As our senior population continues to live more independent and diverse lives way into their 70s and 80s it means we must start to prepare for our older years much earlier.Age Concern, the charity, which works for a better life for Bermuda's seniors, is turning its advocacy power to encourage more people to start planning early for their later years while they are still working.The charity's Campaign for Successful Ageing intends to examine how we can work together to better prepare for our ageing society that is set to boom over the next 20 years, according to Age Concern's director Claudette Fleming. It also helps set the framework for key stakeholders to implement policies to support successful ageing, such as the Government's National Ageing Strategy.“We want to make people more aware of how they can start preparing now for the future and for any financial hardships,” explains Ms Fleming.While the charity is well known for its focus on advocating for seniors and helping to “link seniors to services that meet their needs”, there is a very real need for people to consider planning for their later years as early as their 30s, says Ms Fleming.“The decisions that we make when we are young will impact the way we will live in the future,” she says. “We are trying to help people understand these choices by putting on information sessions and seminars so that people start to prepare now.”Many Bermudians in their 50s and older are having to deal with ageing parents as more of the population live longer. In this respect there is a need to prepare for the eventuality of needing care when we are older, but it is also important to continue to stay active and healthy after we've turned 50 so that we can prevent burdening our children and society when we do eventually need the care.“We need to consider all aspects of the ageing population and integrating needs to help us live to a healthy age by examining our lifestyle,” says Ms Fleming. “We want to drill down on some of these points to give people things to think about so they can start to prepare now.“Who knew we would have the economic problems we are currently experiencing? We can't settle with putting all of our eggs in one investment basket. We currently have a large part of the older population who have real estate but can't sell a house these days. There are a variety of things that we can do to get ahead when we start early. We hope to help people understand what their end result might look like and how they can prepare.”The charity will focus on the five categories of the its ageing successfully framework to address the issues for the seniors in our society. The five categories are financial security, healthcare and disease prevention, integrated programmes and services, advocacy, and planning and accountability.“People need to be aware of their rights when they turn 65,” Ms Fleming adds. “Do you know what you are entitled to from your social insurance contributions? Or healthcare do you know what's going to be available to you?“What we are finding is that if we don't address these issues seriously now, for us as advocates (for seniors), that is not acceptable.”