Domain 3 of 9
body.
Bones, brain, energy — and the cost of caring for all three.
Body is the domain the cheerful retirement imagery works hardest to avoid. The marketing shows people hiking and doing yoga; it does not show the knees that hurt, the energy that flags, the slow recalibration of what a body can and can't do at sixty-eight that it could at forty-eight.
Planning for the body isn't pessimism — it's the opposite. It's deciding, while you still have the latitude, what you'll do to keep moving, what care you'll need and what it will cost, and how you'll handle the parts of aging that don't respond to optimism. The people who do this well aren't the ones who pretend decline won't come. They're the ones who looked at it clearly and made arrangements.
Bearings asks whether you've thought concretely about how your body will change in the next decade, and whether you've made the appointments and the plans you keep meaning to. Not to frighten you — to free you from the low hum of avoiding it.
Planning for the body isn't pessimism. It's the opposite.
What the assessment asks.
A few of the 4 questions that surface this domain — less about whether you've done a task, more about whether you've reached some footing.
- —I'm physically active most days of the week.
- —I have a primary care provider I see regularly.
- —I've factored healthcare and potential long-term care costs into my plans.
- —I have a plan for staying cognitively sharp as I age.
Reading in body.
See where you stand in body.
The assessment takes about fifteen minutes and covers all nine domains. Find your bearings.
Take the assessment