I fear that I only will be imaging them. Wonder if I can bribe my kids? Or some ladies? Or guys? I’m not picky, just someone kind, smart and funny would be preferable. Fertile or willing to adopt. 
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Well, we have DIL we all love—fingers crossed!
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I haven’t made my “nut,” but I have gone “nuts” trying.
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I already started a thread for that!
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Yeah, it bums me out every time I even read the title of your thread, so I haven’t been able to look at it. 
Maybe one day after a couple of glasses of wine, I’ll be able to read through it. But if one of our kids ever gets a significant other, we will have made it!
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I feel the same, but our ds does have plenty of time. He’s relatively young by today’s standards for coupling up. The issue is we were older when we had him.
How old are your kids?
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We dropped the term insurance when D2 graduated from high school. We were 60. I dropped my disability insurance at 65. By then, we had enough for at least 10 years each in a skilled nursing facility, and decided we had made it.
Not meant specifically for you @Hoggirl .
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One of my sisters is single. 2 nephews and 4 nieces are single. The nieces and nephews are between 30-50 years old.
My D is in her mid 20’s and is indifferent to dating or getting married. She has witnessed most of her cousins being single, self sufficient and content with their single lives. She said she is not concerned about being single.
My “have made it” won’t involve my only child being married (never mind having her own children). While I would love to see her finding a great life partner like I do, I have no control over it. My D having a good job she likes and being happy is all I could ask for.
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Ah, they are 29 and 33. Seems like plenty of time, but if they aren’t even interested and looking, I don’t see how it will happen.
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Sometimes things happen when folks least expect it. H was in his 40s when we married. My sister was in her late 30s. Neither was previously married.
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Wow! I am moving my mom to a skilled nursing facility in a few weeks. It’s $15,000/month – coincidentally the cheapest one around (as well as being the best). The others cost $18,000/month and $23,000/month. I am impressed that you can pay for 10 years at $30,000/month!
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We’re in the Midwest, a little less expensive, but yes we have enough. We inherited some money from our parents, our investments have done well. We live below our means, not drawing SS or from IRAs, H still working.
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Skilled nursing facilities are crazy expensive and don’t offer 24/7 care around here unless you pay extra for 24/7 aides. We had SNF for my mom. We visited very very often to help her get the care we wanted for her. She was unable to press a button for help—no concept of pressing a button for anything, tho it was demonstrated and explained multiple times.
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These prices scare the heck out of me!
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Well, I’m not sure if we have made it, but we are both retired (me at 59, DH just as he turned 62.) We were very frugal when the kids were young, and worked fairly low-paying jobs in education and civil service, and both our children had graduated from college, debt-free, before we turned 50. Only after that, could we really start to save for retirement. We feel very lucky that we have been healthy, and that we now have the time to help both of our children with their children.
In the last 4 months, we all moved from cities in Texas to the same small town in the Northeast. The grandkids are in part time daycare, and we babysit them the rest of the time. (And, YAY, DD, her spouse, DS, his spouse all have jobs or job offers as of yesterday, so everything is working out for this big move!)
We have nowhere near the funds most people on this forum have, but we get steady pensions checks, and we have “rice and beans” tastes. We’re about to build a family compound for DD, her family and us, with a larger house and a smaller house, and DS will do the same for his family and his spouse’s parents. We will not need a mortgage for our share of the property, have no debts, and have steady pensions, and starting next month, my social security check. We’ll wait on DH’s SS until he turns 70.
Long term care is not something we will be able to fund for long, so hopefully we won’t need it!!!
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I think just having that family compound indicates you’ve made it! What a lovely and wonderful living situation. I has a friend in South America whose parents did something similar with their 3 daughters for awhile. The big house where the parents lived, then 3 small apartment on each side of the center courtyard. They were about 1100-1200 square feet each. The daughters lived with their young families, or just alone if single. What a wonderful arrangement while it lasted.
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Anxious mom - that family compound sounds amazing!
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mid-50s here - and NO we’ve not made it. yet. enjoying all of these responses though.
two still in college; house mortgage. kid with big loans from grad school. I keep encouraging my H to stay with a job he’s sick of - so we can have a few years after college costs where we can save! (he does have a guaranteed pension; so that is nice).
We do have an actuary, an architect and two budding engineers; our kids are doing fine and will be self-supporting; we are almost to the Made-it side on that front.
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I find the comments about the psychological aspects interesting. I can’t imagine giving up my job (self-employed consultant) that is very flexible and endlessly fascinating. Most people I know who do this seem to continue until they can’t any more, and just gradually reduce the number of hours they work - one friend finally stopped work completely at age 80, another died at 90ish having completed his last book 2 years ago. I don’t know what I’d do with myself, and I already have the flexibility to take multiple weeks off to go see the eclipse or hike a long distance trail.
But then I socialize with lots of people in their mid 50s who are happy (in some cases desperate) to retire as soon as they can, several have already done so and even my younger brother (early 50s) is planning to retire this year. Even within my industry I see people retiring and completely walking away from bigger companies at 60, instead of staying engaged (eg they could take a board position a few days a month) and I’m not sure what they’ll do after the excitement of travel has worn off.
So I guess one question is how people decide what to fill their time with, and whether they deliberately pick something they can do into their 70s and 80s? So far, a bunch of the choices I’ve seen from people we know (pickleball, travel) seem to be more of a short to medium term answer. None of them appear to be something I could continue for as long as I could continue consulting part-time.
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I just do what I feel like doing. I retired right before Covid, so I ramped up slowly. I had the flexibility to spend lots of time with the in laws through a very difficult couple years in their life, I watch my GD once or twice a week, we travel to visit my MIL every couple months, I exercise a lot (which I really enjoy), I read, I watch tv, we go to weekly comedy shows, I organize my stuff from time to time, I volunteer here & there. I have submitted my resume to a group that is deploying financial aid professionals for part time remote work assisting schools during this difficult period. I will probably volunteer more as time goes on, but after a lifetime of taking on everything I am asked to take on, I am still learning to set my boundaries. All in all, I am happy. I am sure that I will continue to find new things to keep me busy and happy. My good friends love their active living communities in Florida, but that holds absolutely no appeal for me. To each their own.
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