Our Guest: Sara Geber, PhD
About This Episode
Roughly one in three of America’s estimated 77 million Baby Boomers are dealing with solo aging. The most vulnerable – one in five — have no children to help them. And while those with kids know that they’ll rise to the occasion when called, no one wants to feel disadvantaged. Nationally recognized solo aging authority Dr. Sara Geber, author of The Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers, knows firsthand the value of planning ahead for an aging loved one’s needs as well as her own. If we’re prepared for the future, we’ll enjoy the present that much better.
5 Things You’ll Learn
- People age alone for many reasons other than not having had children
- Recognizing, planning for, and meeting the challenges that accompany aging
- The importance of assessing facilities in your area before you need help
- Taking healthy proactive steps vs. managing a crisis
- However unpleasant the idea, working things out now is a parent’s greatest gift
Transcript
Announcer:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Love, Longevity. With 80 million Baby Boomers coming into retirement, we need to change the paradigm as to how seniors and their families view and plan for aging and longevity issues. Here at the LTLA, we are your partner for aging options. To learn more about the Long Term Living Association and how we can help you, please visit us at longtermliving.org.
Michael:
Okay, welcome, everybody. We are very excited once again to have an esteemed authority in a very particular subject matter that is gaining more and more momentum, and attention, and need in this country when it comes to aging and longevity. It really deals with the solo ager. There’s many different ways folks can become a solo ager that our guest speaker, Dr. Sara Geber, is going to introduce to us after I introduce her.
The topic is, it’s very important, but it’s also growing. The needs for the single population are different as they go into the second half of their life. We are so excited to have our guest on the call with us today. Maybe before I go any further just to make sure we have a good connection here, can you let me know, Sara, that you can hear me and I can hear you?
Sara:
I can hear you just fine, Michael!
Michael:
Perfect; we had explored folks that were doing great work in this specific arena of solo aging across the country and landed on Sara awhile back. We asked her if she’d be willing to come onto our podcast, the Love, Longevity podcast, and share with our listeners really her depth of knowledge, and her insight, and her acumen through experience on this such important topic. I’m going to give you a little background to introduce Dr. Sara Geber to everybody on the call here.
She’s a nationally recognized authority, an expert in the area of life planning and retirement transition. She’s a certified retirement coach. She’s an author. She’s a very sought-after speaker. She’s authored in 2018 her most recent book, The Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers. In addition to that, she’s been a regular contributor to Forbes.com on subjects of aging and retirement. She’s been quoted extensively in the USA Today, in the Huffington Post, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications about a variety of retirement and aging issues.
Last year I know for a fact was a very busy year for Sara. In addition to the April publication of her book, in September, she was named the Influencer in Aging by PBS’s Next Avenue editors, which is a wonderful accreditation and really recognition for her as a subject matter expert. In November, right on the heels of that award, she was also selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best 2018 books on how to age well which is a great feather in the cap, too.
Today, Sara’s going to be talking to us about the ways that solo agers can live a satisfying and connected life really by creating that community, and safety, and family like bonds for their later years. Without further ado, and I’m so excited for this call, please help us to welcome Dr. Sara Geber here. Maybe if you could just introduce yourself and give us a little background about you and how you got into this area of expertise?
Sara:
Sure, thanks, Michael. I started looking at solo aging about 10 years ago when I was doing a lot of retirement coaching and talking to people who were spending a tremendous amount of time taking care of their aging parents. These are people in their 50s and 60s that had parents that were in their 80s and 90s. They were spending time, money, resources, running back and forth across the country in some cases. In one case that I know of, a friend of mine actually had to take a leave of absence from her job in order to take care of her aging mother who was alone.
At one point, I asked myself, who is going to do that for us because my husband and I do not have children? Now, we have each other, but I realized that people who do not have children whether they’re married or single face a very unknown future without that safety net of adult children. Initially, my definition of a solo ager was anyone who doesn’t have children. Then I realized too that there were a tremendous number of people who were aging alone for other reasons. Those reasons ranged from children living far away, being – on their personal level, being divorced or widowed, and just not having family nearby to pick up the slack if they needed help at some point.
Now, I got interested in the entire issue of aging when about 15 years ago, I was in the midst of my midlife career of organizational behavior and leadership development. I was doing a lot of coaching of executives and high-level leaders in various organizations. At some point during their late 50s or early 60s, a lot of these leaders were starting to talk to me more about their personal plans for the future than their strategic plans for their company. I realized something was shifting with the Baby-Boomers.
