If you’ve opened this book, then you’re thinking about how best to navigate this next stage of life, whether for yourself or for a relative. (For simplicity, I’ll refer to “you.”) Here, you find a road map to move forward, step by step.

Turn back, for a moment, to the cover of this book. What I want you to notice is the illustration: a person at the middle of a constellation of people, activities, and services. The icons suggest a full and satisfying life — family, of course, as well as social connections, healthcare and healthy living, community involvement, and resources. The goal of this book is to help you put everything in place now for the best possible future, both for the person at the center and those who care about, and may care for, that person.

Because you’ve picked up or downloaded this book, you probably already know that you have questions. What you may not know is the broad scope of decisions, services, and choices that may arise. In my many years in the fields of health policy, aging, and family caregiving, I have seen that people often start with a specific question about topics such as buying long-term care insurance or choosing an independent- or assisted-living facility and soon find that they need to explore many other avenues as they pursue their goals of good health, independence, choice, and quality of life.

Times have changed, and there are many more options than there were decades ago, so keep an open mind. Learning about these options can be challenging, but finding the answers you need and creating a comprehensive and workable plan that fits your needs are well worth the effort. Like any other major decision in life, planning requires weighing risks and benefits, being flexible, and staying open to change. It can be unsettling. Some of your assumptions and preconceptions may be challenged. Even though I have many years of experience in this field, writing this book has given me new insights into the difficulties that individuals and families face in planning. I have new respect for their diligence and devotion.

About This Book

I wrote this book to offer the broadest possible view as well as to provide information about specific topics. You’ll find out about

• Modifications you can make to your home so you can stay independent and live at home as you age
• Downsizing your current home or planned move
• Options for housing such as independent and assisted living or specially created communities
• Multigenerational living
• Personal care and homemaker services
• Transportation and other community services
• Medical care, which may be primary care, preventive care, hospitalization, or rehabilitation services
• Financial issues and tips for managing money
• Advance directives so your wishes concerning healthcare are known
• Wills and estates

Throughout this book, I present you with a range of options to consider, always with the caveat that no one solution works for everyone. You may, for instance, need to make modest adjustments to your home, or you may need to move to an assisted-living community. I also include your family, partner, neighbors, and friends — and the community in which you live — as crucial factors in decision making. Remember too that the emotional aspects of a plan are often underestimated but can determine its success or failure.

I’ve read and contributed to many books that tackle one subject at a time. They are valuable resources but don’t cover the wide landscape. This book is a blend of what I’ve learned from all these approaches, but it presents the big picture and then zeroes in on the practical, hands-on information that is often difficult to find in one place.

You, the reader, decide how to use this book. It is organized so that you can easily find the topics you want to know more about and skip the ones that don’t apply to your situation. There are many ways to get to various chapters and parts of chapters. You don’t need to read the chapters in order, although I would recommend at least skimming the chapters in Part 1 for an orientation to the book’s broad perspective. Of course, you can always come back to these chapters after you have reviewed the areas you want to concentrate on.

Many chapters have separate sections called sidebars, which are brief digressions into history, public policy, little-known facts, or other kinds of information that are not essential to the text but add to its depth. You can safely ignore them, but I hope you at least dip into a few.

Every chapter has web links to other resources to help you get more specific information about a particular topic, find information about your state’s regulations, or delve deeper. You may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending that the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

This book is meant to serve as a reference, so you don’t have to commit any information to memory. It’s all there, waiting to be read and re-read.

Additionally, two other For Dummies books from AARP — Social Security For Dummies (by Jonathan Peterson, published by Wiley) and Medicare For Dummies (by Patricia Barry, published by Wiley) — are helpful adjuncts to this book and offer more detail about those two important public programs.

Foolish Assumptions

This book makes a few assumptions about you, the reader:

• You probably don’t know a whole lot about various aspects of housing, finances, legal directives, and medical coverage you’ll want or need to consider as you age. And even if you have some professional or personal background in the field, you can benefit from new information and different perspectives.
• You may be starting to plan, or already planning, for yourself or your spouse or partner. You probably have some time to plan before the need arises — but don’t underestimate how long it may take.
• You may be starting to plan, or already planning, for an older person such as a parent. The time for planning in this situation may be short; it may follow a health crisis. You need help now. But don’t make quick decisions that will be hard to reverse.
• You may be comfortable using the Internet to find additional resources.
• You are worried about making the best choices and how to pay for them. Rest easy: You are not alone.

Beyond the Book

As they say, “But wait! There’s more!” Online you’ll find extras that come with the book. For Dummies Cheat Sheets are handy online reference tools that you can use over and over — for example, a list of questions to ask when you visit an assisted-living facility or some easy fixes you can make to your home to prevent falls. To get the Cheat Sheet for this book, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Navigating Your Later Years For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

With all the flexibility inherent in the For Dummies format, where should you start? If you know that you want information about a specific topic (for example, reverse mortgages or advance directives), by all means use the table of contents and index to find those sections. If you’re still getting your head around the idea of making long-range plans, pick a chapter that interests you and dig in. You don’t even have to start at the beginning of that chapter. But remember what Maria in The Sound of Music told her young pupils: The beginning is a very good place to start.