In this episode of Next Act Ninjas, Rachael Van Pelt walks you through the tough—but essential—decision of whether your aging parent can safely “age in place” or needs to relocate. You’ll discover simple DIY safety scans, low‑cost fixes (non‑slip mats, grab bars, lever handles), cost‑effective remodels, smart‑home tech pros and cons, and values‑driven conversation strategies to keep your loved one independent, secure, and thriving at home.
In this episode of Next Act Ninjas, Rachael Van Pelt walks you through the tough—but essential—decision of whether your aging parent can safely “age in place” or needs to relocate. You’ll discover simple DIY safety scans, low‑cost fixes (non‑slip mats, grab bars, lever handles), cost‑effective remodels, smart‑home tech pros and cons, and values‑driven conversation strategies to keep your loved one independent, secure, and thriving at home.
Chapters
00:00 Navigating Aging in Place Decisions
02:40 Should They Stay or Should They Go?
04:42 Whole Home, Whole Person Safety Assessment
05:38 Simple Home Upgrades to Improve Safety
06:30 Major Home Upgrades for Aging in Place
10:18 Financial Considerations for Home Modifications
11:57 Muscle Strength: The Most Important Upgrade for Aging in Place
13:34 Recognizing When to Transition
14:28 Innovations in Aging Solutions
Download your free DIY Room-by-room Home Safety Scan: http://bit.ly/4iVhV6t
Hey, hey, welcome back to Next Act Ninjas, the go-to podcast for mastering your health and wealth longevity. I'm your host, Rachael Van Pelt, and today we're going to wade into one of the more emotionally charged longevity topics, how to help your parent decide whether they're going to be able to age in place or they're going to have to move. It's a tough one, isn't it? If you've ever held your breath while your mom tottered on a step stool to reach her favorite serving platter or you winced when your dad barely avoided tripping as he shuffled over that curled kitchen rug, this episode is for you. We're going to tackle when it makes sense to remodel, install smart home tech, or just devote more time to improving physical function. More importantly, how to navigate the delicate family politics of offering help without trampling anyone's pride.
Let me start with a story. Last year, one of my clients called me in tears. Her 78-year-old father slipped in the bathroom and shattered his hip. Although Medicare covered most of the $34,000 price tag for his surgery and initial rehab, her fiercely independent father suddenly needed help with the most basic activities of daily living. They had to hire a home health aide long-term to help him age in place. The kicker, it probably would have only taken a good non-slip bathroom mat and a properly anchored grab bar to keep him upright. A small $100 investment could have saved thousands of dollars and his loss of independence.
And falls, they don't just hurt mobility and independence, they're a killer. In 2021 alone, 38,000 people died due to falls. And that number keeps rising. More than 14 million Americans over the age of 65 report a fall every year. That's roughly one in four older adults. And that only accounts for the people who actually report their falls. Far more falls go unreported. The thing is, most people in this age group, they don't die directly from the fall, but due to downstream complications such as infections, blood clots, and chronic illnesses that were set in motion by the fall. It leads to further hospitalizations, immobility, and disability. But these aren't just numbers, they're families, people whose stories detoured into an unwelcome chapter.
But back to the simple home fixes like non-slip mats and grab bars. Before you rush to Home Depot or you call in a contractor, let's ask the hard question. Should your parent even stay in that house? 90% of boomers say they want to age in place and yet researchers estimate that barely 60% of current single-family homes can be modified to full accessibility without doing structural gymnastics or investing a huge amount of money. Nostalgia sometimes smothers common sense.
I want you to press pause just long enough to weigh three variables: the person, the property, and the neighborhood. Now if your dad's arthritis is mild, his home is a one-story ranch with a gentle slope to the mailbox, that's great. But if your mom's memory is slipping and her house sits on a hill with 30 steps to the front door, a shiny new stair lift might help, but it's not going to erase the bigger conversation that you're going to have with her about relocating. A courageous reality check now is far better than a panicked decision later after a fall.
