing education for us.
But we're on top of it, right, Like you said, because we, it's
our job. It's our job to know, it's not
everybody else's job to know, and so we are paying attention
to everything that is happening so that we can help people
navigate to the best of their ability.
So what inspired you to write Teenagers, and how did you come
to redefine the ages between 55 and 80 as extended middle
adulthood? So these, OK, so these things
really don't seem like they go together, right?
So I, I work in care management. I'm typically helping people
navigate. I really get a lot of phone
calls when people are in crisis, like something has happened to
their loved one and they are in panic mode about what I do now,
that sort of thing. And then I've written this very
positive book, right, about how we do have this kind of extended
middle adulthood. And I tell you a lot of stories
about people who are doing things with.
It's not the retirement that you're grandparents would have
had. It's very different now and the
way that happened. I started this business and I
thought I was going to be working with 40 year olds who
were caring for 70 year old parents and that is not what I
do at all. I am working with 70 year olds
who are caring for their 90 or 95 year old.
And I have realized, you know, even with all of my background,
all of my training working with older adults, I had it so wrong
about what this time period was like.
And if I have it that wrong, all the rest of us do too, because
and it, and it's our stereotypes, right?
It's what the there is this message or this story that the
culture has told us about what growing older is like.
And we all just kind of believe it because we're, you know,
we're not there yet and we don't really know.
And then when you really start interacting a lot with people
who are in these older age groups, you go, wait, this is
not this is not what I was told, right?
This. And it's and it's a positive
story, right? Like it's so much better than
our negative cultural story would have you believe.
I'll give you a quick example. I just had my 50th birthday and
thank you. And I was just watching, you
know, YouTube shorts or whatever on my phone and little clip of
friends came up. And it was this segment where
Monica tells Ross that Rachel was the one who started the
rumor in high school that he made out with the 51 year old
media, you know, librarian or whoever.
And they're all mortified. You made out with a 51 year old
and they go, was it? Didn't she walk with a limp?
Didn't she use a cane? You know, just all of these
things about 51 year old and I, I did, I thought, and there it
is. There's the messaging that the
world is giving us all the time and it's so different than what
the actual experience is like. I remember when my my aunt Linda
turned 30 and how devastated she was and how old she felt.
And that stuck with me. And when I hit 30, I was like,
this isn't so bad. Why was she so worried?
And now I'm getting ready to turn 62 and I'm like, this isn't
so bad. Well, and, and with my birthday,
it was really interesting because it's like people don't
know what to even say to you. I got several texts going the
day before my birthday going, this is your last day being in
your 40s. And I'm like, so you know, and
how is how is that different? You know, how am I going to be
so different tomorrow? But but people really again,
that cultural stereotype, this is what you say to people,
right? Like this is and people don't
know how to interact any other way.
I sometimes just go with this is the 30th anniversary of your
20th birthday. There you go.
Then they feel younger and it's not so bad.
I got corrected the other day because I graduated in 1981 from
high school. So I'm a bit older than you and
I made a comment about age, something than that.
And one of my friends pointed out, you know, you're not
supposed to point out to friends that you graduated in 1981 how
old they are. Sorry.
But you know, and, and again, that's the cultural messaging,
like you're not supposed to talk about it.
You're not supposed to admit it. And, and I really wish we could,
could shift that to really owning it, you know, like, no,
you should. I'm really happy that I've made
it to 50 and I really feel like I'm hitting my stride in a lot
of ways and I'm having a good time.
So why should I be upset that I've made it to 50 when we all
know what the alternative would have been, right?
Not making it to 50? So, you know, celebrate it, be
happy about it. The the don't tell anybody or
don't admit it doesn't change your age, doesn't change the
facts. So why not be positive about it?
Yeah, I teach exercise Physiology, so I'm always
pointing out to my students how age is just a number.
And I love when I have to put up normative data, and it's showing
that, you know, if I'm benching my body weight at the age of 21,
I'm in fair condition. But now in my 60s, if I can
bench my body weight, I'm like, superhuman.
And I said, this is ridiculous. There's no reason why we should
think that age is that level of decline.
Right, so. It's we're basing it on norms
and that just means that normally people were doing
poorly as they age. So what can we do to make it
better? Yeah.
And it's you know, it's about 30% genetics and about 70%
lifestyle choices. So it is really about what you
are choosing to do to help yourself age well or and that is
a choice, you know it. Are you continuing to exercise?
Are you continuing to eat well? Are we doing these things or are
we not? And so much of our long term
health and longevity and how well that goes is really just
based on our choices. It's not inevitable at all.
