As many knows, I play with very large hoods and use supporters which I don't play but treated as a playables and plan to set up a retirement area for the elders as I also use homes for sick, military recruits and prisoners which I only play enough to age them up when necessary. While elders can be useful to take care of orphaned grandchildren, they take up extra space when playing 3-4 generation families.

My issues is the pre-made only live up to 15 days while everyone else can live long as 50 sim-days with my custom lifespan (Simlogical Ageicon, I know vanilla is about 30sim days) which can make a bunch of them live until they are about 110 years old in real age, so I'm debating how incorporate it. Since I play these type of sims as supporters, I won't bother much with their actual homes..

But wondering:

It depends upon the hood. I don't have a retirement home in any of them. My sims live on their own or with family members.

In my Elsewhere communist hood, people are never allowed to retire. They must hold a job form their teen years to death.

In the handmaid hood or space colony, people retire when they are ready. I usually let them roll the want before they retire. Sometimes I let them take another part-time job or even start a new career if they seem to want to or they need the income.

You can now fix the issue with pre-made elders not living very long with Chris Hatch's Neighborhood Age Correct file. Just pop it into your Downloads and load a lot in the neighborhood you want it applied to. After a minute or two of the game running, you get a pop up saying that the ages have been corrected. When it's done, remove the file from your Downloads until you need it again. Not only will your elders be adjusted to fit your custom life-span, so will all other pre-mades in the hood. I've found it a very handy thing. I believe you can find a link to it in the Chris Hatch thread that lists his family friendly mods.

Edit: As for elders, I did put several pre-mades into a house headed by the Goodies. It wasn't a retirement home, exactly, as those without jobs quickly rolled wants to have one! They were there mostly to 'age out'. For the most part, they were left to do as they would which resulted in some spicy drama. A few did manage to move on to something different. Leo Wilkie had a very late stage marriage which resulted in four boys! Vynn Scott I aged down and she's now married (with child) to a former townie. A couple of pre-made elders escaped my clutches, mostly because they rarely showed up as walk-bys and I made the mistake of allowing my game to generate new apartment neighbors (half of whom I swear are elders), so I declared the exercise moot.

Playable pre-mades and townies who have aged up to elder still live in their own homes. Most of them still have non-adult children at home, so that keeps them busy. Those who don't are played or not played depending on if I have any ideas on what to do with them. I just played the Goodies as they have some large goals they want to fulfill before they die. The Cookes are party central for their aging group of friends. The Picasos I more or less leave alone, as they have much smaller wants that don't need a lot of time to top up. I may move some elders into the communal house again later, it will just depend on how things go.

My retirement home elders spend their days doing whatever their want panel says. I set them up with a pool table and a poker table, and hire a butler, and put enough solar panels on the roof that no one has to pay the bills.

The sims who go there are sims who have no interest in taking care of their grandkids, who have no grandkids to take care of, who live alone. Even if they don't have much money, collectively, the retirement home has enough money for everyone to be comfortable.

In my megahood, the starting residents are the Oldies, the Goodies, Carlos Contender, Catherine Viejo and Betty Goldstine. Betty usually gets a job, the other six usually make sure every item that can be used for woohoo gets used for woohoo. The Goodies sit around with their noses in a book half the day, Herb has his granddaughters over to play pool, while Coral teaches them poker. (Hell would freeze over before they'd live with Mary Sue and her husband. Just saying.) The butler takes care of the cooking, cleaning, gardening, ordering food, etc.

Well in my game I modded the Elder Stage so that it only lasts 7-15 days (I think 20 is possible) and modded the Adult stage to be 39 days. So in my hood elderhood only represents the very advanced age of a person.
Elders either live with one of their children and take care of the grandkids, or they live by themselves and I just use the Ade Adjuster to age them along with the neighbourhood each rotation. "

That's my extend of elder play.

