By Leslie Price
It took a family crisis for Marni Blank to realize that, for all her type-A tendencies, she had been avoiding planning for – or even thinking about – her or her parents’ end of life. But pushing off the uncomfortable meant she was forced to figure it out on the fly and under extreme duress.
She’s not the only one. Most of us struggle to have these sorts of conversations with our parents, or each other. A lawyer by trade, Blank decided to pivot her career to focus on end-of-life planning.
Unpartnered and in her 40s, she’s also part of a growing cohort of “solo agers.” As AARP notes, more and more of us will fall into this category due to fewer marriages and/or children, a rise in gray divorce, increased longevity, farther-flung family units, and a growing desire to age in place.
We spoke with Blank earlier in the week to ask her what the best way to start planning is, either for yourself or a loved one – and gleaned a few other top tips (including a very important tech-login reminder).
How do people start to plan to age solo?
Most people don’t know where to begin or what is most important. I always make sure people have their healthcare proxy in place and their power of attorney. If someone needed to make medical decisions for you on your behalf, who would that be?
Make sure it’s someone you know and trust, who shows up for you and is able to handle decisions in a moment of stress or overwhelm, and who’s able to advocate for you. Oftentimes people are uncomfortable asking for support. A lot of solo agers are used to making decisions for themselves and being independent. Having to think ahead to a time when they won’t have that ability is uncomfortable.
What are the must-dos for women who expect to age solo?
Make sure you have a letter of instruction with a high-level overview of your life. Think about the everyday things that live in your head that need to be down on paper.
Who has keys to your apartment? If you have a pet, list instructions to take care of it or who its caregivers are. Create a list of your bank accounts and investment accounts. I always suggest people have a digital vault for all of the information that otherwise we’d have that physical copy of. Make sure it’s accessible so when the time comes, people don’t have to go on a treasure hunt to figure out what’s going on.
The number one question I got from friends in their 40s on this topic is: What do you do if you get sick or you get cancer? How do you make sure there’s someone to take care of you physically?
It’s a real concern, especially with so many people our age developing serious illnesses. I start with creating circles of support. Think through the people that you rely on the most in your everyday life. Who are the people that you can be vulnerable with? Who has shown up in the past for you? And is that the type of support that has come in handy? Whether that’s family, chosen family, or people in your community, take inventory of those important inner-circle people and start to talk to them about these concerns.
If you can’t think of who those people are, start to build more of those connections. Who are the people who might show up for you when things get tough? Who could take you to an appointment, or be that extra set of eyes and ears if you’re getting information from a doctor? Who can water the plants or take care of the animals if you can’t get out of bed?
If you’re in a city like New York, maybe those are your neighbors, a religious community or affiliation you belong to, or another sort of social circle or network you are connected with. Then create an outer circle of professional support. If you like your primary care doctor, great. If they’re not someone you’re going to be able to rely on, maybe it’s time to be looking. Same with a therapist. I have long-term care insurance, because aging is expensive, whether you’re partnered or not. Is there an amount of money you can be putting away now towards making sure that, if you need extra care, you will be able to have that support?
How do you find good professionals?
My first tip is to ask your community. I’ve asked my friends about trust and estate advisors or doctors or any sort of specialist. It’s way better to have real feedback and not just a Google review. That being said, you can always ask a professional in a related field for who they trust and refer out to.
I should probably ask you a bit about yourself. How did you get into the business of helping people plan the end of their lives?
I’m a lawyer by background, and I started a business with my sister. While we were running that business in 2018, we got a call from the hospital. My mother had been in a car accident and had become seriously injured. My first thoughts when I heard that she was injured, other than was she okay, was that I had a lot of her paperwork that I was supposed to have gotten signed and notarized that I hadn’t done.
I am the eldest daughter. I am very capable. I know how important these documents are. And I had a mental block around dealing with things that had to do with my parents’ incapacity or eventual death. I hadn’t done it. I think that that is common. The ensuing months of figuring out how to care for a critically ill parent from afar while running a business were incredibly overwhelming. It highlighted a lot of conversations that we had not had that we really needed to have about wishes and values, but also practical things like: Where were her passwords? What did I need to know to be able to run her life? I ended up getting very curious about this. I have plenty of friends who have lost a parent or both parents and I wanted to feel more prepared.
I ended up going to death doula training in 2020 to get more of a sense of what death and dying and grief looks like in our society. What I focus on, based on my legal background, is melding the practical and the emotional aspects of planning in advance for ourselves as well as being able to facilitate these conversations within families and help people after a death deal with the administrative tasks that fall on overwhelmed executors and their families.
I’m in my early forties. I’m aging solo. That might change. Life can be long or short. People get divorced, women outlive their partners. My grandmother lived to 102 and a half and my great aunt lived to 103. They outlived their partners by, in some cases, decades. I wanted to feel more prepared for myself and make sure that I am creating my circles of support now so that as I age, I feel that I can keep my independence. Loneliness is a big concern with people who are solo aging. This is not something that should have any stigma attached to it.
What are some ways that you are thinking about loneliness and what are you doing to try to prevent it?
I have made it a real point to check in on my friends whenever I’m thinking about them. I reach out, I send them a text, I FaceTime. If they pick up, great, if they don’t, they don’t.