If you've met 170 year old, you've met 170 year old, and
your experience could be very similar to that person, or it
could be radically different based on your choices.
So in your business and your experience, when you're talking
about seeing people who are in their 70s taking care of parents
or in their 90s, are either or both or neither of those
individuals in the more sick kind of state?
You know, because sometimes I think we did.
Imagine if you're in your 70s and you have a parent in your
90. You're both kind of in that
decrepitude and decline. Is it getting better?
I think it's very individual honestly.
I've had I've had 70 year olds who were in much worse health
than their 90 year old parents and they were worried about what
was going to happen to their 90 year old parent if something
happened to them because of their declining health.
I've also had 70 year olds who were very healthy and active
caring for their still very healthy and active 90 something
year olds, old parents. I have a neighbor and he's 93.
He's out mowing his yard, he's taking care of his house and his
70 year old son is coming over on the weekends to help him with
those things. And so they're both, you know,
doing great. It really varies.
I mean it. There is so much individual,
individual choice, individual experiences there.
We cannot make a blanket statement, even though our
stereotypes really want us to. I just, my church had a 90th
birthday for everybody that was over the age of 90 recently.
And there was a woman there who was 100 and and she did not look
100. She, I mean, she looked 90,
sure, but she didn't look 100. And they asked her kind of what
her secret was. And she proceeded to tell me
that her father lived to be 106 and he had written his memoir
when he was 87 and ended up having to write a second
addition to his memoir because he did so much after 87.
And he at 93, went to the North Pole.
So actually the captain of the Russian ship that took him to
the North Pole actually had the engineer form a, you know, make
a key for him to the North Pole and honor his age.
And, you know, the fact he went to the North Pole and, you know,
the guy just continued to really live and experience well into
his hundreds, which I think that's a huge key.
Yeah, that should be our everyone's goal, continuing to
to live and have a healthy lifespan, right?
Have a health span that goes as long as possible and then as
short a period of, of any sort of chronic conditions or health
deterioration as we can possibly have.
I mean, that's that's the thing. And interesting thing to me is
you just, you know, your whole having a 90th birthday for
everyone who was over 90. OK.
So right there we've got multiple people in this group
who are over 90 that is and that is becoming the norm.
We think about it as kind of being a one off, but it is
really so much more normal now than people realize.
And that again, is a shift in perspectives like, Oh no, I so I
could live a healthy, active life well into my 90s.
That's a reality. And that really changes a lot of
how we approach those latter years.
So what are some of the biggest myths, myths or misconceptions
about this stage of life that you address in the book?
Well, I think the first one again is what we've already been
talking about, that it is a time period of inevitable decline and
deterioration. And will you experience some
changes? Yes, absolutely, we all do.
How significant they are in terms of your mobility or how
much they impact your life has a lot to do with how well you are
taking care of yourself and your positive outlook.
Outlook. One of the most interesting
things I talk about in the book is some research by Doctor Becca
Levy up at the Yale School of Public Health.
And she has done a whole lot of research on ageism and the power
of your own positive perspective on aging.
And one of the things she finds is that people who have a
positive outlook about growing older, they're looking forward
to these years. They live on average 7 1/2 years
longer than people who have a negative outlook.
So just the power of that positive perspective and you
can, you can kind of imagine why that might be.
If I've got a positive outlook, I'm thinking ahead for this time
period. I'm planning for it.
I'm going to my doctor's visit, I'm getting my check UPS.
I'm taking care of myself because I'm looking forward to
this time period versus if I've got a negative outlook and I'm
like, oh, it's all downhill from here and there's nothing I can
do about my shoulder that hurts or whatever it is.
Then you don't take those steps. You kind of bury your head in
the sand and you pretend you're not aging like that.
Aging, things happening to other people.
It's not really happening to me. And you don't put things into
place or take the steps to actually make it a good
experience. And so again, just that
perspective, you know, thinking in your own head or catching
yourself with your own thoughts when you think I'm too old for
something or, you know, it's inevitable that I'm going to
have aches and pains. Stopping yourself and going.
Why do I think that right? Is that actually true or is that
something that I've just heard people say?
And could I think something, could I choose a different path?
I think that's one of the most interesting things for me it
that comes out of the book. And and you mentioned ageism and
you speak of ageism in the book, particularly as we see it in
business, healthcare, everyday life.
Where do you see it showing up the most and how do we start to
dismantle this whole idea of ageism and I guess ageism?
I just interviewed Neil Steinberg, who is the director
of a new PBS documentary that will air before this actually
airs. So it airs on May 1st.
