It wasn’t until after the Spring Festival in 2022 that Xiao Qi brought her 80-year-old mother to live in Beijing that she realized that providing for the elderly is not as simple as she thought.
Xiao Qi and her husband specially vacated a room, hoping that their mother could live comfortably in Beijing. A month later, Xiao Qi found that her mother was not at all comfortable living in Beijing. In addition to speaking dialects and hearing loss, her mother could not make new friends in the community, and she was afraid of getting lost when she went for a walk. Xiao Qi worried that her mother would not live comfortably, and her mother was afraid of causing trouble to the young couple.
Xiao Qi and her mother lived in a tense and cautious way for more than two months, until the results of the medical examination at the hospital showed that her mother was in good health, and her mother was determined to return to her hometown.
During the period of living with her mother, Xiao Qi realized that her mother’s pension of more than 2,000 yuan per month was enough to maintain her daily life in her hometown, but the premise was that there would be no serious illness and no family accidents. The reason why the mother does not have much to worry about is that she has 3 children, who can supplement her life at any time. At some point, the concept of “raising children for old age” is still one of the guarantees for old age at least in the parents’ generation.
But Xiao Qi and her husband have no children. She began to think about how she should deal with risks in her future retirement life.
“When I get old, what kind of nursing home can I go to?”
Regarding the pension model, Xiao Qi wanted to live a sojourn life. She bought a house in Beihai six years ago, thinking that she would live more comfortably in a small city after retirement. But because of the epidemic, she hasn’t lived there for three years. In the past, she also wanted to let her mother go to Beihai for the elderly, but the actual situation was that they were worried that her mother would go there alone, and they were still working, so the house remained vacant.
After going to her mother’s nursing home, Xiao Qi began to worry about what kind of nursing home she could go to when she was old. She told herself that she still needs to save more money.
“Forget about ‘raising children for old age’, we will not rely on children in the future”
Li Qian, 34, has two daughters with her husband, both of whom are civil servants.
”Compared with the pressure of retirement, I am more worried about getting sick.” Li Qian said that after the birth of their youngest daughter, she and her husband immediately bought critical illness insurance and accident insurance. “Based on my observation of parents, I think that as they grow older, the place where they spend the most money is medical treatment.”
Li Qian and her husband have basically no concept of “raising children for old age”, and they don’t expect their children to do anything. Pension. Li Qian said that they desire emotional needs more than material needs. As for whether to buy commercial pension insurance, Li Qian said that when the child is older, she should buy it with her husband.
They have learned about commercial annuity insurance before. On the one hand, it is expensive and the cost of children’s education is high, so they gave up.
Hui Rui, who has been an insurance agent for 8 years, found that more and more young people have purchased commercial pension insurance in recent years. Huirui said that especially the post-95 generation, the first thing they consider when buying insurance is retirement savings, and they also pay more attention to the income of repeated interest. Everyone’s situation is different, and there may not be a one-size-fits-all pension plan, but there is definitely nothing wrong with saving more money.
“It is better to open a nursing home than to hand over the pension to others”
A few years ago, Xiaohui called 120 for the first time because of illness. After being carried into the ambulance by the medical staff, she thought of the scene when she was old. In her opinion, since the younger generation has stepped out of the traditional concept of “raising children for old age”, why not be more thorough and choose to support the elderly in groups? 25-year-old Xiao Huixiang tried to run a nursing home for single people. For this reason, she went to a nursing home in Hainan in February this year to work as a volunteer for a month, and learned the operation mode of private nursing homes by the way.
In the nursing home, Xiaohui observed the living conditions of the elderly and met many young caregivers. Before coming here, she had seen the news about caregivers abusing the elderly, but when she was actually living and working in a nursing home, she was spat on by the old man, and she had seen the caregiver’s eyes reddened by the old man’s beating. One night, she brought the family of the elderly to the hospice and broke down and cried as she faced death for the first time.
After living in a nursing home for a month, Xiao Hui began to rethink the responsibilities and pressures of nursing home operators. If I run a nursing home, I have to take responsibility for the lives of the elderly, do my best to retain nursing staff, resolve conflicts between people, and find a way to maintain the normal operation of the institution.
Xiaohui said: “If life is a journey, I have seen what it looks like when the journey is nearing the end.” She is more determined to realize her dream of becoming the director of a nursing home for single people. Next, she will continue to choose sites and continue to learn from experience , work hard to save money, and then open a nursing home for singles, at least you can hold a group with your friends for the elderly.
When we discuss aging, there is always a tendency to over-problemize or specialize. The shortage of public funds and human resources for the elderly is a global problem. The solution to these problems requires a more complete pension insurance system, a more flexible retirement mechanism, and the continuous development and improvement of the long-term care service and security system.
And when more and more young people pay attention to and even join the pension industry, the future retirement life of this generation may become richer and more diverse—they can also live a rich and romantic life when they are old.