Both of those things collided. I was interested in the people who were aging alone and I was interested in retirement in general. It got me launched into a whole new field, my own retirement field if you will because I left my career of about 25 years in organizational behavior and shifted to retirement coaching and focusing on aging and retirement for Baby-Boomers.
Michael:
For you, it was personal given the fact that you were looking at how you’re going to age healthily, and properly, and age well for you and your husband because you didn’t have children. Then you realized that the topic expanded even beyond that, but that there were some unique issues that were involved with people who either don’t have children or folks who are on their own, single, solo.
Sara:
Yeah, and people can be on their own for so many reasons today. A number of people have kids that have migrated across country and in many cases even to other countries. In addition to that, there are people whose children are not as functional as they might have hoped or they’re estranged for some reason. There are so many reasons today why people are really facing a fairly daunting future of aging entirely on their own. Even if they are married like I am, my husband and I, neither one of us have a crystal ball. We don’t know who between us is going to predecease the other, so we both are planning to be solo agers so that we’re not caught off guard at some point later in our lives.
Michael:
You’re right. There’s the ones that have never been married, ones that have been married and divorced, folks that are widows or widowers. Then within those groups, you have some that have children and some that don’t. The reason I really wanted to have you on this because we’re going to get into some of the meat here and some of the real power of information that you have to pass on about some of the issues that these groups deal with that are unique.
I remember doing a lot of workshops over in our world, in my business, too. A lot of folks would say there are so many examples for married couples. You should have some examples in there for some single people. It didn’t occur to me as much up front. That’s why when I came across your work a while back, I said, wow, that’s really a growing area of need. What would you say, how would you define a solo ager? Is there a definition for it or is there categories? Or how do you define it?
Sara:
Yes; again, I originally defined it as anyone who doesn’t have children. I still include that as the Number One criterian for being a solo ager. If you don’t have kids, you’re a solo ager. Now, a lot of people who don’t have kids do have close siblings with kids of their own, so they have nieces and nephews that they can rely on. There’s varying levels of being a solo ager as someone who is childfree. In addition to that, there are people who are aging alone for other reasons. I just use that as a broad catch-all. If you feel like you’re going to be aging alone for one reason or another, then you probably consider yourself a solo ager and can benefit by the things that I have to say in the book and that I talk about in my presentations and workshops.
Michael:
How big of an issue – I know you’ve got a lot of data because you speak extensively on the topic. How prevalent is the issue of solo aging in the United States?
Sara:
It’s more prevalent than most people realize. When I first looked at the statistics on the childfree, I realized that in the Baby-Boom demographic – which is the one that I’m focusing on mainly because those are the elders of the future. The eldest Baby-Boomer is now 73. We’re looking right down the tube of aging ourselves. In the Baby-Boom population, almost 20% of women do not have children. That’s a pretty shocking statistic. It’s actually 19.4%. That comes right off of the census and a study that was done by Pew Research back in 2010.
When you look around, and you see a Baby-Boomer, you can say to yourself, well, that person has a one in five chance of not having children. That’s pretty large in itself. Then when you add to that the population of people whose kids live far away, or whose kids are estranged, or not accessible to them for one reason or another, then you’re looking at an even much greater statistic. We’re now between 30-35% of the population of Boomers that are looking at solo aging.
Michael:
The Boomer number is around roughly around 80 million in total?
Sara:
Yeah, a little less than that. It’s like 77 million right now, but that’s very close. It’s big.
Michael:
The oldest one just turned 73. They were born between 19 – what ‘46 and 1964. Twenty percent, those are people who don’t have any children, never mind the estranged or the ones that geographically have moved away. Is that right?
Sara:
Correct, 19.4%.
Michael:
Of 77 million. That’s 15 million people in America.
Sara:
Yes, it is.
Michael:
It’s even higher if you added in the ones that there is no relationship or they’re separated. Yeah, when you say one in five, that breaks down to a pretty simplified number for folks to wrap their head around.
Sara:
Yeah, and that’s certainly on the low side because that’s just the people who don’t have children. Now, as I mentioned, some people that don’t have children have very close relationships with nieces and nephews and that counts. That definitely counts because if you have someone out there that can come to your aid if you need it, and help you organize homecare, or rehab, or whatever it is that you might need in the future, then you’re very fortunate. You’re among the solo agers that doesn’t have to worry quite as much about the future.
I find that just as many people who do have kids tell me that, gosh, they don’t want to be a burden on their kids or this, that, and the other thing. In the end, what I’ve seen in the 10 years that I’ve been involved in this work is when push comes to shove and an older parent needs help, the kids rise to the occasion, even those that live far away. My biggest concern really is for the people that do not have children.
