Planning for Solo Agers

WHO IF NOT ME?™You’ve built a life of independence.Make sure it stays that way.

If you're aging without a spouse, partner, or adult child who will automatically step in, there is a question traditional financial planning often leaves unanswered:

Who handles the things you handle today if, someday, you can't?

  • Your money.
  • Your healthcare.
  • Your home.
  • Your decisions.
  • Your care.
  • Your legacy.

DON'T LEAVE IT TO CHANCE.™

A Definition, Without the Label

You may already be a Solo Ager without using the term.

A Solo Ager is someone approaching later life without a spouse, partner, or adult child automatically positioned to coordinate financial, healthcare, housing, care, legal, and personal decisions on their behalf. It is not a legal category and it says nothing about how connected a person is. It describes a planning situation: the person holding everything together is also the only one positioned to do so.

You might be single. Divorced. Widowed. Never married.

You may have children who live far away, children you do not expect to place in a caregiving role, or no children at all.

You may have close friends, siblings, nieces, nephews, neighbors, and a full social life.

The label matters less than the planning question:

If you are the person currently coordinating your financial and personal life, who steps in when you need help?

Nearly three in ten adults age 65 or older live alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Many more have family, but not family positioned to step in.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Living Arrangements Varied Across Age Groups (2022 data, published May 2024)

Where Traditional Planning Stops

Most financial plans answer:“Will I have enough?”

A Solo Ager may also need to answer:

  • Who will notice?
  • Who will decide?
  • Who will advocate?
  • Who will pay the bills?
  • Who will coordinate care?
  • Who will protect me from mistakes or exploitation?
  • Who knows where everything is?
  • Who knows what I want?

WHO IF NOT ME?™

A plan built for a couple or a multi-generation family quietly assumes someone is standing by. It assumes a spouse notices the change, an adult child makes the calls, and somebody knows where the documents are. When those assumptions are not true, the financial plan can be excellent and the life around it can still be exposed.

The WHO IF NOT ME?™

Solo Ager Readiness Check

Free · About 5 Minutes · No Email Required

Find out how prepared your life is to keep working if you temporarily or permanently cannot manage every part of it yourself.

  • Fifteen statements across five areas. Answer Yes, Not yet, or I'm not sure.
  • Only Yes scores. Uncertainty counts as a gap, because it usually is one.
  • Your answers stay in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, and no email is required to see your result.
  • You will get an overall score, five category scores, and the three areas we would address first.
Take the Solo Ager Readiness Check →

About 5 minutes. Your answers stay in your browser.

DON'T LEAVE IT TO CHANCE™

Having people in your life is not the same thing as having a plan.

Someone being willing to help you is not the same as that person having the legal authority, information, instructions, resources, and professional support necessary to help you. You don't need children to have a plan. But you do need a plan.

  1. The right people

    A primary and a backup for each important role, chosen deliberately, asked directly, and realistically able to serve.

  2. Financial structure

    Cash flow, reserves, and a plan that can keep operating without you, including the cost of buying support others receive from family.

  3. Legal authority

    Documents, prepared with qualified counsel, that let the people you chose actually act: for your finances, your healthcare, and your property.

  4. Information

    The accounts, contacts, instructions, and wishes an authorized person would need, organized so they can be found in days, not months.

  5. Backup systems

    What happens when the first plan does not work: a second person, a professional fiduciary, a care manager, and a review rhythm that keeps everything current.

The Frame That Matters

This isn't planning for dependence.It's planning to protect independence.

The objective is not to assume something will go wrong. The objective is to make intentional decisions while you are healthy, engaged, and fully capable of making them.

Every decision you make now is a decision nobody else has to guess at later. That is what independence looks like in practice: not doing everything yourself forever, but deciding, in advance and on your own terms, how things should go if you cannot.

Your Personal Board of Directors

You may not need a bigger family.You may need a better-defined team.

Solo Agers often assemble their support structure on purpose, from people and professionals who each hold a defined role. The roster is different for everyone. What matters is that the roles are identified, coordinated, and understood before they are needed.

  • Trusted friend or family member

    The person who would notice, show up, and make the first calls.

  • Financial advisor

    Keeps the financial plan coherent and coordinates the other professionals around it.

  • Estate-planning attorney

    Prepares and updates the documents that give your people the legal authority to act.

  • CPA or tax professional

    Handles tax matters and stays reachable to whoever steps in.

  • Healthcare advocate

    Speaks for your medical wishes, whether a family member, a friend, or a professional patient advocate.