But he had worked closely. Now I'm drawing a blank in the
guys name Roger, who coined the term ageism.
I think it's like back in the 80s or something like that, or
might have been earlier than that.
So the term has been around a while.
But how do we go about dismantling?
We've got 40 years and we haven't.
Yeah, So first of all, ageism is bias against someone based on
their age. And it's amazing to me how many
people don't know what it is. So I just want to make sure we
establish that. And it really can go either way
for like we can be a just against young people because we
say they're too young, they're too inexperienced, they don't
know anything, right. Like you could be a just that
way, but it's more commonly applied to older adults where we
don't want to hire someone because we think they're too
old. We think they won't adapt to
technology. We think that they, you know,
they've got 1 foot out the door, they're ready to retire.
They won't want to continue working, right?
Those are Aegis beliefs. I'm in healthcare.
It would be, you know, if you go to the doctor for something and
your doctor responds with a, well, you know, you're just
getting older. We kind of expect these things
as you get older rather than actually investigating what's
wrong. I'm, you can see this in
psychotherapy. If a psychotherapist has a
belief that, you know, depression is something that
just happens as you get out, you aren't, you're getting older,
you ought to be sad, right? That's something to be sad
about. Then they, they, that person may
not get treated for their depression the way they should
be. And I give an example.
There's a story about that in the book of a guy who went to
get treated for his depression in his 50s and they just blew it
off and said, oh, you know, just go buy yourself a sports car and
you'll feel better. This is, this is a normal
experience. You're just having a midlife
crisis and and instead, you know, he had clinical
depression, which just continued to get worse.
You would also see it in healthcare if somebody comes up
to an older person when they go in for a doctor's visit or go to
the hospital and they go, how are you today, sweetie?
You doing OK, honey? They're trying to be nice, but
what they're doing is actually being condescending because you
would not speak to another grown adult that way.
You know, kind of that high pitched loud, almost like baby
talk, but we actually call it elder speak.
You do that and older adults do not like being spoken to that
way. They find it condescending
because they're like, I'm a grown adult.
You can speak to me like a grown adult.
Or if you're at the doctor's and the doctor speaks to your adult
child or to your spouse instead of speaking directly to you,
that's also agent. And it's it's like this
presumption that somehow you can't understand or you won't
understand and that, you know, you take some advocacy on your
part to be like, hi, I'm here. I would like for you to speak to
me, which can be uncomfortable, right?
Because we respect our health care providers and we want to be
respectful to them and we don't want to upset them.
And so how do we make that balance?
I think the first thing when you to your question about how do we
dismantle it? I really think the first thing
is becoming aware, which is part of the reason, you know, I wrote
the book and I'm doing podcasts and things like this because I
really AM surprised all the time at the number of people who
don't know what ageism is or who think, I'll, I'll explain what
it is and they'll go well. But those things are true,
right? Young people are really
inexperienced and not qualified and older people really are, you
know, 1 foot out the door or slower at work or whatever those
things are. And so they just believe them.
They think they're just true. And so the first step is kind of
educating people about what ageism is and that those things
are not necessarily true, that those are stereotypes.
And then also dismantling it is an inside job for each person
because we have all been brought up in this culture that is very
ageist, right? We this is ingrained in us from
the time we are small children. If you go look at children.
Books and look at the depictions of older adults.
You get a lot of old hags and Crohn's and witches and, you
know, cranky old men. It's not a great message right
from childhood. And so hundred hundred day of
school celebrations, kids go to their their elementary schools,
they've reached the 100th day. Everybody dresses up like an old
person and comes in with their canes and puts powder in their
hair. And I mean, so we're sending
this message from childhood that this is not something to look
forward to, that old people are scary and maybe kind of gross.
And it makes sense that as we grow up in that environment that
we believe these things. And so stopping to realize that
those things are not inevitable and that that messaging you, you
can question it in your own head, you can stop and go, why
do I, why do I say that? Why do I think that in the first
place? So how can we as business
owners, healthcare providers and even in our families become more
age inclusive in our practices and policies?
Well, again, I think the first thing is realizing that you
might be age non inclusive because again, I think so many
people are making their decisions on autopilot about who
to hire or how to treat people because they just believe these
things are true. So stopping to reconsider that.
And then, you know, if you really read the research on
intergenerational connections and like an intergenerational
workplace, those things are actually really positive.
When you get people coming in from multiple different age
groups to work together, they are all bringing in different
skill sets. Will your oldest worker probably
be your most tech savvy? No.
So you've got a younger worker for that.
