As the summer ends, I’m about to take a path less travelled. Taking a break from SMBs and fintech, I’ll be joining a six-month social entrepreneurship mission focused on exploring how we could add quality to later life. While a fairly wide area to cover, experience over the past few years pushes me towards care, finances and wellbeing. Ageing and life is challenging enough, in my opinion, even in a well managed society.
How we care for each other at different ages (from childcare to adult care) has changed with increased urbanisation and the economic growth mindset (i.e. rat race!). My previous posts touched on the reality of fragmented care’s impact on our lives. I had been actively managing my mother’s journey – updating doctors who don’t read notes either after shift or rotation change; and generally following up and negotiating with all the various people involved in the chain of my mother’s primary, acute and social care. Fragmentation will, in my opinion, only worsen as resources grow scarce. While my mother had us fighting in her corner, over 11 months in various wards (and over years in the primary care network), we observed many of her ward mates (also elderly, fragile patients) having to fend for themselves – both in navigating the NHS, as well as managing living arrangements and social care. I saw their frustration and sadness at being helpless – something I imagine none of them had ever foreseen for their younger selves.
Care aside, the spectre of finances also looms large for those of us in and beyond middle age. Ask anyone in middle age if they have thought through life post retirement, and a mix of panic and quick changes of subject follow.
Helping my parents for over 20 years, both financially and overseeing parts of their care, I know it can be daunting. Neither parent had thought through their post-retirement, and like many of their culture and generation, I suppose that they hoped that property values; the universe would provide; or at worst, their offspring would look after them. In the hope of avoiding the situation my parents found themselves in, I’ve been exploring gaps in information and products available to those in their 50s, 60s and 70s.
I’ve always gravitated towards challenges that mean something to me. Simplifying how we and our families care for us as our independence declines is a challenge I’m passionate about. I’m confident my past experiences have seasoned me enough to build, adapt and navigate through uncertainty, and I’m technologically curious enough to find the right balance of technology and people. On paper, the mission I am joining promises the opportunity to learn, network and perhaps link up with a team to create something interesting and new. What exactly that is, I’m not sure and I go in with no pre-conceived propositions.
If serendipity does not bestow its gift and the right people don’t coalesce around the right proposition, I’m confident I would have learned a great deal by the end of six months, regardless. Whether a year or two down the line, this will have been the right decision remains to be seen. For now, I go in with eyes and ears open.