Preparing for your senior years !!

We work and toil to make a living, provide for our progeny and see them grow into young aspiring adults. Oftentimes the focus on making a living is so intense that we forget to live a life!! Suddenly as you turn into your late fifties and step into the senior years, we tend to feel neglected and lonely. But is that the way it should be? Can we plan and make our senior years very enriching? 

The senior years is actually a rerun and a reversal back to childhood. The urge to seek attention is equally pronounced. Only difference being that the elders / seniors do not manifest their urges as easily as a young infant would. They often tend to leave their feelings and desires for others to interpret!

Over the last 50 odd years, India has seen the slow disintegration from the solid joint family system to nuclear families. There are also a few cases of single parent families. A time may even come when, if a husband and wife were together, it would be referred to as a joint family!!! A couple of generations ago, the support of the joint family system, saw our grandparents through their old age. This is no longer a reality.

Modern conveniences of transportation & communication, industrialisation, urbanisation, willingness to move across borders etc have made this a global economy. With the younger generation becoming global citizens, the ability of the children to be with and take care of their parents is seeming more improbable, even if they had the desire. Parents too realize that children aspiring to pursue their career ambitions in locations other than their home location in India or even globally, is a reality. The younger generation also realizes that when they themselves would get into their own senior years, their children too are going to be global citizens and it is therefore imperative that they too plan for their own senior years!   

This is where I see a huge opportunity in Senior Citizens Gated Communities where the seniors can lead a very high quality life and explore their abilities to the fullest. Coimbatore has been a pioneer in this industry and I am associated with a few of them. Additionally, it is a retirement for the senior woman from the chores of cooking and kitchen work!! Mind you, these are not the "old age homes ' or "vriddhashrams"!! These are very sophisticated & enriching communities, and is a very practical and viable option. Should be actively considered by those approaching their senior years and also by youngsters for their parents & themselves !!

Coimbatore offers properties in Senior Citizens Gated Communities suiting many budgets. Either a small one bedroom / two bedroom apartment,  or row-houses, and even standalone ground level or ground plus one level Villas. With centralised maintenance and concierge facilities, entertainments and special events, health care facilities, centralised kitchen and dining facility etc, these communities offer an enriching lifestyle to seniors. Being a common kitchen facility, the food and type of cuisine is generally the primary consideration. Food is typical of the location of the project and the cusine caters to the project's majority target population.  For eg most of the projects in Coimbatore offer traditional South Indian vegetarian food typical of an Iyer/Iyengar cuisine. 

Coimbatore as a city meets all the criterion for such projects : proximity to specialty hosiptals of all kinds, access to rail and air travels, excellent climate all year around, availability of part-time and full-time caregivers. 

  
Many youngsters are investing in these and encouraging their parents to relocate to such communities. With the newer concept of ownership property (instead of the earlier concept of leased property), investing in such projects is also a wise capital investment strategy.