But will that older worker have the people skills and the
communication skills to really connect with clients and
customers and give great customer service?
Probably. And that may not be the skill
that your younger worker has because they've grown up in a
world where they kind of are on their phone all the time and put
their headphones in and they don't socially interact that
way. So there is real power in
bringing together different groups, people of different ages
to work together because they're all bringing something different
to the table. And that's a good thing.
Rather than having everybody in the room be the same age or
close to the same age, they don't.
They've all got similar experiences, so they've grown up
in the same time period as part of the same cohort.
Bring different people together to give you different power
sets. I think it's important too from
a business standpoint to have people that understand across
the the population as well, because you have people that are
putting together ads, for example, that are directed
towards everybody, but it's like you have no clue what attracts
or appeals to somebody my age or older.
So if you've got, you know, apps on your phone are a great
example. If everybody who is a app
developer is 30 or younger, 35 or younger, they have no idea
what a 55 year old wants from an app on their phone because
they've got a very limited view. Or the thing I really see happen
is every app or software that is developed for older people is
healthcare related. Everything is healthcare related
because all young people can see about growing older is that
you're going to have health issues.
And we'll, we'll try to solve those as we get older.
We continue to be complicated, rich, rich in terms of like your
experiences and your emotions, right?
We are, we are the same complicated people with rich
lives at 60 that we were when we were 30.
And so we still want all those things, right?
We want dating apps for when we're in our 60s because if
we're looking for love, that's, you know, but how is a 30 year
old going to know what that experience is like?
And so yes, that is a perfect example.
You've got to, you've got to have people in the room who
understand that age group if you want to market or develop
products for that age group. Yeah, Speaking of apps, I have a
couple different games that I'll play on my phone just to kill
time once in a while. And there's one ad that keeps
coming out that just annoys the heck out of me.
And it's I'm a college professor and I recommend that for my
elderly 61 year old mother that she played this game.
I'm like, what are you talking about 61?
What are you a professor in that?
You think that 61 is elderly A. 30 year old developed that ad
because they're thinking, they're thinking that at 61 you,
you are like that. But really, what that app that
should be aimed at is like an 85 year old, yeah.
And even at 85, it's like, don't tell me at 80 that I'm going to
be quote, UN quote elderly. I don't like terms like elderly
and senior citizen and all those things because they they
pigeonhole you into some demographic that you may or may
not exist in. Well, and so this is how the
word teenagers from my book with AK came about because when I was
trying to write about aging in a positive way, it is almost
impossible to find words that talk about aging and have a
positive connotation. You might get there's active
agers, but a lot of it's either negative or neutral.
So it's older adult or senior citizen or elder, but then you
also have the Crone and the hag and the, you know, dirty old man
and all these other really negative things and oh, codger,
Oh Ku. I mean, I could there's a whole
list. I have really looked at this.
And so that's why I use the word teenager because I was trying to
find something positive and to to talk about this age group.
The other thing is, you know, we start putting you in the older
adult category. You know, you start getting some
of your senior discounts at 55, but we really talk about you
being an older adult, you know, 6065 plus.
But we're living, like you said, to a 90 and 100.
So this is 40 years of time that you're in the older adult
category. There is no other time period in
life where we would group people together who are that far apart
in age and be like, oh, you guys are in this.
You guys are the same. You're in the same group.
It makes no sense because it made sense when we retired at 65
and our lifespan was 67, right? That was the average lifespan
when Social Security was first enacted in the 1930s.
Sixty 7. OK, cool.
Older adulthood starts at 65. We're not living that much
farther past it. But today that is so different.
You know, our average lifespan is like 76 and that's the
average. We got people living so much
longer than that. We've got to come up with better
words, better phrasing to talk about the diversity of this time
period because we are not the same for 40 years, right?
Like, let's, let's be real, we're not.
And we need better words to talk about it.
I love asking my students, how do you define older adult?
And they, they struggle because they're looking at me.
It's like, we know you're 60. What terms do we use?
And so they always just go a little bit beyond where my age
is at. They know I'm going to be 62.
So now it's like 65. Well, it could be 70.
I'll do that. When I'm doing a class or
something too, I'll do that and they don't know how old I am and
they'll say 50. And then I'm like, oh, OK, so
I'm an older adult and you can see them kind of like recoil.
And I'm like, no, it's fine. I was like, that's because I
can. Where I live, there is a movie
theater that does senior movies once a month.
And it's usually older movies that like my mom grew up with.
My mom is 80 and you can start going to the senior movies for
free once a month at 50. So my mom and I who are 30 years
apart can go to the senior movies together for free.
