It's Your Move: Choices for Senior Living

The lists in this book will help you choose between staying at home, moving in with your children, or moving to a retirement facility. It guides you through the process letting you compare benefits and costs of each choice. It provides a wealth of information to ensure you make the right decision for your situation.

Its Your Move is a workbook for those who are contemplating where they want to live for the rest of their lives.. Most books on the market describe your choices, but they do not provide an easy way to compare your choices. This book is an adjunct to those books since it is a workbook with lists that one can use to help make the process of choosing where to live more objective. Children of Baby Boomers may suddenly need to find a place for their parents. They may not be aware of the choices available, let alone the resources available to help them choose the best place - not the cheapest, or most expensive, but the one that will make their parents the most comfortable, with the best care, and thus, the most happy. Many people base their choice for senior living based on the lowest price, or a location near their children. Many don't know that there are month-to-month retirement communities instead of the expensive ones with a large up front fee. There are many books describing retirement finances and retirement communities. In other books the authors describe their personal experiences while living in a retirement community, or when choosing one for their parents. These do not consider the “nitty gritty” for such things as “Does this facility have cable TV?” This workbook contains 33 tables which list the items you need to consider when choosing how and where you will live until the end of your life. There are lists of items to consider if you want to stay in your own home as well as items you need to evaluate if you think you'll move to a retirement community. There is no “right” choice for everyone, each of us is an individual so although staying at home might be right for person A, it might be the wrong choice for person B. The information and lists of questions in this book will guide you through all of the choices available to you as well as the decisions you must make for those choices. No choice will be perfect, but using the lists in this workbook will help you ask the right questions and make the best possible informed decision. Many seniors don't realize that without a life care option, if they run out of money they may be forced to find alternative housing (often for destitute people). No matter how much money you have, the world, your health and your investments can all change.

Gail Lawley spent 30 years as a computer analyst defining requirements. Her attention to detail and the ability to clearly define extensive requirements contributed to her success in choosing and installing software for companies such as TRW, Western Digital, etc. She used her analytic talents to make lists to help relatives and friends decide where they wanted to live during their senior years. These lists were so successful that friends borrowed them, added to them and encouraged her to publish them.