Report: Building a house as retirement provision? No way!

Oh, I do mean that seriously. I have some good examples in my family. A grandmother, fit well into her 80s, she did sports. A great-grandmother-in-law, no sports, she started using a walker just after turning 70. Yes, sports (not just movement! that is often confused) does not protect against everything, for example, not necessarily against a stroke, but if you look at people over 60, it’s not the stroke, but simply the laziness that keeps them glued to the armchair in front of the TV. There may be exceptions, but I personally don’t know any. In the past, people didn’t go to nursing homes, they managed the farm until they dropped. This whole nursing care thing is a modern development. My mother is not even 70 and does not take a step she does not absolutely have to. You don’t need a degree in sports to know that this is no good for the muscles, and muscles protect and support the skeleton. And if you find the idea of hopping around at over 90 unlikely, please google Ernestine Shepherd, who is already over 80 and looks like a fit 30-year-old. I totally believe she can do that. You don’t have to overdo it, but do nothing and then wonder why you can no longer get up from the chair... but of course, that is just as unrelated as the diesel scandal and driving bans. Common sense tells you that.

Elina, you are not entirely wrong and not entirely right either. That is also a side issue. And I know cases where very fit elderly people fell into dementia and could run but no longer find their way home....

My impression is rather that those who mentally retire deteriorate. Maybe that is also related.

In the past, there were also care cases and bedridden elderly. Only the daughter/daughter-in-law was at home and "was allowed" to take care.

Age-related frailty does not happen overnight. Most of the time, it is a gradual process. The art is to respond early to this physical (and/or mental) decline. Unfortunately, in an estimated 95% of cases, the opposite happens and people keep convincing themselves until the very end that house, stairs, and garden will somehow manage until the Methuselah age. Expressed concerns from children and grandchildren are defiantly dismissed. The result after another 5-8 years of persisting or clinging on are insights that come far too late and completely worn-out homes that – and here the circle closes – can be sold for little more than the land value. Plus a lot of incomprehension as to why no one is willing to pay the demanded 190,000 euros for the 30-year-old oil heating system, the pretty green-brown bathrooms, and the simply glazed wooden windows with a four-digit postal code of the window manufacturer on the frame label.

watched the first 15 minutes and then switched off. What I took away from the documentary, vacancy in the villages. When young people see that, they build overpriced in the city. The old people live in their houses and wonder that they are only worth 15k but don't really want to sell. No one takes a loss. If I were to choose the village, there would be plenty of cheap houses for every budget.

Simply brilliantly phrased, Jean-Marc!!