|
-----------MEMBER
BENEFITS-----------
Mary
Rowland
Personal
Finance Column
April 2008
Planning for
Caring
Rosanne Grande learned first-hand how caring for an
elderly parent can disrupt a child’s life. Because of this experience,
Grande became a specialist in helping people of all ages plan care for
elderly parents. “When I can help others to find more options, I feel as
if I’m saving my mother again,” she says.
Grande’s father died when she was 16, leaving her to
care for her elderly and disabled mother. Her older siblings had families
and careers. Her own dreams of going away to college evaporated because
her mother, who lived in Queens, needed daily care.
Grande went to Pace University in New York. She
married at 18 and moved with her husband to Long Island. Each day she got
up at 4:30 a.m. so she could stop in Queens to plan her mother’s meals and
care on her way to school.
Grande prepared her mother’s lunch because she didn’t
want her turning on the stove when she was in the house alone. She brought
dinner to her mother in the evenings, which put a great strain on her
marriage. She eventually divorced. “It was extremely difficult,” Grande
said.
After her mother died, Grande went on to become a
certified financial planner with a specialty in gerontology. That’s when
she learned that she could have gotten help from a home health aide or
perhaps even purchased a long-term care policy for her mother. “I saw that
there were things I could have done differently for her,” Grande says. “I
did it all on my own.” Here are some of Grande’s suggestions:
For
Younger Members Starting Out
If you’re in your 20s or 30s, your “worry
priorities” probably include completing your education, getting grounded
in a career and, perhaps, starting a family.
But Grande points out that, with changing
demographics, many young people have an almost-elderly parent. “You can be
in your 20s and have a parent in his 70s,” she says. So she suggests that
in planning for your parents’ elder care, the sooner, the better. “Usually
we find that the conversation happens in an emergency situation,” Grande
says. “You want to avoid that.”
She suggests asking parents about what kind of life
and health insurance they have, whether they want to stay in their home or
downsize and whether they have long-term care insurance. “You are not
talking about assets, you are talking about their well-being,” she said.
“They feel their children are looking out for them and it may set them on
a track to get things done.” Make a list of what you will discuss with
your parents including their retirement dreams of travel or creative work
as well as happy memories.
For
Mid-Career Members
If you are in your 40s or 50s, help your
parents make a list of where records such as life insurance policies and
investment assets and debts are kept. Don’t forget the everyday things
such as name and phone number of doctors, information on car and
homeowners insurance, as well as care-taking information, including care
of a spouse and care of pets.
You may want to check on long-term care insurance for
yourself as well as your parents. Benefits can be paid for younger people
who become disabled as well as elderly people. To qualify for benefits, a
policyholder must be unable to perform two out of the six activities
considered essential for daily living, such as dressing and going to the
bathroom. A policy would pay for rehabilitation of a working-age person,
Grande says.
Grande suggests the web site
www.nyspltc.org, which gives information about long-term care issues,
much of it specifically for New York, some of it national, all of it
useful for anticipating what you should do. She also suggests that you
check with your state office for the aging.
For
Pre-Retired/
Retired Members
If you are near or in retirement, you will
want to look at both your parents’ plans for care as well as your own.
Grande mentions a client, a retired couple in their seventies, who took
care of a 98-year-old mother who lived in her own apartment until six
months ago when she died. “Here we have people on a retirement income
responsible for caring for an elderly parent,” she says.
She mentions author Dan Taylor who was entirely
unprepared one night in 2000 when he got a phone call from the police
telling him that his 72-year-old father was in protective custody. His
father could no longer be left alone because he’d been found wandering
about town disoriented and confused.
Taylor knew nothing about elder care and needed to
get up to speed quickly. He saw that the problem was not just his but that
it was national in scope. He wrote The Parent Care Solution to help
others gain the knowledge that for him was hard-won.
His web site, www.theparentcaresolution.com, provides
great ideas for getting started, such as the six critical conversations
you need to have with parents. Questions include: What are we afraid of?
How will we be remembered?
Grande is interested, too, in how illness and care of
elderly family members can affect the entire family. If well planned, an
elderly parent’s care can be a time of triumph for the whole family. Many
services now help family members prepare a life story or memorial for
parents to help them pass on memories and family values. For an example,
see www.memoirs.ca, and turn elder care planning into a memorable time.
Mary Rowland is a nationally known business and
finance writer. The former personal finance columnist for the New
York Times and former co-host of a nationally syndicated radio show, Ms.
Rowland is the author of several investment books and speaks regularly to
consumers and financial planners about investing and personal finance.
MEMBER BENEFITS HOME PAGE |
ubscriptions!
