A Place For Me

As a follow on to my piece Boomer Roomers a friend asked me to do an executive summary of what such a project would be about. What follows is a lightly-edited version of that summary. If anyone is interested in working with me on this project, just drop me a line. I’ll be working on the business plan.

A friend and I have been talking about the problems of aging and long term care. I just turned 60. I am still in great health, still working. I am fortunate

But you know what my biggest problem is right now? Making new friends. Finding people who share my interests and outlook. That’s what makes the difference between a long, fulfilling retirement and a short, painful one.

This brings up a story I like to tell. What’s the best thing that can happen? What’s the worst thing that can happen?

For my parents, the worst thing that could happen is my dad (right) won the lottery. He won $189,000 when he was about 65, about when this picture was taken.

Dad only had friendships at work, at his lock shop, so my brother came in and got to “invest” the money in various schemes aimed at growing the business (about which he knew nothing). The money disappeared. My dad had to close the place. He felt guilty. He had no friends. He lost interest in life. He died shortly after.

The best thing that could happen to my mom is she went blind, age 55. (Here she is a few years later, with Fred, me, and her new daughter-in-law. You will meet the two younger folks further along in this piece.)

She lost 99 44/100ths of her vision to retina detachments. The first one went so fast they couldn’t do anything. On the second, the scar tissue never fell away. She could only see a very little bit, through a lens held close to her eye.

So she joined Braille. And you know what she found? Friends. Old friends and young friends. She found people she could take the bus to and visit, people she could talk with and help because she was the “sighted one.” There were people she could travel to Laughlin with and gamble with on a weekend.

It’s because of that, I believe, that she’s still alive. She’s 91.

What is the difference between these two stories? Friendship. Relationships, real ones, the kind we baby boomers have so much trouble with. My dad had no way of making new friends when the money ran out. My mom did. He died. She lived.

This happens all the time. People “retire,” get tired of it, and wind up working at Home Depot. Other people die as soon as they retire. Worse, as health declines, there’s no way for us to connect with the vast home health, assisted living, nursing home network that exists, and is growing. You get thrown into a situation by others. You’re lost.

What if there were a site, and a service, that could help retirees make these connections? A cross among AirBnB, Match.Com and social work. Something that would make aging in place something desirable.

How would it work?

A retiree walks into the office for their final retirement interview. Instead of being given a gold watch and a handshake, they’re given an appointment. With a service. And a web address. With a form.

The form can take all their social connections. The exit interview emphasizes the value of honesty – this is a service for you, free for a year, or five years.

So you do what they say. Here’s my Facebook page. Here’s my LinkedIn Page. Here’s my Twitter feed. Boomers have these things. Our parents didn’t. It saves time. There would also be a questionnaire, created by trained social workers. What do you like to do? What are you passionate about? What would you like to be doing for the next five years, or 10? What do you see as your perfect day? Are you close to your family? How is your health? What’s going wrong? Where do you stand politically? What issues are important to you?

Now, a few days or a week after retirement, the retiree gets an e-mail, then a phone call. From the site. From a social worker. That worker has been over their questionnaire, and has matched it with those of other users in the area.

The retiree meets the social worker for coffee. Or tea. Or wine. Client’s choice. At their home. Or someplace else. Wherever they’re most comfortable. This is a service they’re paying for, that’s already paid for. We’ll have some fun.

The social worker has the site and the questionnaire on a tablet. They go over it with the client. You like books? You like golf? You want to travel? Here are some people near you who share that passion. Here are some new friends you might make. Here are their e-mail addresses, their phone numbers. They’re waiting for you to call. I’ve let them know you’ll be in touch. Or they can contact you. No obligation. Then the social worker follows up, offering more names as necessary, so the client’s retirement gets off to the right start.

That means getting the retiree back into life. Match a new retiree’s passions and interests with those of others, near them. People their own age, with whom they can become friends. These are things past generations relied on churches and social clubs like the VFW for in the past. Our generation doesn’t have them. Many of us lost our religion, and shared religion isn’t always a close link. Shared sacrifice is, but maybe your politics are unusual, or your social attitudes.

