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Planning for Future Aging

Thank you to everyone who participated in our research study on planning for aging! A summary of the results has been sent out, and is available below.

Highlights from the summary include:

Based on responses from 385 people in Calgary and the surrounding area, this is the summary of how people are planning for aging:

Plan

%

I have a will or estate plan

81

I have looked into my eligibility for government financial assistance

78

I have a living will, or personal directive

62

I have named a power of attorney or substitute decision-maker

59

I have talked to my family about my end-of-life care preferences

51

I have set aside money for age-related expenses, such as home care

50

I have looked for information on aging issues and ongoing living assistance

45

I have downsized my residence

42

I have discussed my care preferences (such as long-term care) with my family

29

I have made home modifications to make my house easier to live in as I age

22

I have moved or made plans to move to a community or residence for older adults

17

What does this mean?

  • Most people have made a will, and looked into financial assistance
  • Some people have made personal directives or named a substitute decision maker if they can no longer make decisions for themselves
  • About half of people have talked to their families about end-of-life decisions and set aside money for age-related needs
  • Few people have looked for information on aging and ongoing living assistance or downsized
  • Not very many people have talked about care preferences with family, made home modifications, or plan to move to a community for older adults

More planning behaviour was related to certain factors such as:

  • Planning in the past
  • Considering autonomy, or independence, as important
  • Feeling that you might have less control over the future

Some people were also selected to be interviewed about how they viewed planning, and some of the reasons people mentioned for not talking about planning or planning for the future included:

  • I’m healthy right now
  • I live one day at a time
  • I don’t have the money to plan
  • It’s a negative topic and people don’t want to discuss it, so I don’t bring it up

It can be hard to look so far into the future, but planning has been shown to relate to higher quality of life and lower levels of stress in research studies.

  • Many people said they wanted to talk to friends and family about planning, but didn’t know if they could bring it up. This means people in your life might want to discuss planning too!

If you are interested in learning more about planning for the future, here are some online resources that have information on how to get started: 

http://www.advancecareplanning.ca

https://www.myspeakupplan.ca/how-to-use-this-workbook/

https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/corporate/seniors/forum/aging-checklist.html

Thank you once again for generously donating your time, this study could not have been completed without your participation!

If you have any questions or want to know more information, please feel free to contact us!