Cool, let's go. Yeah, I don't mind being 60
actually. You know, coming up on 62, I
take kind of pride in adding those numbers because, and I'll
show off to my students. I'll you know, I was doing
strength and conditioning for the local wrestling team for a
few years and there were many situations when I was outlifting
those guys and I loved it. You know, it's like, how do you
do that? You know, I can out deadlift
like literally everybody in the room and I'm not that strong in
those things and they don't expect it, but it's like, why
not? I mean, I'm probably stronger
than your 40 year old father, you know, so why can't we be
better? My goal was 120.
OK. OK, we're going to go for.
That sounds good. So you run Choice Care
Navigators. Can you share what kind of
challenges families most often face when they're trying to
navigate care for aging loved ones?
Yeah, unpreparedness, lack of preparation.
They, again, I think the biggest problem I see is that families
don't talk about aging. They don't talk about what they
would like to have happen as people in their families age.
So the individual, the older person themselves doesn't talk
about it and the other family members don't bring it up.
And so we all just kind of go along pretending like everything
is fine and nothing bad is ever going to happen.
And then of course, something does happen and that's the
moment when we get the kind of panicked phone call because they
need to know and understand everything and and they don't
know. So the biggest thing people
could do to make yourself have a good experience as you grow
older is talk with your family members about what you would
like to have happen, how we're going to pay for it, right?
And kind of setting everyone up for success, right?
Having your healthcare power of attorney, having your financial
power of attorney, having your living wills and documents done
so that everybody knows what you want.
And you may not get what you, you want at all because nobody
talked about it. You know, most people their,
their goal is to stay at home as long as possible.
I'd say about 90% of people say they want to stay at home as
long as possible and that's great, but that takes planning.
Is your house age friendly? Do you have a master bedroom and
a full bath with a walk in shower on the 1st floor so that
if you need to use a Walker or a wheelchair, you're going to be
able to just roll right into that bathroom and use the
shower. Things like that.
Do you need grab bars? Do you need to widen hallways or
doorways? Do you have a zero entry front
door where you can get in with no steps?
You know, even one or two steps, that's a big deal.
As you, you know, if you have, have a knee replacement, that's
going to be a really big deal. So thinking about what if that's
my goal to age in place? What do I need to do 10, 15
years ahead of time to make it so that that's because you do
not want to be trying to renovate your bathroom to make
it age friendly after you already need it to be that way.
Because we all know how home renovations go, right?
They're not going to, they're not going to go seamlessly.
And then also talking about the finances, right?
How, where is the money? How are we going to pay for
things? What does care in my area cost
so that I can kind of play this out, budget for it, but people
just don't do that. They bury their heads in the
sand and they hope for the best and that can it could go really
well. But the cases I see are where it
has gone very poorly. So you've kind of alluded to
some of this, but what advice do you have for someone who's just
starting to care for an older parent or partner?
If you're just starting to care for someone, I mean, well, let's
be honest, caring starts long before people would call it
caregiving. I mean, if you are helping fix
someone else's meals or you know, just the kind of everyday
things that that's caregiving, right?
People really don't self identify as caregivers until
they have to maybe start helping somebody get dressed or bathe or
they're having to give them a lot of reminders or prompts to
do different things. But it starts way earlier than
that when you are going on this journey.
If you're starting on it and you've done pre pre planning,
right? You know what your loved one
wants, you know what the plan and is.
That's a very different situation than if you're
starting on this journey and we've not done any planning.
So my first piece of advice if you're starting and nobody's
done any talking would be to have those conversations.
And you, maybe you need a care manager to come in and like kind
of help guide the conversations, help open everybody's eyes to
the realities of the situation, what the options are, things
like that. And, and there are care managers
all over the country. You can find one in your area
who can help kind of guide that family meeting to get everybody
on the same page. Because again, most people don't
know what the senior Care World is like.
So they really don't know what the options are or what the
future may in terms of available services, financing options, you
know, where could we get money, things like that.
So basically, somebody should start caring for their older
adult before they really realize that they're caring for their
older adults before not planning ahead.
And yes. Preparing Yes, you, you should
plan to care before you actually have to do it.
And you know, the reality is all of us will be impacted by
caregiving at some point in our life.
You're either caring for a child, you're caring for a
spouse, you're caring for an aging loved 1.
You know this is just part of the human condition, right?
We help take care of each other. And so it's likely to happen
whether you plan for it or not. And so it's just a question of
do you want to be ready? I, my parents are divorced, so
they were in kind of two separate kind of aging
scenarios. And my in laws, they're from New
York, so they retired to Florida very early.