The site would do more than this to bring its clients together, of course. It would organize Meetups, in coffee shops or bars, around neighborhoods, around interests. When you get interest you get a bunch of tickets to concerts, or ball games, or plays, and share dinner together. Want to share a bus to Cherokee? Want to go on a wine tour of France? We can set that up for you, with people your own age, people who are a lot like you, people you may already know.

The idea of this site-service, tentatively called APlaceforMe (in contrast to A Place for Mom, an interface with the long-term care industry) is to build interlocking communities of like-minded seniors, a network of friends who will age together, along with a service that can replace those friends as they pass, and (here’s the big one) enable these people to share homes or apartments when the time comes that they need that.

It’s inevitable. Your spouse dies. Your family is distant. Your health starts to fail. What do you do?

BoomerRoomer would put you in touch with other people (through APlaceForMe) who can share the burdens of this stage of life with you. Maybe someone in your social network is having financial trouble, and needs a place to stay. Maybe they can share your home. Again, it’s important to bring social workers in here as match makers, and supervisors not just of the money but the emotional relationships. This is a very big deal. You need processes, and people to manage those processes.

With BoomerRoomer, people can stay in their homes longer, or at least stay in a home longer. These are not personal care homes. These are HOMES. You share the benefits of having a home health care worker come monthly, or weekly, or even daily, to do those things that need doing.

BoomerRoomer also provides a market window to the next stage of care, when you really will need a full-time facility. It stretches the capacity of the existing system, which is already overburdened. It gives companies in that market the opportunity to pre-market, to develop relationships with clients before they become clients, rather than developing those relations through families who’ve just seen marketing brochures.

I see this as a huge service for a growing market. Take the best of what the Internet can do for people, combine it with what trained social workers can do, and make retirement a more fulfilling, more human experience. More like what my mom found with braille, something my dad didn’t get when he won the lottery.

And just in time. I mentioned I’m 60. I’m a writer. Writers retire to pine boxes. To me, retirement means doing what I want, on my schedule, without worrying about the needs of the market. Doing something like this would be a great part of my retirement. But I know I can’t do it alone. I need management, I need technical expertise. I need an entrepreneur to lead the way. I’m just a writer, a thinker, a publicist. I’ve never built anyone else’s company but my own.

I have another reason for urgency.

There’s a woman in my life who is even more important to me than I am to myself. We have been together for 40 years this September. She has been our family’s main source of support for 15 years now, ever since the dot-bomb turned my six-figure income into a zero-figure income. (It’s been up and down since.) Sometime in the next decade she’s going to have that interview I described earlier. Sometime in the next decade I’m going to get her back.

We’re best friends, but one thing I’ve learned in this life is you need more than one best friend. You need friends who share your interests, your outlook, and your passion. Friends who will get you off yoru couch and back into life.

Right now my wife, whose case I believe is typical, finds that her only friends outside family are the people she works with, and once she retires she’s going to lose touch with those friends. It’s inevitable. Her new friends should share her interests. She loves reading. She’d like to do some volunteer work, but she really, really loves reading. Mysteries and romances, with some science and biographies. After work she likes nothing better but to sit on her “throne,” a bed pillow, with a glass of wine and a good book.

I’d like her to be able to find, say, a half-dozen friends upon retirement who share these interests. I’d like her to become part of a community through which she can find good volunteer opportunities, things to do, people to travel with, friends who will last even if I pre-decease her.

So there is a sense of urgency here. I want this company up-and-running so that, when the time comes, she can have that interview, so she can fill out that questionnaire, so that she can talk to that social worker and make those friends that will let her have a retirement that is more like my mom’s than my dad’s.

Can you help? Do you know someone who might want to take this task on with me? I think it’s a huge business opportunity. This can be a $10 billion enterprise, within five years, if done right. Because it’s not just a virtual business, like Facebook, and it’s not about sharing rides or rooms, like Uber or AirBnB. It’s a very real social problem, one that badly needs practical solutions. The pig is going through the python, as we say of the baby boom, and we’re all nearing life’s poop chute. Hundreds of billions are going to help boomers age out over the next 20 years, and this site can get a big hunk of that money.