Michael:
Okay, so it’s the child-free is the area that you’re referring to mainly.
Sara:
Mainly; and I do include in solo agers anyone else that believes they are really aging alone. That’s quite a sizable number of additional people out there. There’s a lot of people unfortunately that are estranged from their kids in one way or another. I teach them, too.
Michael:
What would you say that solo agers, what are some of the issues that they face that are unique or what should they do differently than those that have either close family around them? If you’re a widow or a widower, you’re thinking about planning and different things differently with or without children. If you’re married, you have a partner to converse with on those things, a confidant, especially about financial decisions. Nobody wants to be taken advantage of, or if there’s any scams or schemes out there, when somebody’s married, they have a confidant to really bounce those things off of each other.
Sara:
That’s right.
Michael:
What would you say – what are the things that solo agers face as issues as we dig a little deeper here?
Sara:
In a very real way, we all face the same issues of aging. We may lose the ability to drive. That will happen to most of us at some point if we live beyond the age of 85, say, and many people give up their cars somewhere when they’re in their 70s. That makes you less noble. It makes you less able to get around and take yourself on the errands that you need to do and whatnot. We all face that. We all face issues of the potential for declining physical abilities, declining mental capacity, so everyone needs to realize that aging comes with challenges.
One of the things that I notice is that Baby Boomers are very reluctant to talk about this, very reluctant to face the fact of their own aging. Now, those that have watched their parents age and have helped them meet many challenges of aging, they seem more accepting and more willing to talk about it because they know it’s in their future. No matter how good of care we take of ourselves and no matter how diligent we’ve been in keeping our weight in line with good height-weight ratio, how well we’ve done to keep our body in good shape in other ways, working out, getting exercise, eating right, no matter how good of job we’ve done with that, we still face the challenges of aging. We all know 95-year-olds that are doing exceptionally well still living in their 2 or 3-story homes and, in some cases, still driving, but that’s the exception. It’s not the norm. Most of us – In fact, the statistics say that 70% of us after the age of 65 will face a time in our life when we will need some help with the activities of daily living, which means that we might be rehabbing after a hip replacement, or a knee replacement, or a shoulder replacement. We will need some help. We’ll need to either get that help at home or move temporarily into a rehab facility.
The thing that I stress the most both for solo agers and anyone really is to think about how you want to handle those kinds of episodes when and if they happen. I encourage people to look around their own community to assess the availability of help. That may be understanding where the assisted living communities are in your area, where the rehab facilities are in your area. Some of them are much better than others, and the more you educate yourself and understand where those resources are, the better prepared you’ll be for the future. You know what? If you never need it, wonderful, but if you do, you’ll be ready and able to choose the right place for you to go either temporarily or for the rest of your life.
This is sometimes a very hard sell for Baby Boomers who most of whom, including myself, still think of ourselves as young and vibrant and able to do most of the things that we’ve done all our lives. Coming out of that denial is a very important part of meeting the challenges of growing older as a responsible human being. For solo agers, that means that they’re going to face the future on their own, initially possibly with a spouse, but once the spouse is gone and we don’t know which spouse is going to go first, none of us do, facing those challenges on our own, so preparing for them and understanding where the resources are and how to engage them is a very important part of preparation.
Michael:
Why do you think that – I mean, you have a PhD in counseling and organizational behavior and guidance counseling and so on, along with a B.A. in psychology. Why do you think that our society has always been and just continues to be more reactive than proactive?
Sara:
I’d be wealthy wouldn’t I if I had the answer to that?
Michael:
Right, I mean, but if everybody agrees – you ask in the seminar. Raise your hand if you think that you make better decisions before a crisis happens, and everybody raises their hand. You say, now, we would prefer to take – to manage a crisis or to be proactive. Everybody knows at some level that doing things prior to the catastrophe occurring is so much better for them. The decisions and the options, the world is their oyster in advance, but doors are shut off and closed or not even available at all in the midst of the midnight call, so to speak.
Sara:
Yes, it’s so well put, Michael, really. Managing in a crisis is very difficult for anyone. Very few of us do it well. I’ll give you an interesting story that set a great example for me. I often tell the story both when I’m coaching and when I’m doing workshops and giving talks. My father, when I was about 18 or 20, sat me down for the first time and talked to me about what to do when he died. Now, what 18-year-old wants to hear about the father they dearly love dying? I certainly didn’t want to hear it, and I pushed back ferociously.
