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

A grandma, fit well beyond 80, she did sports. A grandmother-in-law, no sports, she started using a walker at just over 70.

And if you think jumping around at over 90 is unlikely, please google Ernestine Shepherd, she is already over 80 and looks like a fit 30-year-old

Unfortunately, such statements do not work based on individual examples... If someone has had such experiences, fine – on the other hand, I know great athletic people from my father's generation (1953) who basically dropped dead from the soccer field at around 60 years old... What does that prove? Only that a statistic is needed for such statements, and that cannot be derived from 5 or 10 or 200 cases in one's circle of acquaintances... The trend is certainly right, “exercise is good,” but please don't argue in this esoteric way.

Unfortunately, such statements do not work based on individual examples... If someone has had such experiences, fine - on the other hand, I know great sporty people from my father's generation (1953) who practically went straight from the football field into the grave at around 60 years old... What does this prove now? Only that a statistic is needed for such statements, and this cannot be derived from 5 or 10 or 200 cases in the circle of acquaintances... The trend is certainly right, "exercise is good," but please don't argue in this esoteric way.

As an educated person, the biologist should actually know that samples have to be sufficiently large to make statements regarding the population.
Apparently, she slept through statistics.

No, she does a lot of sports, feels good doing it, and dreams of being able to run away from aging. However: Jan Klapperbeen catches up with them all. I don’t find Jean Marc’s text good. Not because everything is wrong, but because he speaks from a high horse. Until summer 2018, Mrs. K lived here in the wider neighborhood. She was almost 90. She lived in a 1950s house built to 1950s standards, except that the oil stoves were replaced by a ZHZ at some point. Mrs. K and her husband were never rich. Both had fled from Danzig, he was a small-scale fisherman, she was a cashier in a supermarket. He had been dead for a long time, she a widow for very long. She had a small pension and repaid the house to the settlement cooperative stubbornly until beyond the age of 70 with 30.00 euros per month. There was neither capital for investments nor a greater need with her; the only son lives 100 km away, and she simply wanted to grow old and die in the familiar environment. All okay. That was how it succeeded. The son is neither angry nor disappointed about the meager inheritance. He expected nothing else given his background. And yet—no one here is disappointed and no one did anything wrong. By the way, he now uses his mother’s house as a holiday home for himself. K.

That it is so much more affordable in the village than in the city is of course nonsense. It depends entirely on the location and what one categorizes as a village. And in the vicinity of the city, the prices of the villages have now become so high that only very few can afford a house.

The city is actually not affordable for normal people. Only for millionaires.

I can understand both viewpoints.

Just as a thought-provoking idea: I work in the social welfare office - asylum + SGB XII. In basic security for the elderly, at least here, a clear trend can be observed: decreasing in frequency

1. divorced women (tenants)
2. late resettlers / foreigners (tenants)
3. divorced men (tenants)
4. single men / women (tenants)
5. married couples (tenants)
6. homeowners

In numbers - out of about 80 tenants dependent on basic security, there is one homeowner.

Currently, paying rent is definitely one of the main reasons for dependence on social assistance.

I would rather say the other way around, that "divorced woman" [unfortunately] is the cause of rent and basic security ...