I'm going to assume that they prefer to stay put. If so, the very first remodel that has to happen is in the living room, not with power tools, but with conversation. So I want you to pour some coffee, silence your personal preferences, and ask your parent to paint a future-forward picture. Ask something along the lines of "What does your ideal Tuesday look like five years from now"? And then I want you to listen for clues about social life, hobbies, the kind of privacy that they expect, the safety that they need. Frame the discussion around their values, and that is going to reduce defensiveness. It's going to open up doors to practical talk about grab bars and shower benches later on. You're not taking control, you're giving them agency.
Once their values are on the table, then you can do what's called a whole house, whole person audit. Now I'm a huge fan of hiring an occupational therapist to come do this. They'll come do a home safety evaluation. And Medicare Part B will even cover the cost if your parent's physician writes a referral. The OT walks around, they go through every room of the house, they keep their eyes peeled for tripping hazards, they look for reach-range problems, lighting, and even medication placement.
If professional help isn't an option, then I encourage you to complete a home safety scan yourself. I've provided a free DIY downloadable in the show notes. Take the time just to observe your parents' mobility, their eyesight, their cognition, their continence. The goal for you is to get clarity and to look at things that are preventable. I don't want you doom scrolling the risk list.
There's a lot of low hanging fruit that you can harvest right away. For example, you can replace twist knob faucets and doorknobs with lever handles that are easy on arthritic fingers. You can add motion sensor LED strips under cabinets and along hallways to illuminate dark areas. You can swap throw rugs for non-slip area mats that have rubber backing. You can get rid of that wobbly towel bar and install a properly anchored grab bar instead. And fortunately today there are nice options that look more boutique spa than hospital ward, so there's no need to completely ditch aesthetics. I realize these fixes probably sound trivial, but remember two thirds of falls happen inside the home, not on an icy sidewalk. So that small investment is well worth it.
After this simple DIY comes the structural upgrades. Those are the projects for the CAP certified contractors rather than weekend warriors. You know, the national average for a typical aging in place reno falls somewhere in the three to $15,000 range. That price tag's going to depend of course on square footage, complexity, and what region of the country you live in.
Of course, the budgets balloon fast in bathrooms because water plus slick tile equals a surgeon's new Porsche. A zero-threshold shower with textured flooring, a handheld sprayer, a fold down teak bench, all of that will easily cost you around $8 to $10,000 on average. Although you might be able to get away with a prefab insert that starts around $700 if you're handy and the plumbing stack cooperates.
Add to that comfort-height toilets, widened doorways, rocker panel light switches, a ramp or a ground-level entrance and you've got a great start on thriving in place. But I always want you to prioritize upgrades that are based on likelihood of injury multiplied by the severity of the outcome. For example, you want to prioritize investing in flat doorway thresholds and non-slip flooring over blowing cash on a remote monitoring system that's not going to catch your mom when she stumbles.
The reason tripping hazards matter so much is that there are two physiologic systems that decline quickly with age: proprioception and the righting reflex. Proprioception is your brain's internal GPS. It fades about 1% per year after the age of 50. All that means is that your feet are sending fuzzier data about floor angle and traction to your brain. Meanwhile, your righting reflex is also slowing. That's that lightning fast cascade of muscle firings that helps you snap upright after you stumble. Those delayed reflexes might be microscopic, but on a slick tile, they're the difference between a graceful pivot and a hip shattering fall. That's why a flat zero-threshold entry is way more protective than even the fanciest carbon fiber walker. Now a cane or a walker is going to help after a slip, but a level surface that prevents the slip in the first place is key.
Of course, there are all kinds of high-tech solutions being sold today. There are motion sensors tied to smart bulbs that can light up during a middle-of-the-night bathroom trip. Stove shut-off devices that ping you if burners stay hot too long. There are wearables with AI-driven fall detection that summon help immediately, even if your phone is in another room. It's futuristic and it's fabulous, right? But false alarms can make us complacent. Those monthly subscriptions can snowball. And some of those gadgets just take up our mental bandwidth. They don't really solve any problems. My litmus test for you is simple. Ask yourself, does this tech add a layer of redundancy or does it replace a physical safeguard that we already have, something that already works. I think redundancy is great, but substitution not so much.
Another big problem that I see with many homes is that they simply have too many stairs. That's the kind of thing that can really make it hard for someone to age in place. If the master bedroom is on the second floor and the laundry room is in the basement, that can pose a real problem for older adults, especially if they're not maintaining muscle strength. Sometimes you can move everything to the main floor, but these are the types of renovations that are going to require the big bucks, the big financial outlay, and sometimes they're not even feasible.