They, they were in a continued care kind of retirement
community for many, many years. And it worked out very well for
my father-in-law who and ultimately, you know, died of
Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's.
And my dad and his wife live in Arizona and they moved into more
of a continue care retirement community a little bit later on.
And it was actually pretty timely.
You know, I was kind of pushing for them to do that, you know,
just for the long term possibilities.
And it ended up they really didn't need it.
My dad just kind of passed in his sleep.
And it was a shocker for everybody.
But my stepmom is still in that situation.
I really tend to favor those types of communities because it
prepares for the unexpected. But what should people look for
and avoid in choosing senior living communities?
So the main thing I think is to look at them early, right?
Plan it again, plan ahead. I sound like a broken record,
but many of the big continuing care communities have long wait
lists, multi year wait lists at this point.
And we've got more older adults coming.
And so we're expecting that those lists are going to get
longer. So you want to be on that list
way before you actually want to move.
I'm in my area. It's like a two to three-year
wait right now, but I've seen it as long as 10 years at certain
communities. So you need to be touring and
looking at the communities and going to some of their social
activities and things long before you actually think you're
ready to move there. And trust me, these communities,
they're, they're happy for you to come on their campus and do
tours and come to some of their social events because they know
that this is marketing, right? Like it's to help get you
familiar with the community, help you meet people who live
there, make friends so that that will help encourage you to move.
But you don't want to be calling me and saying I'm ready to move.
I'd like to go tour those communities or look at those
communities because I want to move in the next 6 months.
But that's just not going to happen, right?
That's not a possibility. So the other piece of that is
you want to be planning financially for those fees
because they have large move in fees and then they have monthly
fees on top of that. And so you want to be thinking
about how I'm, how are we going to pay for this?
Is this even feasible for us to pay for?
And if it's not like if we look at the numbers and we go this,
this is not going to happen. OK, What are all our
alternatives? There are some really great
communities in my area that off they're not continuing care.
So they're, they don't offer all the levels of care, but they
offer independent assisted and memory care all in one campus
And they're lovely and they don't charge the same kinds of
move in fees and, and they're, you know, different structures.
That could be a good opportunity.
But don't wait until you really need to move to start looking if
that's what you want to do, right?
Just like if you want to stay at home, you need to start planning
for that 10 years in advance. Same thing here.
If you think you want to move, you don't want to stay at home.
You should be planning for that way in advance.
To So how do you help your clients find purpose and
direction in retirement and post career life?
So most of my clients like are the care management clients.
And so they're in a slightly different situation, right?
They're they're, they're managing care at that moment.
My book and the purpose behind that is to help people think
about what am I going to do with all these extra years, right?
To reframe this idea that I'm going to retire at 65 and have,
you know, years and years of relaxation and bliss, right?
Because what we actually know about retirement is that if you
retire and most people, if they had a job they didn't really
love or they were tired of doing, they retire and they are
really happy for about 18 months to two years.
And then after that kind of honeymoon phase, they start to
look around and go, I got several more decades here.
What, what am, what am I going to do?
Because we all like to have purpose and meaning and feel
like we're valuable to the world and to other people.
And so they kind of have a period of turbulence.
There where they have to renegotiate who they are and
what's their place in the world. And am I going to go back to
work? Am I going to start a new
business? Am I going to volunteer?
Am I going to care for my grandchildren?
Like what is it that's going to give my life meaning for all
these years that I've got where I'm healthy and I'm active and I
want to do stuff and whatever you do is fine.
Like I have some people will say to me, oh, you just want
everybody to work until they're dead.
And no, that is not my message at all.
But my but work is really fulfilling for a lot of people.
And it's where you get a lot of socialization.
You get a lot of mental stimulation.
You know, your brain is constantly working.
And if you retire and you're not getting mental stimulation,
right, like you're not being challenged in new ways and
you're not getting a lot of social stimulation, right?
Like you're staying at home a lot.
And that kind of that's really bad for your brain, like really
bad. And so we want to continue to do
things that give us purpose and meaning and are challenging and
they get us out into the world. And whatever you do is fine as
long as it does that. So when should somebody start
really preparing for retirement? I don't think there's a wrong
age for that in terms of, you know, you always hear the
financial advisors say you should start saving like the
moment you get a first job. Retirement is expensive,
especially now that we live so much longer.
So it's expensive. You do need to save as you get
older, you know, in midlife. I think it's time to start
thinking about not only the financial piece, but also the
what's going to give me purpose and meaning.
