This book is a complete guide to Continuing Care (also known as Life-care) Retirement Communities.  It will tell you what they are, how they operate, what they offer, how they differ from each other, how to find them, how to find out which one is right for you, and how to proceed if you decide you want to live in one.

            Much more than that, it charts the psychological process one needs to traverse in order to give up the known for the unknown.  Make no mistake, it is an emotional and sometimes scary business to leave one’s familiar home and move into a new community that may, or may not, be as wonderful as the brochures say it is.

            So why do it?  There are excellent reasons, and you will find them all as you read on.  You will learn the advantages and disadvantages of Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs), you will learn what pitfalls they might entail and how you can avoid them when you make a choice.  You will find out what to look for, what to steer clear of, what you have a right to expect, how to discriminate among various kinds of contracts, and how to make the transition when you move.

            I wrote this book because when my husband and I became interested in the CCRC concept, in 1995, we had no idea how to get information.  There was nothing in print that told us what we needed to know, and we spent a huge amount of time and money doing it the hard way.  I would have given a great deal for a book like this one.

            Much of the nitty-gritty information—tables, checklists, bibliography, resources, etc.—is in the Appendix at the back of the book.  The heart of the book is the account of the journey—psychological, emotional, and very personal—that my husband and I took to get from our happy home in East Hampton, New York, to a Continuing Care Retirement Community in a suburb of Philadelphia.  It often felt like a journey to Mars.

            Your experience will, of course, be different from ours, but much of it will be similar.  And I hope that at least some of the difference will have been made by the information you find in this book.  I wish you a safe journey, with some fun along the way, and a happy landing.