Awareness Part 1

My best friend Chuck is a few days my junior but his family is much older than mine. His Mother and Father passed away over ten years ago. Chuck had barely hit his 40’s when he was confronted with the long term care needs of his parents. He and his older siblings struggled together with varying degrees of success and involvement to put together a plan of care. I was not around much at the time and I had no appreciation what a monumental task it was for Chuck. It was tough on him physically, tough on his relations with his siblings and emotionally draining.

Part of the ideal of NQnext is to create a community, a place for discussion and interaction about the challenges facing our generation, a place to discuss how we will provide for ourselves in those later years. I am sure Chuck could have used a community at the time for support but few of his peers were faced with parents as old as Chuck’s.

There is a whole new community growing and it is a large one. Americans between the ages of 55 and 70 will live longer than any other generation and those last few years could be very tough for the entire family. Just because this group will live longer does not mean it will end better. There will still need to be adequate care, adequate money and adequate emotional support.

In Awareness Part 2 we will look at several other examples given to me from colleagues about their parents. What we will see is how unpredictable our later years can be and maybe look into some possible ways to soften the blow.

The Fall season is in full swing. Seattle has a good storm going on right now. The fans are watching a lot of football and baseball playoffs. There will be many commercials from insurance companies. Will the message from those companies really speak to those in need of the financial security hit their mark? I don’t think so. What will hit the mark is a sharing between members of a community. NQnext exists to be that community so we can learn from each other through our stories about our parents, ourselves and our children.

You can also engage on twitter – www.twitter.com/NQnext

Doug Marshall