You know, do I, what do I want to do with that time that's
going to keep me active and engaged and stimulate my brain
so that I want to get out of bed and I'm excited to get out of
bed on a Wednesday morning and go do whatever it is.
And that will be different for everybody.
But you, you should not just have a financial plan for
retirement. You should also have a social
and emotional plan for retirement because those things
are equally important. Yeah, we've on this podcast, we
kind of initially started off really with much more of an
exercise science emphasis because my, my Co host is one of
my former students. And and we're just looking at
aging well from the standpoint of, you know, trying to be
healthier and longevity and all that.
And the more we've gotten into this, the more we have kind of
been driven toward what one of my friends from high school has
labeled as spies. My well centered fitness is
spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional and
social. And all of those components are
so critical to aging well. And we talked about how aging
well really begins at conception, if not sooner,
relative to your parents and grandparents and so on.
And so retiring successfully begins at that point too.
I mean, part of it is, you know, having your pet, you know,
teaching your kids what they're going to need to be able to be
financially secure and successful, but also having the,
the physical, the spiritual and intellectual, the emotional and
social background to be able to be successful in aging.
And so it's not something we just, oh, I'm getting, I'm 50
now. I'm going to be retiring in
another 10 to 15 years. So I got to start thinking about
this stuff. I haven't really like, I mean,
financially I've been thinking about it, but mentally I've not
been thinking about retirement. I just don't see myself
retiring. At some point I want to retire
from teaching, but I'm going to have to find something else to
kind of fill that time and my goal, if I have another 60
years, I'm not going to retire now and then try and live off
of, you know, well, right now my retirement is probably tanked
quite a bit over the last few months.
And so, you know, that might put me to work for another decade or
so. But you know, there's a lot more
that we have to think about other than just the financial.
Absolutely. And you said it was spies?
Spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional and
social. That's great.
I might have. Is that?
Is that copyrighted? I might have to steal that.
It is not copyright written, but I do always credit Jay and Jays,
just one of the great supporters of this podcast in recent about
the last year or so, but he's the one that pointed it out to
me. I've I've talked about, you
know, well, centered fitness and I and I always refer to it in
that order, spies, spiritual physical, because I think those
are the top 2 most important to lead to the others.
But he was like, are you intentional in presenting it as
spies? I said, no, I never really
realized that it's spelled the acronym and he's like, it does
an acronym. So it's a lot easier now What I
feel like I got to always credit him whenever I bring it up.
OK, I've made a note. OK, maybe I need a copyright
that. Is there a way I can make money
on that, you know, if I trademark it.
But no, I mean, I'm happy if everybody thinks it starts
thinking that way and, you know, the phrasing gets around.
So what personal or professional experiences have most shaped
your perspective on aging? So I think the professional
experience of, you know, again, working with older adults on a
regular basis and their adult children has really, you know,
shaped my worldview tremendously.
I originally got into working with older adults because I
watched my mom be a caregiver for her mom for almost a decade,
right? And that's kind of what, and I
lived right next door to my grandparents growing up, who I
adored. I think most people who get into
working with older adults had a set of grandparents that they
loved and which I always find so interesting because we have all
these negative stereotypes about older people, but we adore our
grandparents, right? It's like somehow all of that
doesn't apply to them. But that relationship and then
watching my mom become a caregiver really shaped I'm, you
know, my interests and then, you know, starting this business and
kind of going down this path and then working with older adults
and their adult children. You know, again, I just see how
wrong our stereotypes are about who, who older adults are at
what age we become older adults and what that experience is life
is like. So I think that's those are the
the real keys for me. So if you could change one thing
about how society supports older adults, and again that the
definition of older adults is pretty broad, what would that
be? The one thing I would change is
our perspective. Older adults are adults.
They are human beings with complex lives and emotions, and
they have the same rights and privileges that every adult has.
That does not go away as you get older.
Somehow we start to think of them as different or separate.
You know, if you, if you talk to anybody about the, the romantic
goings on in retirement communities, people are often
like, Oh, yeah, I mean, you should be happy.
You should be happy that people at all ages are continuing to
enjoy fulfilling romantic relationships because that means
when you get to that age, you also get to enjoy those things.
But somehow we want to other older people in a way that makes
them, that dehumanizes them in some way.
It it lessens them to say, Oh, no, you don't have the sometimes
people get upset and not want people to have romantic
relationships, right? You don't have the right to
those things or you shouldn't be doing that at your age.
And it's like, no, you're, they're adults.
Unless there is a cognitive impairment of some kind, which
is not inevitable at all. They're, they are adults and
they have rights and privileges that every adult has.
