Category: elder care

At what age are you too old to manage your money?



Here’s the good news:


Here’s the bad news:




  1. Have a spending plan for your retirement years.


The financial risks of dementia

Dementia covers a broad range of mental diseases that cause a gradual decrease in the ability to think and remember.  It often affects a person’s daily functioning and is different from the decline in cognitive abilities that are the usual effects of aging.  The most common type of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease.

About one in ten people get dementia.  It becomes more common with age and it’s estimated that about half of those over age 85 suffer from it in some degree.

As the disease progresses, most people with dementia require a certain amount of skilled care.  Eventually the family will not be able to provide the 24 hour services that the patient requires and they will be placed in a facility designed to provide that care.

According to the NY Times:

On average, the out-of-pocket cost for a patient with dementia was $61,522 — more than 80 percent higher than the cost for someone with heart disease or cancer. The reason is that dementia patients need caregivers to watch them, help with basic activities like eating, dressing and bathing, and provide constant supervision to make sure they do not wander off or harm themselves. None of those costs were covered by Medicare.
For many families, the cost of caring for a dementia patient often “consumed almost their entire household wealth,” said Dr. Amy S. Kelley, a geriatrician at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York and the lead author of a paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

As people age their cognitive abilities deteriorate.  Even before they begin to suffer the effects of dementia, they may become forgetful or lose the ability to focus on their finances.  Obtaining the services of a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) well before this happens – a fiduciary that puts his clients’ interests first – is vital.  And, as people prepare retirement plans, the cost of dementia treatment and care should be one of the things for which they plan.

Getting Financial Help






There is a fairly big difference in the advice sought by






How Advisors Can Help Surviving Spouses

Investopedia published an article we authored.

When the subject of death comes up, a term that’s often used to describe the feelings of those left behind is “loss.” But there is more to that loss than the loss of companionship. There’s also the loss of information, especially if the person who died also handled the family finances.
In my 30 years of experience advising families I have often had to help and council widows who depended on their husbands to manage the family finances. It’s fairly common for families to have several investment relationships. It’s quite rare to find that the spouse who managed the money actually did a good job keeping records and keeping his spouse “in the loop” when it comes to money management. And when her spouse dies, the widow has to deal with a host of organizations whose primary focus is on making sure that they don’t distribute money to anyone who is not entitled to it. The liability is too great. So we typically have a widow dealing with the death of a loved one, plus the Social Security Administration, the husband’s pension plan, and two, three or more brokerage firms who handled the couple’s investments. (For more, see: Estate Planning: 16 Things to Do Before You Die.)

Who Handles the Finances?

One of my earliest experiences was with a widow whose husband took care of all the family finances. He made the investment decisions, paid the bills and balanced the checkbook. He died suddenly and his wife did not know what to do. Childless and with no near relatives, she needed help. (For more, see: Estate Planning for a Surviving Spouse.)
While her husband’s will was up to date, during our first meeting she revealed that she knew nothing about her financial condition. She did not know how much she was worth, what her income sources were or what it cost her to live. It took a while to learn where all the investments were, what her income sources were and how much she needed to maintain her lifestyle. (For related reading, see: Advanced Estate Planning: Information for Caregivers and Survivors.)
Over the years I found that this situation was not uncommon. Balancing a checkbook, paying bills and making investment decisions does not appeal to a lot of people. They are happy to allow their partner to do that for them. The problem with this division of labor does not appear until the individual in charge of the finances disappears either through death or incapacitation.

Helping Manage the Transition

This is the point at which a trusted financial advisor can ride to the rescue. A good one is willing to go through records to see what it takes to run the household. He will be able to determine the survivor’s income. He will know how to identify the family’s investment and bank accounts even if the records are incomplete. Just as important, a financial advisor should be willing to provide more than simply financial advice to the surviving spouse. This is the point where questions arise about selling the extra car, upgrades around the home, moving to be nearer the children – or moving into a senior living facility. These may well be the questions a trusted advisor is able to answer. (For more, see: 6 Estate Planning Must-Haves.)
Advisors who are simply money managers will, at this point, probably find themselves replaced. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Global Private Banking/Wealth Management Survey, 2011, more than half (55%) of the survivors will fire their financial advisor following the death of a spouse. A lot of that will be due to the changing level of service that a surviving spouse needs. (For related reading, see: Why Do Widows Leave Their Advisors?)
But there is actually a better answer to the financial confusion that often follows a death. The best time to gather comprehensive information about family finances is when the couple is still alive.

Why a Will Might Not Be Enough

With due respect to the legal profession, will and trust documents are written to specify how assets are to be distributed at death. With few exceptions, they rarely get down to the kind of detail that allows the surviving spouse to take up where the deceased has left off.
What is needed is a specific book of instructions itemizing financial assets, their location and their ownership. Income will be vitally important to the surviving spouse. Realizing that income will change once one’s spouse dies, it’s important to know what the survivor’s income sources will be. Finally, the cost of maintaining the surviving spouse can be determined while both are still alive much more easily than after one has passed away. And since so many transactions now take place via password protected Internet portals, the survivor needs a list of those portals and passwords. (For further reading, see: The Importance of Estate and Contingency Planning.)
When someone dies, the surviving spouse will always have a period of grieving. But if a little though is given to preparing for the inevitable, grief does not have to be accompanied by fear of an unknown financial future.

To make it easy for couple who want to plan, purchase a copy of our book: BEFORE I GO and the BEFORE I GO WORKBOOK. 

Protecting Elderly Clients

Much has been written about the vulnerability of the elderly to scams that are perpetrated on them. Because seniors are concerned about health care, con artists prey on the elderly to get them to buy fraudulent products or services. Home improvement scammers prey on the elderly by providing shoddy or unnecessary repairs. Stories about unscrupulous financial advisors are frequently in the news. Funeral homes have been known to get the elderly to spend more than they want or need. Some scammers will read the obituaries and pretend that the deceased ordered products or owed a debt to try to get money from the surviving spouse.

Very often the people preying on the elderly are relatives. Because most of us trust our relatives, it gives them an opportunity to take advantage. Children have been known to move back into the family home and physically abuse their elderly parents. They may employ emotional blackmail. They may threaten to stop visiting or calling.  They may tell their parents that not giving them money means that they don’t love them. Often a demand for money is disguised as help with bills, or presents to grandchildren.

Of course parents make gifts to children and grandchildren all the time. But there is a line beyond which it becomes clear that children are looking to get their “inheritance” early. This can lead to an impoverished parent who loses his independence, or even his home.

It can be very difficult for a concerned financial advisor to protect his client from predatory relatives.  Often the parents want give money to their children and may be unaware of the financial consequences.  As fiduciaries we have to keep in mind that our obligation is to our client; not her children, grandchildren or any other relatives. You may have to tell your client “I know you love your son, but you should not give him the house because you may need to sell it so that you can move into a senior living facility.” Of course this can create a conflict with the relatives who will not appreciate what you are doing.

At some point it may be necessary to get an attorney involved, one who specializes in elder care. This is particularly important if the heirs don’t get along. If the elderly become incapable of managing their own affairs they can assign power-of-attorney to a third party.  If the children are not competent, or if there is a conflict, appointing an attorney as the executor of the estate may be preferable to appointing a relative.

Providing financial guidance to the elderly is much more than managing their portfolio. There is often much more going on that is critical to the well-being of the client, and avoid the chance that they run out of money before they run out of time.

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