My Parents Can’t Afford to Retire Early, and I’m Terrified They’ll Have to Start Working Again

Not everyone can, or should, go back to work

A resident of a senior living community in Arlington, Virginia listens to a band play a socially-distanced concert. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Renolds/Getty Images

The line at Trader Joe’s wrapped around the store that morning. I sized up the queue from inside my mom’s car, bug-eyed, sweating, contemplating whether joining the throng was worth the risk. It wasn’t the rain that thwarted me. It was the lack of distance between many of the shoppers who were waiting to step into the store. Some of them couldn’t have been standing more than three or four feet apart from one another. Too dangerous, I decided. I can’t take that chance.

So I drove home, empty-handed and sad. My folks would understand. Maybe we could cook some sort of pasta dish with herbs and frozen veggies for dinner, and I’d try Trader Joe’s again the next day, going early and staking out, as if I were waiting in line for Nine Inch Nails tickets. Maybe that would work.

It was not always going to be like this. Back in early March, my pandemic plan was to self-isolate at my apartment in Boston until the crisis was over. I hadn’t really considered going home. Like many people in their twenties and thirties, I didn’t want to risk getting my folks sick. My dad is 72; my mom is 65 — as senior citizens, they are both in one of the most vulnerable demographics.

I cannot save our parents’ nest egg alone. And they wouldn’t want my money anyway.

What convinced both me and my sister to take the gamble and move back to the old suburban homestead wasn’t the persuasive phone calls from my parents (they worried about our safety) or the white-hot panic spreading through Boston as case numbers flared up. It was the realization that by moving back in with our parents, my sister and I could do all the grocery shopping and gas station fill-ups. We could, in essence, ensure our parents were properly social distancing. This seemed the slightest bit safer than leaving our parents to go it alone during a viral surge. Now here we are, a month later, still converged under one roof, with nobody but each other for company.

So far, things have been good. My sister and I can still work remotely. Our parents can’t, but they’ve found plenty of…