And that is really important for everyone to understand, not only
for the older adults that we have today, but for your future
self, right? You do not want to be belittled
or, umm, lessened just because you've gotten older.
You want all the same rights and privileges that you have right
now, whatever age you are. And if that's important, we have
to start changing that today. And just reminded me of a guest
that we interviewed last year. And I hope I have the right
name. I believe it's Patricia
Christafola, who writes kind of romance novels about older
adults. And it's really just, it was
really inspiring to kind of talk to her about the inspiration for
the novel and, you know, just writing about kind of romance in
these senior communities. It's a real thing, yeah.
I can imagine. And she talks about some of the
experience kind of she's had. It has led to that.
Yeah. You know, these older adults can
live pretty wild lives in the senior communities.
Yes they can. It's a lot like a college dorm,
it really is. Except the drugs are prescribed
by the physician, right? Indeed, yes.
So this is a question we ask of all our guests.
So you're not going to be able to escape it.
What are you doing personally to age well?
Working all the time on how I am thinking about my own aging
again, it's an inside job, catching myself going, you know,
if I think something negative going, wait, why do I think
that? Where did that come from?
Who says that's true? And you, you will catch
yourself. So I, I was in New York with my
husband a while back and I had a set of air pods that I was
trying to get to connect to my phone and they weren't
connecting. And I was getting frustrated and
he's like, what's wrong? And I was like, oh, I can't get
these air pods to connect. These are my old ones.
They're just old and cranky. And my husband looked at me and
goes, you know, that's ageist, right?
So you know, it, it is a struggle.
But I the thing I'm trying to do the most is be positive about
it. Look forward to it.
I'm like you. I, I don't know that I'll ever
retire. I like what I do.
I enjoy my work. I have no idea what I would do
with all that freak time in retirement.
That seems a little overwhelming and scary to me.
And so I I'm really looking forward to these next decades.
Like I'm excited about it. And I think that is a big factor
in how it's actually going to go.
See, my goal is that there's always more of a mediocre at
best athlete growing up, and my goal is to be an elite athlete
in my 80s. I love it.
Do you know about Ernestine? Oh, I can't think of Erstein's
last name, but she's 8 like 87 and she's a professional
bodybuilder. Oh yeah, I've seen seen her,
yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And she didn't start until she was in her 60s, so.
There's a few people like that and it's impressive.
So you you can do it. Go for it.
Not the bodybuilding piece and there's no way that I'll be able
to pull that off, but I'm thinking, you know,
weightlifting and some of that kind of stuff.
If you just maintain enough strength.
I think like the, the Max bench press for like a 90 year old is
like far less than I'm lifting right now.
And I have a bad shoulder. So that's all I got to do is
maintain. It's like for my students, it's
like it's not about improving our fitness as we age.
It's just simply maintaining a level of capacity as we age that
over time, because everybody else is declining at such a more
rapid rate, you start to excel more and more above your peers
without doing anything other than just maintaining.
Yeah, yeah. So what gives you the most hope
about the future of aging in America?
So I think there has been a real shift in the last, say, 5 to 10
years in how we are viewing older adults.
There's many, there's a lot more talk about ageism.
There's a lot more talk about positive aging.
I'm going to a conference here in the next week.
That is the whole theme is about ageism.
I mean, you, you never saw that previously.
And so I think there is a real shift, a real momentum in terms
of how we are thinking about older people, how we are talking
about them and, and a real sort of tidal wave of people trying
to change the message, right, like trying to change how we're
thinking about it overall. And that, that gives me a lot of
hope. So is there anything that we
missed talking about? Not that I know of.
I'm sure there's some stuff we missed, but so the book is out
right? The book is out, yes.
Where can people find the book? Where can they find out more
about you, your programs? Sure.
So my website iscorinnealmond.com so just my
name and there's a link to the book there that'll take you to
Amazon. You can also ask for it at any
bookstore. They they can order it for you.
It's probably not on the shelf bookstore, but if you ask them
to order it they can get it too. And what about your your
company? Oh, Choice Care Navigators.
We're in North Carolina, so we are local to North Carolina.
If you're in North Carolina, we'd be glad to help you.
If not, you can find care managers by going to
aginglifecare.org. They have a search feature where
you can find a care manager anywhere in the United States.
I just enjoyed this conversation.
I really appreciate your time today.
Just kind of keep doing what you're doing and keep aging
well. I'm going to do my best.
You too. Thank you for listening.
I hope you benefited from today's podcast and until next
time, keep aging well.