Elders are my least favorite age to play. Many of my retired elders spend a lot of time meditating with game speed maxed so that their (boring) turn in my rotation goes by as quickly as possible. Since only their relationships decay while meditating (their motives don't), once or twice each rotation they'll spend time talking on the phone to their friends and relatives, who no doubt are simply doing so to get some of their insurance money when Grimmy finally comes to take them away.

Occasionally I'll send them off some days to Chris Hatch's Senior Center if they need to meet new people. But usually by the time they are elders, they've done everything they've set out to do and I'm counting the days before I can put their house back on the market.

I rarely use elders for anything other than storytelling, and I don't think I've given any TS2 sims jobs since... maybe 2008 or something? And I rarely let them age up tp the elder stage. For regular gameplay I've just "abandoned" the still-adult parents and started over with some of their kids in another house. In most cases they get to live forever.

Devon Aster:
Well, My hood is currently going through both war and plagues right now with 30% (rolled twice) of being send to military, die from disease, send to hospital or a victim from the war (Military recruits and Hospital sims won't be played except for aging them up and each rolled how many days they will stay there or live there permanently). So even if they live to 100, many might die earlier to due to the rolls. I also have Insiminator which I can subtracts the age and use Simlogical Age left to check how long they live. If they grow up in red, they barely live to the late 70s, so I find the aging get balanced.

I just let what few elderly Sims I have live a relax retirement life, since they work hard all their life. I have one who enjoy writing novels, and another selling art work.
Also I usually let my Elders reach platinum by letting them reach new skills level, they seem to be very happy at that point and not in a bad mood.
I don't have a retirement / Nursing home ( I hate those places my mother died in one. ) I only have a few Elders because in my game I have the fountain of youth I play with aging off.

I had two retirement homes in my old large hood. Part of how I decided who and where was based on money. It costs money to join one of those communities, both were pricey but the deluxe home full of hot tubs, pool tables and really expensive high comfort furniture was super duper pricey. The other more modest home had some crafting items along with majong a swimming pool and plenty of room to garden. This kind of dealt with two issues the first being what to do with elder sims and the second how to keep my sims from becoming uber-wealthy. I also had a funeral tax so that if the sim still lived with their family they still got hit for a large chunk of cash. I used Monique's computer to extract the funds.

As for what they did will they mostly enjoyed themselves. If the home itself would start to gather excessive funds I would use them to take all residents on a holiday or throw a massive party.

I also used to hate my elders and find them boring. They inevitably ended up being fastforwarded through the last days of their lives, or helping raise their grandchildren. Then I figured out why they suck so much. It's my fault - cause I don't have any goals for them.

Exploring Wants-Based play, I have discovered that there are so many other ways to play sims. It doesn't just have to be about getting a job and raising kids - just like life!
loc
Take Gretchin Asimov. First her older wife Mary-Sue (formerly Pleasant) died, and her elder lover, Joe Carr, died. Now she's an elder herself. She retired and I thought - what am I going to do with you? Her daughter sold the family home to live in a party house and my other elders are locked in the old patterns of raising other people's children (or their own).

I put her in an apartment and did what she told me. I found it passed incredibly quickly.

I will say the best thing for elders for me is - Community Time project - Repeating the same day they just spent downtown would drive me crazy.
Also, going on vacation counts as real time for me, so sometimes they spend 90% of their retirement days on vacation.

My elders only retire when they roll a want to or reach 70.

Playable elders most times live in extended families with grown children and grandchildren. Some may move to the retirement community that I have uploaded here.

I try and age all townies/NPC's who are safe to age up a lifespan every now and then starting with A_B names. Townies/NPC's who have been aged to elder get sent to my other all in one retirement home (also uploaded here) The burglar Alan Somebody left because I needed a sim to hold down my playable crooks lair but normally once there, the group house is the end of the line. I have a caretaker who does the work and the elders do whatever they want on free will undirected.

That place looks like this...

They don't even get makeovers, I just age them up and move them in.

