Emma Soames Now I’m hitting 60 and I am feeling much the same. I’m delighted to report that middle age, which is what my early fifties felt like, apparently extends into the sixties. Yippee! Indeed, 60 seems too young to qualify for a state pension, a winter fuel payment and a bus pass. However, let me not delude myself: any feelings of guilt about getting these while still working, will be washed away at the prospect of a free ride when the day dawns.
I certainly don’t believe that 60 is the new 40 – at least I very much hope it isn’t – but it certainly has changed greatly. Just as the very young seem to grow up much more rapidly, so we seem to be ageing much more slowly at the other end of the age spectrum. Certainly from memories of people I knew in their sixties, it is now something else entirely.
My grandmother’s generation and to some extent my mother’s, retreated to a place of old ladydom where their clothes and language, their manners and their way of doing things were concerned. They inhabited a different world to the rest of us and we sat up very straight and minded our manners when around them. Maybe if I ask a 20-year-old I would be disappointed to hear that they are tiptoeing round us; but all Twittered up and profiled on social networks, I am pretty convinced that we still inhabit the same world as the young – well, anyway until midnight.
There are now almost as many definitions of what 60 looks like as there are people (25,000 a year) hitting the bus stops after 9.30. Many men are changing nappies for the first time, and I have girlfriends who are spending their spare time juggling grandchildren rather than children around a job. I know people who have launched businesses and others who have actually retired. More and more of us, however, want to work on – we just don’t feel like hanging up our boots.
These cultural changes are reinforced by the new economic order that promises to upset the applecart of conventional retirement for almost everyone. It’s just as well that we are feeling so fit and full of energy. Unless it is forced upon us by redundancy or that almost equally disagreeable default retirement age, a conventional retirement is no longer something millions of people in their sixties will be able to afford for another 10 years. Indeed, I think it is safe to say that “old” has moved on a decade – and perhaps by the time I get to 70 it may have done another runner up to 80.
And what will I do in my sixties? Get on my broomstick and fly.
Since I wrote about the new long-term care proposals on this page last month, Saga has commissioned more research to find your views about how the new system should be structured. Half of those questioned by Populus in July – more than 11,600 people responded – think long-term care should be provided at a set standard for everyone by the State but that individuals can top up this level of care if they wish. The three different versions of payment suggested in the Green Paper have differing levels of support. A fifth of respondents think we should fund care by contributing during our working life, only six per cent think there should be a one-off payment at death or retirement to pay care costs and one sixth think the cost of long-term care should be met entirely by the Government.
While scrutinising the different models suggested, we need to bear in mind a few basic points that are not spelt out clearly in the Green Paper: whatever level of care is contributed free, the figure will not include food and accommodation costs of a care home.
To give an idea of what this would cost: in Scotland, where the personal care allowance is more generous, Scots can receive up to £222 a week to cover those costs. However, the average cost of a Scottish care home is £598, so those in need of care still have to find another £376 a week. And what sort of care would be provided free? When I asked the Department of Health this question, the answer was, "This relates to people who are projected to have difficulties with three or more 'activities of daily living', such as eating and dressing, rather than 'instrumental activities of daily living' such as shopping, cleaning, etc." The gobbledygook is theirs but I take this to mean that any element of free care would only kick in when or if we are very incapacitated. Until then we shall have to fund our own care, whatever the model.
What do you think? Please join the debate at www.sagazone.co.uk