  • Geriatric care manager

    Finds, arranges, and supervises care if you need help at home or elsewhere.

  • Insurance professional

    Reviews the coverage that pays for care, protects income, and funds your wishes.

  • Trustee or professional fiduciary

    An individual or institution that can manage assets or decisions when a family member is not the right fit.

  • Property and home support

    The people who keep the house, the bills, and the practical logistics running.

  • Other specialists

    Elder-law counsel, a daily-money manager, a patient navigator, or whoever your situation calls for.

The right team varies. The important question is whether the roles are identified, coordinated, and understood before they are needed.

Whitwell & Co. does not provide all of these services. Our role is the financial plan and the coordination around it: helping you see where the roles are undefined, and helping the financial decisions fit the people and professionals you choose. Legal, tax, insurance, and care roles belong to the appropriately licensed professionals.

The 48-Hour Test

Could someone pass your 48-Hour Test?

If you were temporarily unable to manage your life, could an authorized person locate the critical information they need within 48 hours? Not eventually. Within two days, while decisions are being made without you.

What they would need to find

  • Estate documents
  • Financial accounts
  • Your financial advisor
  • Your CPA
  • Your attorney
  • Insurance information
  • Physicians
  • Medication list
  • Healthcare documents
  • Property information
  • Recurring bills
  • Emergency contacts
  • Digital-access instructions
  • Pet-care instructions, if applicable
  • Important personal wishes

An organization concept, not a cybersecurity protocol

Do not place passwords, account numbers, or other sensitive credentials in an unsecured document. The goal is that an authorized person knows what exists, who to call, and where the secure originals and access instructions are kept, not that everything sits in one unprotected file.

The Financial Plan

Independence has an economic architecture.

For a Solo Ager, the financial plan has to do more than fund retirement. It has to keep working during the years when you may be buying the support, coordination, and care that other households receive informally. A plan that has considered these questions is designed to hold up when life changes; no plan can promise a particular outcome.

  • Sustainable cash flow

    Income that covers the life you want without depending on your ongoing attention to run it.

  • Longevity

    A plan built for a long life, not an average one.

  • Inflation

    Costs that rise over decades, especially for care and services.

  • Healthcare costs

    Premiums, out-of-pocket exposure, and what Medicare does not cover.

  • Housing changes

    The cost, timing, and liquidity of modifying, supporting, or changing your home.

  • Long-term-care risk

    How care would be paid for, and how that changes the rest of the plan.

  • Liquidity

    Money that can be reached quickly, by an authorized person, when it is needed.

  • Emergency reserves

    A cushion sized for a household of one, where there is no second income to absorb a shock.

  • Investment risk

    Risk calibrated to the plan's job, not to a generic age-based rule.

  • Tax strategy

    Withdrawal sequencing, account structure, and charitable intent, planned ahead.

  • Paying for support services

    Transportation, household help, care coordination, and advocacy as line items, not afterthoughts.

  • Financial decision-making during incapacity

    Who has the authority, the information, and the instructions to keep the plan running.

Housing and Care

Your home is part of the plan.

Housing is not merely a real-estate decision. For a Solo Ager it can involve, all at once, questions that a couple or a family would usually split among several people.

  • Independence
  • Transportation
  • Social connection
  • Physical accessibility
  • Proximity to care
  • Maintenance
  • Cost
  • Liquidity
  • Lifestyle

The options, thought through in advance

These are options to consider, not stages everyone moves through. Many people never leave the first one. The point is to know what you would choose before a health event chooses for you.

  1. Current home

    Stay where you are, with the finances, support, and logistics already arranged to make that work.

  2. Modify the current home

    Change the house before the house becomes the problem: access, stairs, bathrooms, and the systems that keep it running.

  3. Home support

    Bring services in: transportation, household help, care coordination, in-home care.

  4. A different home or community

    A smaller home, a different city, or a community designed around the next chapter.

  5. Assisted living or another care environment

    A setting where daily support and care are part of the arrangement, chosen on your terms rather than in a rush.

Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. Each has a cost, a timeline, and a set of people who would need to make it happen.

Why Whitwell

Financial planning is only one piece.The pieces need to work together.

Investments, cash flow, taxes, estate documents, insurance, housing decisions, and outside professionals are often handled separately, by different people, on different timelines.

Whitwell's role is to help clients see the whole picture and coordinate financial decisions around one coherent plan. That is the third step of the Whitwell Framework: coordinate all the moving parts so decisions are not made in silos.