I said, dad, I don’t want to hear about this. You’re not going to die. You’re only 52, or 3, or whatever he was at the time. I said I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. He persisted, and over the years, over the next 20 years, he sat me down several times and told me about changes that he had made to his investments, or his will, or whatever he had done and where the paperwork was. At that time, people had safe deposit boxes, and he showed me where that was and where the key was, and took me up to the cemetery where he had bought his plot and showed me exactly where it was. Oh, it was very hard for me. I suspect it was a little challenging for him to, but he persisted.
When he did die 20 years later – and I was only 38 at the time, but he did pass away when he was 75, which seems so young now. I knew exactly what to do. I knew who to call. I knew who his attorney was. I knew where his paperwork was. I knew exactly what mortuary to call. It was absolutely turnkey, and it was the greatest gift he could’ve given me. I didn’t have to manage in a crisis. It was all worked out ahead of time, and it’s just the best example I had for what you can do, what you can provide for your loved ones.
Whether you have kids or not, there is going to be somebody left in your wake; someone that is going to have to clean up whatever mess you’ve made or handle your affairs in some way. The easier you can make it for them the better. Now, that’s speaking in very strong and clinical terms. Nobody likes to think much about that, but my position is that we all need to. We all need to come out of our denial and realize that the future is going to come, and if we’re prepared for it, then we can relax and enjoy the present. I certainly don’t spend my entire life harping on and thinking about what’s going to happen in my future when and if I’m 80, or 85, or 90, or 100 because I’ve done all the planning for it, and people will know what to do. I try to drink my own Kool-Aid or eat my own dog food, as they say today, and stay as ahead of it as I can, and my husband does the same. Most of my close friends have gotten religion as well by listening to me now for years. It’s important, I think, to face that with a realistic outlook.
Michael:
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we could spend hours and hours talking about the topics and the details. I think that one of the things that you’ve written and you’ve really compacted and consolidated all these things in more detail in your book, it’s called Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers: A Retirement and Aging Roadmap for Single and Childless Adults. What I’d like to do is I’d like to offer that complimentary from the Long Term Living Association, the LTLA, through our Love, Longevity podcast to the first 15 callers. We’ll offer your book to those that call in. The number you can call in to get a copy of that free book is 1-800-868-1193. That’s 1-800-868-1193. I think you go into much more detail from what I’ve seen and read in the book with regards to the specifics on each of these topics and tutorials and some roadmaps for them.
Sara:
Yes, there’s a lot of worksheets, checklists, tremendous numbers of resources. The resources are somewhat generic because it varies greatly from state to state who and where your resources are, but every county in the country, or parish, or whatever the designation is in your state has a Council on Aging. These offices often have the best information for what’s available in your area, where the senior care agencies are, where the assisted living homes are, where the memory care units are. I mean, you name it. They will know about it so great information from those folks. Senior centers in most every reasonable size town in the country are also tremendous resources, and yes, I go into a lot of different specifics in the book. There’s also a lot of stories and anecdotes of people who have planned well, and some stories of people who haven’t planned so well and what has happened as a result and what – how they have had to correct it.
Michael:
People can get more information about you and your work and some videos and tutorials if they visit your website. Do you want to share your contact information, your website and let people know where they…
Sara:
Sure, I actually have a couple of websites. If you’re interested in the book or in my talk, then go to sarafzeffgeber.com, and if you’re interested in just a wide variety of topics on aging and preparing for aging, you can also go to my lifeencore.com website. Encore is E-N-C-O-R-E. It’s lifeencore.com or sarazeffgeber.com.
Michael:
Sara with no H, right?
Sara:
No H on Sara.
Michael:
Z-E-F-F-G-E-B-E-R, wonderful. I know that there is, again, so much more on this topic, but at the end of the day, solo agers, those that either have children or those that are by themselves really need to start being even more proactive and find a trusted resource. Hopefully, here at the LTLA, we can be that for folks as their trusting partner in aging options, but Sara, we are really so thankful for your time. You told me one of your favorite quotes was “To have a friend, you must be a friend,” and you are a friend to the aging and longevity world out there. You’ve got a friend in us over here at the LTLA, and I’m sure many, many friends of people that you’re influencing and impacting just by way of being proactive and educating them. We’re really, really blessed and thankful to have had you on this call, and hopefully, our readers – our listeners will grab one, two, three little nuggets, and/or if they want a copy of your book, again, they can call in to 1-800-868-1193. They can request a copy of your book that we’ll send to them for free.
Thank you so much, Sara. Have a great rest of your day. We’ll talk to you soon.
Sara:
Thank you, Michael. It was a pleasure.
Michael:
Likewise.