I have my separate retirement subhood, which is added to a hood as soon as there are a retired elder.
My new hood does not have one yet, but I will make one soon, because some of my first CAS sims are closed to retirement.
There are, of course, Sims that prefer to keep working, so they keep working until the grim reaper shows up. If they are married to a retired spouse, they move to the retirement hood as well.
I regard elders as great contributors to the society, and the play an important role in my hood.

I rarely play elder/retired sims. I recently downloaded the hood "New Arlestown" from here http://www.modthesims.info/d/628918...plot-no-cc.html in where it is a retirement hone lot. Maybe worth a study?

I have a couple of elders rattling about in TT. So far, they've not rolled any wants to retire, nor do they want to quit their jobs. Darrell Walton is currently studying to become a master architect and running his grocery store on his days off. He keeps busy since his breakup with his second wife.

I've built a retirement home, but it looks like it's not going to be used very much because the elders don't believe in being shuffled off to one.

I've also started to make sure the kids visit their parents every day, by teleporting them into visit. Elders can be boring but only if you let them be. Retirement is often the way to die of boredom early.

My elders: (In my big hood, Black Rock Mountain)
Run businesses
Hold family reunions
the retired rock stars perform on weekends, Sundays at the elder hood's town hall is quite popular under all sims,
teach at my unemployment center and at uni (last one with the help of Sophie David''s mods)
help to run the unemployment center where the retired family sims feed the visitors grandma's comfort soup in the winter
take their grandchildren on vacation
garden
the retired general drills his visitors on his obstacle course if they look like they need it
With their career rewards, they give lessons to other sims
And they have some huge parties
A funeral is a big occasion
there are second weddings, sometimes to younger sims, bringing in all kinds of family interactions

I have had no problem at all giving them things to do and I actually really enjoy playing elders.

It's worth it. It's setup like a University dorm style without the mascots. Everyone has an assigned room with a picture on their door and there is a cook that keeps them fed. It's a really fun household and I recommend it just as much as the regular households.

I had to look for it, but there's a nice orphanage lot by Gummilut which when converted for the use, makes a decent retirement home for pixels:http://modthesims.info/d/515092/sun...-orphanage.html

Yes, it does take some renovations, but you can fit in a hottub and other vital necessities of life for elders in the backyard.

I really love this idea! I think I'm also going to have them be the 'family manager' so to speak and make sure she has a relationship with everyone. I just really hate those phone calls lol.

I have, though, never considered moving elders into a retirement home.
Some of them may, however, share a house, farm together, running a business together, etc.
But I am quite happy to not see them as useless enough so that others have to take care of them.

@FranH I have a retirement home uploaded here with hot tubs. http://modthesims.info/d/497990/aut...ement-home.html

Well, I've never yet allowed an Adult to age up to Elder, so all the Elders in my game (of whom I have quite a few) are either pre-mades or I created them in CAS as Elders. I'll never have a "retirement home" as such because I hate the idea of retirement homes almost as much as I hate university tuition fees. All my Elders participate fully in the life of the community. (I have a bit of a vested interest since I'm well past my 60th birthday. I was already past it when I bought the game.)

A few of the pre-mades (Isabella and Patrizio Monty) are already retired at the start of the game, but only two of my Elders have actually retired in game. Olive Specter in Strangetown retired because she told me that she wanted to retire. I believe that may be scripted. I have no idea what she intends to do in her retirement, but I know I'm not going to let her murder any [more] of her neighbours. In Baldrair Bluffs, Romance Elder Callum Croall retired because he wanted to spend more time with his teenage "husband" and other boyfriends/girlfriends. He actually worked quite hard getting promotions in his business career so he could retire with a decent pension. He was Company President when he retired, and he used up all his vacation days before finally stopping work. He's more than happy with his new status.

One limitation with CAS-created Elders is that it's hard to make them retired with a pension. With Callum, I gave him a Business Career job with the Sim Manipulator (it was level 2 -- the highest that the Sim Manipulator would do). I also used the Sim Manipulator to randomize his skills, as I think it's unlikely that anyone could reach his age with no skills whatsoever. I then kept him working hard till he reached a reasonable level in his career before letting him retire.