Sigh Aldric, I don’t think there are easy solutions to your Auntie Sim’s situation. Having enough money is a necessary first step but ageing gracefully in place also means a lot of enabling infrastructure needs to be available. And our societies (yours and mine) have only just begun grappling with these questions.

For instance, the home environment needs to be adapted to the specialised requirements of the elderly - non-slip surfaces, grab bars, rounded surfaces instead of sharp edges, etc. But the availability of these things, and the services to arrange them coherently in a living spacd, is extremely limited, and there is no financing mechanism to assist seniors to get these things if they need them (unlike the developed countries which have had to deal with an ageing population earlier).

I have hopes Singapore can find the solution and be a model for the rest of the region. But in Malaysia, I fear we’ll end up a society that “grows old before it gets rich.”