Great post!Gudrun wrote: I think the 'getting old and ill' scenario needs a community approach not lots of money. It reminds me of one of the ideas I liked in Jacob's book, namely that often you can save money by investing in relationships. With ERE you have the time to care for other people, to invest in them. Why wouldn't they return the favour if you pick good people? Yes, getting old or becoming ill might mean one needs a lot of care, more than we would ever ask of friends, but then we are back at the INTJ/Ps problem of letting oneself be taken care of....
So my idea of dealing with a worst case scenario is to have medical insurance, but to also invest in friends (or family if they are good people), who care. If this may seem utopian than just think about how utopian it seems to never have to work again! There is also a strong community spirit here on this forum. Why can't we come up with a better model of getting old and supporting each other than what is available to us in our societies right now? Given that most of us will probably get ill or weak at some point, how would you like things to be? Who says each one of us has to deal with this by themselves?
The other day I had a frantic Pharmaceutical rep banging on my front door. She had found one of our tenants who suffers from mild and sometimes moderate dementia. He had gone for a walk, gotten disoriented and passers-by decided he needed help. This happens a few times a month. Ms. Pharma with her smart suit, high heels and ex-cheerleader legs was rather upset and slightly indignant that he was left to wander. She said her father-in-law was in the same condition and that the family had put him in a lovely assisted living facility where he had excellent care and was barred from leaving. I sat her down and we talked about it for a while. She repped for a drug company that sells dementia meds and somehow found it comforting that Medicare (our government program for the elderly) provided my tenant with every medication a demented person should be taking. But she was still upset that he had nobody to help him.
I have to admit, I am often bothered by the fact that he has nobody. He eats breakfast and dinner at a greasy-spoon restaurant every day. He has to cross a major road to get to it. He never makes it across the street before the light changes and will probably get squashed some day. I watched him cross a few weeks ago and he had a look in his eyes that said, "I ain't dead yet". I told that to Ms. Pharma. She said her FIL does not have that look.
It made me wonder how much of the suffering involved with this end-of-life stuff is really the suffering of loved-ones watching the decline, and the suffering of the declining person who has to see the sadness of their loved-ones. This guy has nobody who cares and he gets pissed off, as he did with Ms. Pharma-cheerleader-legs, when someone pities him.