Aging Essay

Fears or challenges about aging are the worries and obstacles that surround the journey of
getting older. These fears and challenges stem from the certain characteristics of aging that are
deemed undesirable, inconvenient or even unbearable. People will often fear encountering
challenges that come with losing the abilities and functions that were accessible at a younger age,
such as living independently, moving freely and thinking clearly.
A major fear that many people have about aging is the possibility of being left alone and
being alienated by their family. Children often won’t take the initiative to properly attend to and
accompany their parents and the elderly feel bad about bothering their children to get help, and
so the elderly is often left home alone craving company and attention. My parents own an
assisted living facility where all the residents display this feeling of dissatisfaction because of
disconnect from their family. To avoid this problem, it would be helpful for people to stay
healthy throughout their younger years so they can be more mobile when they get older and thus
more actively engaged with their family. It would also be helpful if there was more of a family-
oriented culture in America where it is commonplace for children to look after their grandparents
in their own homes.
Another fear that accompanies aging is being able to retire and still being able to
financially support oneself. A common guideline for retirement is having 70% of your pre-
retirement income in order to sustain yourself. This is not always attainable for many reasons.
For one, a fixed social security income doesn’t meet that 70% that is needed for a mortgage,
food, insurance, etc. Another reason is that people might not have been educated early on in
order to save up for retirement. Additionally, the elderly often spends a lot of money on family
members other than themselves. A way to avoid this problem is educating people in school about
the importance of saving up for retirement.
Another challenge that accompanies aging is that the healthcare system is insufficient for
the needs of the elderly. Insurance premiums for Medicare patients have steadily gotten more
expensive and receiving proper healthcare is becoming increasingly difficult. To change this, we
should look further into how to improve our healthcare systems and the structure within it:
reorganizing cost-cutting, cost-effectiveness, re-imbursements and who in the government makes
the financial decisions.