November 2023

With skilled nursing home care prices rising year after year, many retirees are looking into other avenues for their end-of-life care. Some are building additions onto their homes for whatever full-time care they may receive in-home in the future, and some are building tiny accessible homes on their children’s property. If the construction projects aren’t for you, some retirees are hitting the seas.

Mama Lee Wachtstetter began living on a cruise ship in 2008, and remained there into her 90s, more than 12 years later. It cost her approximately $164,000 per year for her single-occupancy room. That sounds expensive but even an “all-inclusive” assisted living facility would not have provided the same quality of goods and services. Mama Lee enjoyed daily lunch and dinner with beverages, tips, daily ballroom dancing, cocktail parties, movies, lectures, other shows, and entertainment and most uniquely: the opportunity to travel and meet people from all over the world. She said the one thing she missed was her family, but she stayed in touch with them via laptop and telephone and was able to see them about five times per year when she docked in Miami.