“Age is a high price to pay for maturity” -Tom Stoppard

Aging is not a common topic of conversation in our culture.  Our movies and television shows are very youth-focused, even our commercials tell us how to stay younger longer—with all this focus on staying young, it can be difficult to plan for getting older.  And for those particularly independent-minded people it can be especially difficult to plan for the day when you might be dependent on others.

Mutual Federal Savings Bank Vice President Dorothy Douglass learned the hard way the necessity of planning for the future.  She has written a touching article about caring for her parents as they aged, and how it has prompted her to think about her own future.

Most of us think—as Dorothy Douglass and her parents did—that there’s plenty of time to plan for our old age.  We feel young, we feel healthy, and we have years yet . . . until suddenly we don’t.  By the time we realize the need for something such as long term care insurance, or a last will and testament, or an estate plan—it’s too late.

Ms. Douglass didn’t take the advice of her well-meaning friend in time to help her parents.  Don’t make the same mistake.  You may still feel immortality stretching out before you, but take the time now to think about the future.