For Solo Agers, that coordination can become particularly important, because the system should not depend entirely on one person's memory, attention, or availability. Ours included.

What we do, and what we coordinate

What Whitwell & Co. does
  • Financial planning and investment advice as an SEC-registered, fee-only fiduciary
  • Modeling the economics of independence: longevity, care, housing, liquidity, and tax
  • Identifying the gaps in your people, authority, information, and backup systems
  • Coordinating the financial plan with the attorneys, tax professionals, insurance professionals, and care specialists you choose
What Whitwell & Co. does not do
  • Draft legal documents or provide legal advice (your estate-planning attorney does)
  • Prepare tax returns (tax and accounting services are offered through Whitwell Tax & Ledger Co., a separate firm under common leadership)
  • Sell insurance or annuities (insurance and annuity products are offered through Living Prepared, LLC, an affiliated firm, and its licensed insurance professionals)
  • Provide medical advice or act as your care manager, guardian, trustee, or executor

Solo Ager planning: common questions

What is a Solo Ager?
A Solo Ager is a person approaching later life without a spouse, partner, or adult child automatically positioned to provide or coordinate support. It is a planning description, not a legal definition. Someone can be widowed, divorced, never married, or a parent whose children live far away, and still be a Solo Ager. The term was popularized by aging researcher Sara Zeff Geber; the planning question behind it is older than the label.
Do Solo Agers need a different kind of financial plan?
Often, yes. The investment plan may look similar, but the surrounding plan usually needs more attention. Cash flow has to fund support that other households receive informally. Longevity, healthcare, and long-term-care costs fall on one person. Housing decisions carry more weight. Incapacity planning and estate planning have to work without a spouse or adult child as the default decision-maker. Coordination among professionals matters more because there is no family member quarterbacking it.
What happens if I don't have someone I want to name as financial power of attorney?
This is a common situation and it has answers, but they are legal decisions, so discuss them with qualified estate-planning counsel. Depending on your state and circumstances, options may include a professional fiduciary, a trust company, a bank trust department, or a licensed private fiduciary, sometimes paired with a trusted friend in a monitoring role. Whitwell & Co. does not provide legal advice; we can help you think through the financial implications of each structure and coordinate with the attorney you choose.
How should Solo Agers plan for long-term care?
Start by modeling the risk honestly: how likely you are to need care, for how long, at what cost, and where. Then look at the resources available to fund it, your preferences for where you would want care to happen, the support network that would manage it, and whether insurance belongs in the picture. Insurance evaluation is handled by licensed insurance professionals; for Whitwell clients that is typically Living Prepared, LLC, an affiliated firm. The financial plan should show what care would do to everything else, so the decision is made with the whole picture in view.
Who should be on a Solo Ager's professional team?
It depends on the roles that need to be filled, not on a fixed list. Most Solo Agers benefit from a financial advisor who coordinates the plan, an estate-planning attorney, a tax professional, and a designated healthcare advocate. Many add a geriatric care manager, an insurance professional, a trustee or professional fiduciary, and someone who handles the home and the practical logistics. The important question is whether each role is identified, the person has agreed, and the roles are coordinated.
What if I have plenty of friends and family?
Excellent. Relationships are the raw material of a good plan. But having relationships is different from explicitly assigning roles, authority, and backup responsibility. A friend who would gladly help still needs to know they have been chosen, needs the legal authority to act, needs to know where the information is, and needs to understand what you would want. A strong plan turns goodwill into defined roles.
When should Solo Ager planning begin?
Before a crisis, ideally while you have maximum flexibility and full decision-making capacity. There is no specific age. The best time is whenever you notice that your plan quietly depends on you continuing to manage everything yourself. The decisions get easier, cheaper, and more your own the earlier they are made.
Does Whitwell & Co. provide legal, tax, or insurance services?
No. Whitwell & Co., LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser that provides investment advisory and financial planning services. It does not sell insurance or annuity products and does not provide tax preparation or legal services. Whitwell & Co. is affiliated with Living Prepared, LLC, a licensed insurance and annuity firm, and is under common leadership with Whitwell Tax & Ledger Co., a tax and accounting firm. These are separate legal entities offering distinct services, and legal work is always done by your own attorney.

For educational and informational purposes only. This assessment is a general planning diagnostic and does not constitute individualized investment, legal, tax, insurance, or medical advice. Advisory services are offered through Whitwell & Co., LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Consult the appropriate qualified professional regarding your specific circumstances. Full disclosures. Last reviewed 2026-09-03.

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