In this post, our third in a series about aging gracefully, we’ll explore various options for continuing care retirement communities. In our two previous posts, we talked about family conversations that need to be had, primarily by boomers who are charged with supporting elderly parents or relatives and we talked about the pros and cons of enabling the elderly to stay put at home. Again, the majority of elderly folks want the freedom and independence of staying at home. But there’s a third option: continuing care retirement communities, which have really morphed over the last couple of decades and have quite a bit to offer. Just remember that most continuing care communities will not accept new residents whose health has already deteriorated past a certain point—so you can’t wait on this decision indefinitely.

Retirement is one of life’s biggest transitions, and the first question many people ask is, “When should I start to take my Social Security benefits?” Do you need the cash flow right away, or can you afford to wait to start collecting? If you’re not sure, go through a projection of your balance sheet, your cash flow and taxes to see if Social Security really needs to be part of your income as early as age 62. Or, can you defer it to a later date.

As we move closer to National Financial Literacy Month in April, this is our fourth weekly post about age-specific financial literacy. If you’re just joining this series, in Part 1 we discussed how children can learn about donating, investing, spending and saving. In Part 2 we talked about getting young adults launched on the right financial path right out of high school or college. And in Part 3 we addressed the five major concerns that all of us have about money in our prime income-producing years to get to our retirement years. And now, we’ll focus on folks who are retired, typically age 60, 65 and older.

One of the biggest transitions we make in life is going from actively working for a living to active retirement.  This came up again the other day when a client I had been working with for many years came in. Let’s call her Judy. Judy’s husband had retired several years earlier and she was ready to explore her own transition.

Changing your health can be a difficult but rewarding battle. The weight loss challenge is an obvious one. Rewarding? All you need to think of is Jared Fogle, the Subway guy turned pitchman. He lost 245 pounds. And he’s kept it off. Nothing short of astonishing. Plus he launched a new career.

One way to look at life is in three phases: Learning (through your early twenties); Earning (into your early sixties or beyond), and Yearning (that time after your Earning phase).