Living in a Community vs. Staying at Home

As you reach your golden years and move toward retirement, there are many choices to make. Deciding where to call home for the years you worked hard to enjoy without reservation is perhaps one of the largest and most important choices you will make. For most older adults, there are two main choices: staying in your current home or moving to a retirement community. Let’s explore those two choices and how to determine what’s best for your grandest vision of your retirement years.

Factors to Consider When Deciding Where to Spend Your Retirement Years

Retirement is a reward. After spending so many years doing the things you had to do to make retirement a reality, now is your chance to do the things you want to do. There’s only one question you have to ask yourself: How do you want to spend your golden years? How to spend your retirement is a question easier asked than answered, but here are four considerations that can help you find your way.

Social Interaction

Take stock of where your social interactions mainly occur now. Do you have weekly get-togethers with friends, is your family near your current home, are there locales that you would rather not lose proximity to? For some older adults, social interaction is just a few steps or a quick drive away. For others, finding social community and getting quality time with friends and family requires much more. Within this factor, it’s important to consider how much social interaction you want to have and how easy meeting your social needs is in your current living situation. 

Mobility and Maintenance

For some, the idea of living in a two-floor home as they get older is a pain management nightmare. For others, the care and effort it takes to maintain a home’s yard, landscaping, or other home maintenance projects is the final straw. Whether these apply to you or not, considering your current mobility levels and the work required to keep your home looking the way you like is an important part of deciding whether living in a community or staying at home is the right fit for you in your older years. 

Consider: 

• Stairs and whether or not you care to continue traversing them if your home is multiple stories
• Outdoor maintenance
• Regular cleaning
• Deep cleaning 
• Handling unexpected home maintenance surprises (e.g. a broken fridge or washer, a sudden leaky pipe, etc.) 
• Typical daily chores

Some retirement communities (like Abbey Delray) offer services that take most of that list off of your plate. If your main priority is enjoying your retirement years, moving into a community can alleviate much of the stress of home owning maintenance that stands in the way of that enjoyment for many seniors. 

The Benefits of Community Living

When weighing the pros and cons of each style of living, having a clear idea of what living in a retirement community offers is an important step. It’s hard to look at a big decision like where to live in your retirement years objectively without truly knowing what each option offers. While you’re likely to be familiar with the pros and cons of staying in your current home or living situation, you may be less familiar with what moving to a retirement community offers. Here are a few major perks worth taking into account. 

Socialization

When you live right next door to your peers in every direction, finding people you connect with is easy. Furthermore, at Abbey Delray, your fellow residents are more likely to align with where you are in life and how you’re used to living. These compatibility factors lower the barrier to socialization. Often, retirement communities offer a calendar of events as well, providing ample opportunities to socialize and connect with your fellow residents while participating in activities you enjoy or trying something new. 

Lower Maintenance Needs 

Any retirement community worth its salt will provide a certain level of maintenance and care services. One of the biggest perks to retirement community living is cutting your maintenance and cleaning time drastically. Each community will offer different services, but things like lawn care and laundry services are excellent benefits to look for. Other maintenance and repair costs are covered by your monthly costs, taking the burden of home maintenance entirely off your shoulders.  

Convenience and Amenities 

At the end of the day, independent senior living communities offer one thing that you worked hard to afford in these years: convenience. Lifespace’s communities focus on providing a wide array of amenities to make living your best life in your retirement years as easy as stepping out your front door. 

The amenities that mean most to you will impact the choice of community you might make, but whatever your decision, including the convenience and amenities available to you in your decision-making process ensures that you will be able to maintain or elevate your current quality of life.

How to Choose the Community That’s Right For You

As we’ve discussed, there is no easy formula that will help you determine whether moving to an independent senior living community or staying at home is the right choice for you. There are so many individual realities, concerns, and hopes to address. If you believe that the benefits of retirement community life might fit your needs, then the real challenge comes in choosing the community that’s right for you. 

Prepped with your list of wants and needs, it’s time to take some tours. 

What Abbey Delray Offers

When you visit Abbey Delray, you’ll notice a difference right away. Inspiration comes unexpectedly easy at Abbey Delray. Our community is filled with distinctive, interesting people. We encourage every resident to pursue their passions, ambitions and aspirations. We foster a community that embraces possibility and enjoys the abundance of resort-style choices that make life at Abbey Delray unique. 

We offer: 

• Lifelong learning opportunities in our Performing Arts Center for lectures, banquets, performances and more.
• A renovated state-of-the-art fitness center featuring Helsinki University Research (HUR) equipment specifically designed to provide safe and effective full-body workouts for older adults.
• More time to enjoy fresh air and aquatic exercise with our new resort-style heated outdoor pool.
• Lavish pampering that you deserve with new spa and salon services.
• Enhanced restaurant-style dining featuring open-kitchen concept and outdoor Terrace table service.
• A serene new outdoor garden adding more beauty to our already gorgeous grounds.
• Fully updated independent living apartments and villa homes with stainless appliances, crown molding, space for an in-home office, and most include washer and dryer.
• New private and semi-private apartments and suites for assisted living and memory care, designed to enhance your independence and quality of life.

One of the best ways to determine if a community is right for you is by scheduling a tour to see all the possibilities for yourself and get a better understanding of how an independent senior living community feels. 

Whether you’re just starting your journey toward making this decision or you’re working on narrowing down your senior living community options, we’re here to help you find the right fit. Step into your retirement years with complete confidence that you can live them precisely how you had always hoped. After all, that’s exactly what you deserve! 

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