But before you write off any renovation as being cost prohibitive, I want you to make sure that you look into assistance programs. Often there are grants or funds available through the Local Area Agency on Aging or the VA. Your state might even offer tax credits for accessibility upgrades. These kinds of subsidies are aimed at keeping people in their homes. So take advantage of them if you can. You might also consider home equity lines of credit or reverse mortgages to help fund those modifications.
Just be sure to run the numbers. You're my financially savvy audience, so I can say this. Do a simple return on investment calculation, an ROI. In this case, the cost of remodeling divided by the cost of assisted living for a year. In many regions of the country, staying out of assisted living for just a few months can pay for the cost of that bathroom remodel. Staying out of assisted living for a year or two could easily pay for moving that master bedroom and bathroom to the main level. The return on investment often turns skeptics into proactive planners, so do the math.
But before you swing a sledgehammer, don't forget to also consider the downsize option. There are homes out there that are already available that check many of the boxes when it comes to safely aging in place. A single-level ranch with a few stairs, wide doorways, levered handles throughout. It's certainly going to require crunching a few more numbers, but it can be a great option for parents who want to stay out of assisted living and remain independent.
Whatever you and your parents decide, remember that no home renovation or downsize is going to compensate for quads of cotton candy. The science shows that a bit of muscle strength is all that it takes to slash the incidence of falls up to 50%. That's huge. And I don't mean that your mom has to go become a bodybuilder. She just has to do a few simple exercises using resistance bands, some balance drills, and maybe a bit of brisk walking. If your parent can't stand up from a chair without using their hands or dead lifting a gallon of milk, I would encourage them to enroll in an evidence-based program, something like Silver Sneakers or any other community class. Correction, encourage them to do this no matter what. Muscle strength is absolutely critical for aging in place. It doesn't just reduce incidence of falls, it is the cornerstone of longevity and staying independent.
I say this all the time, but I'm going to say it again here. Muscle loss is the primary biomarker of aging. What do I mean by that? I mean that the faster someone is losing muscle, the faster they're aging. And the decline isn't just physical, it's mental. Low muscle mass is associated with 60% higher risk of dementia, which in and of itself is going to force someone out of their home prematurely, fall or no fall. So make sure that you and your parents understand this. Aging in place isn't just about home safety and accessibility. It's about staying physically and mentally strong enough to maintain independence for as long as possible.
And hey, I'd be doing you a disservice if I painted aging in place as a viable option for everyone. There is a line where staying becomes more perilous than leaving. And that line is usually drawn by debilitating disability, cognitive decline, and caregiver burnout. If your parent can no longer follow multi-step directions or safely move about their house, or if you're sacrificing your own career and your own health to provide constant supervision, that ranch style home with safety features is just a prison, a pretty prison, but a prison at that. As much as they may want to live there indefinitely, they're not going to have the option for long. Hold space for that possibility and revisit the conversation every year. I know it's a hard conversation to have, but keep doing it from a place of love and understanding.
Now the good news is the future's bright. There's a lot of great innovation going on. There are backyard cottages or ADUs that are popping up all over cities as people look for multi-generational solutions. They're making things like pneumatic vacuum elevators that fit inside a standard closet. Soon we're going to have humanoid robots that fold laundry and keep our elders company. None of these things erase the basics though of good lighting, safe flooring and leg strength, but they do widen the menu of options that we have far beyond just "stick granny in a nursing home".
So here's my challenge for you. First, before you price a single grab bar, please make sure that you have that initial conversation with your parents. Get clear on their values and their desires. Second, complete a whole house safety scan. Remember, you're going to find my free checklist in the show notes. And third, just pick one quick modification and schedule it within 30 days. Momentum really does matter.
Our homes represent safety and security, don't they? Empowering our parents to live out their days where they feel safe and secure is priceless. And if aging in place isn't in the cards for them, at least you can help them transition to something that preserves their autonomy for as long as possible. If you need help with that, hop on my calendar for a free consult. I'd love to help. The link is in the show notes.
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Next Act Ninjas. Until next time, live well, love more, age less, my friends.