Katie Canales/Business Insider
Spending your final years in an assisted living community doesn't mean you have to lose your sense of independence.
- Where you'll live as you get older is an important consideration many of us will have to make at some point.
- While most seniors say they'd prefer to live at home, retirement communities can also offer the care and amenities that some seniors want and need.
- About 5% of elderly Americans live in some sort of senior living home, and a senior might make the move for a number of reasons, like a bad fall, a need for socialization, or to have easier access to medical staff as they age.
- Sifting through and settling on the wide range of retirement community options can prove to be challenging though.
- The choices can be overwhelming, and few of them come cheaply - independent and assisted living facilities can cost anywhere between $18,000 to $72,000 a year on average.
- Moving from the home they've known for decades and into a foreign place can also be traumatic for a senior.
- And it's not necessarily easier for their families, who sometimes have no other choice but to transplant their loved ones into a retirement community.
- We visited an assisted living retirement community in San Francisco, California, to see for ourselves what it's like to live there and how residents stay busy and maintain a sense of purpose and independence in their later years.