The New Retirement Resorts
Instead of moving his mother into an assisted-living apartment three years ago, Eli Portnoy rented condos for both of them, two floors apart, at Canyon Ranch Hotel & Spa in Miami Beach, Fla.
His mother received many of the same services and amenities that would have come with an assisted-living facility—on-site doctors, healthy meals, a gym and all kinds of wellness classes—but in a far more appealing setting.
The kicker? Mr. Portnoy, a 57-year-old branding consultant, estimates that he saved $50,000 to $75,000 a year—even including round-the-clock private nursing aides—over what he would have paid for an assisted-living apartment luxurious enough for his mother, a retired New York art dealer who died in December at age 90.
A growing number of intrepid retirees, wary of spending years in an assisted-living facility or staying at home, are opting for arrangements that provide them with a full range of services and a greater sense of adventure—fully staffed homes in Costa Rica, backyard bungalows on their children’s property, so-called cohousing arrangements, full-time spa living and even serial cruises.
Assisted living emerged in the 1990s as a popular alternative model to nursing homes for older people who no longer felt comfortable on their own but were too independent for a nursing home. An estimated 733,200 people in the U.S. lived in an assisted-living facility as of 2010, the latest data available, according to the American Health Care Association’s National Center for Assisted Living.
Typically, assisted living consists of a small apartment with services that may or may not cost extra, such as medicine management, personal care, housekeeping and laundry, meals, activities and transportation to doctors’ appointments.
Now, some pioneers are piecing together similar services on their own in a setting more to their liking—often with help from their adult children—and at a price comparable to or cheaper than an assisted-living apartment. A one-bedroom unit in an assisted-living facility cost as much as $9,500 a month in 2011 before any add-on services, according to long-term-care insurer Genworth GNW -1.82% .