Books for Making the Best of Living Longer

In our work with seniors, caregivers and families, we have come to know well the many challenges they face. To help you benefit from what the experts have to contribute, we have put together booklists in the following categories. The links in each category allow you to purchase any of these resources that you would like to explore in depth. When you click on a book link and then purchase the book from Amazon.com, a portion of the proceeds goes to support WISE.

Aging Well
Aging brings with it the gifts of experience, wisdom and self-knowledge. While it also brings limits and losses, how we approach this time of our lives can deliver tremendous rewards.

Caregiving
If you are care for a loved one, you face not only the challenges of caregiving but also the challenge of having a life of your own without burning out. As people live longer, this trend will affect most of us.

Retirement Planning
Living longer -- or facing retirement earlier in today's business climate -- makes planning ahead for retirement more essential than ever before.

Books on Long-Term Care

The need to place a loved one in long-term care can stir up guilt, anxiety about finances and confusion about how to find the best placement. These resources offer help with the challenges of the long-term care decision.

When Love Gets Tough: The Nursing Home Dilemma by Doug Manning. Facing the decision about moving a parent to a nursing home can be a wrenching process. Manning helps caregivers cope with the normal, natural emotions – including guilt – can be associated with caregiving. Understanding these issues can be particularly helpful when there is more than one member of the family, caregiver or decision maker involved.


Long-Term Care: How to Plan & Pay for It by Joseph Matthews. This book covers many of the decisions that you or a loved one may face as you age. It is a comprehensive guide to the field of long-term care. Being able to make informed decisions before they become emergency decisions can make long-term care much less challenging for all concerned. The process of planning for the possible need for long-term care helps open discussions that can be enormously reassuring when the time for decisions arrives.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Long-Term Care Planning by Marilee Driscoll. This book helps you sort through the baffling web of payment sources for long-term care. Despite the complex subject, the book is highly readable ad easy to understand. While facing the need for long-term care for a loved one, many people may feel they have little information and few options. This book helps break down the barriers to understanding a complex and changing subject.