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Living alone with significant functional disabilities leads elderly people to organize themselves, both mentally and practically, in order to lead their daily lives in accordance with their wishes. This requires continuous efforts, both to curb physical pain and to tackle loneliness and finiteness. This paper draws on twenty interviews with people aged eighty and over living in the Canton of Vaud (Switzerland) and receiving care services at home. The concrete situations bring forth what “living and ageing” alone at home implies in terms of the resources, shrewdness, practical strategies, and intimate reasoning that these people use to maintain a satisfactory life balance. The collected stories evoke loneliness and the conceptual apprehension of finiteness. The latter is considered along two complementary and simultaneous lines: living one’s life within “the four walls” and living in an environment “beyond its walls.” We perceive a distinction between vital risks and existential threats and we observe that the prevention of the former can only be done if the latter is kept at bay. The innovative approach of a “clarification interview” used in this research offers renewed prospects for home care.