It’s showing up for people when they’re in hard times and making sure that we’re connected. A lot of my friends moved across the country during Covid, and I went through a grieving process. I still live in Brooklyn, and I felt that aloneness.
We’ve made it a point to take trips together, even if just for a long weekend, we talk regularly. It’s about daily connection, not big gestures. I am in a movie club with a bunch of my friends where we get together almost weekly, have dinner, and watch movies together. Another thing I do is make sure that I have relationships with my friends who have children. It’s important to me to be involved generationally with my friends and their families.
Who are your clients?
When I started this business, I thought I would be working more with our elders, making sure that they felt supported at the end of their life so they felt like they could have a good death and everything was buttoned up. But most of my clients are in their 40s and 50s. They want to plan ahead and worry about not having started the process. Many are newly divorced and having to rethink their healthcare proxy, power of attorney, and beneficiaries.
People get very overwhelmed with the idea of estate planning. They don’t start, or they go as far as to get an attorney or get a questionnaire and then it sits on their desk for two years because they get stuck on a question.
I work with a lot of people who are worried about their aging parents and don’t know how to have the conversation with them. They want me to help facilitate, because part of our planning as the adult children has to do with what our parents have planned. If we have to make sure they are financially supported or have the right resources, we need to take that into account for what we’re planning financially.
When you say you help facilitate these conversations, how far does that go? Are there clients who are like, I want you to call my parents for me?
I do have that. Sometimes I’m having conversations between adult siblings to get on the same page. People are spread out across the country. Someone may have more financial resources, maybe someone else is able to show up physically.
People can grow up in the same household and have very different family dynamics or relationships with their parents. Many times I’m having conversations with the whole family. So, if there’s two adult children and their parents, being able to ask the parents questions about what planning they have or haven’t done can really start the conversation within the family that many people are just uncomfortable to have on both sides.
It can be financial, or it can be practical in terms of decisions around aging in place or thinking about assisted living. It can be about funeral arrangements and wishes around burial decisions. It can really run the gamut.
For people who are in their 40s and 50s who worry about who will take care of them when they’re older – they don’t feel like they are prepared for it financially, and they don’t know if they will ever be – what is there out there?
Unfortunately, it’s really state-by-state. I always suggest an initial conversation with a financial advisor to understand where your finances are now, where you want to be, and what you can do to steer the ship in that direction.
A lot of people bury their heads in the sand because they feel like they won’t have enough. Once you start having those conversations, the better chance you have to make sure you are financially supported. In New York City, there is a wide range of opportunities for low or no fee support if you know where to look. And again, many professionals offer a free one-off to ask questions and they will have resources. Attorneys and financial advisors often also provide free webinars.
People are often concerned about their pets. What can they do to make sure their pets are taken care of?
Again, it’s thinking in advance. We just don’t know how life’s going to turn out. For everyone who has a pet, my first suggestion is to create a simple Google Doc with high-level instructions: their birthday, who their vet is, food instructions, if they’re on any medication, any quirks. Write it down and give it to a couple people.
My direct neighbor has keys to my apartment and their child, who is 13 and very sweet, takes care of my dog when I’m running late for work or something. The super in my building loves dogs and has helped me out on occasion. And my sister has keys to my apartment. Along with other important paperwork like my will and my healthcare proxy, I’ve given Penny’s instruction manual to people I know and trust.
It really is about asking in advance and not waiting ‘til the last minute, like when you are in the hospital for surgery and are not going to be able to walk for a month. People don’t want to ask too much of someone or be a burden, but the people you’d be asking are people who want to show up for you and be able to support you. They just want to know how. For a pet, it is asking in advance, Hey, if something were to happen to me, would you be open to taking care of my pet? If you’re creating a will, you can add their information. You can say, this would be the guardian of my pet just as you would name a guardian of a human child.
You can even create a pet trust to leave money specifically for the care of your pet. I know my dog loves to eat things she shouldn’t and she ends up in the vet quite often. I want to leave money for whoever is caring for Penny to make sure it’s not a financial burden.
There was one thing that you had asked me in the beginning that I would’ve answered differently about the things that people should know. And I want to say that everyone should make sure that someone has access to the passwords – to their phone, to their computer, and to their email. To do that securely, you set up a legacy contact in your iPhone. It is a three-minute process to set up an inactive account manager in your Gmail if that’s what you’re using, which again gives someone legal access.
Is that because if you don’t give that over, it’s hard for people to ever gain access to your email?
Yes. These are huge companies. If you don’t have access, Google will never give out the password. Same with Apple. If you don’t have access to someone’s email, but all of their bills and statements go there, there’s a wealth of information that someone is going to need, whether it’s to close subscriptions or to understand where someone’s assets are.
Think about all the things that live on your phone that might be helpful or just meaningful. All of your photos, all of your videos, the things people want to find after you’ve died. Losing that would be a huge loss.
Is there anything else that you feel like people should know?
It can feel like a lot. It really is progress over perfection. Take small steps to start getting organized. You don’t have to do it all at once.
People can go to my website. I have free resources to start your planning process, [including] a list of important documents to get organized and important digital assets to be thinking about – because a lot of people don’t think about their digital assets.