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The time has come when I need to step in and do my parent's finances. I am set up at the bank to pay their bills, can review their investment accounts, etc.
I personally have always used Basic Quicken - entered everything manually, each a.m. to balance against the bank, etc. What I would like is to be able to set them up the same way to either do it online so I can go to their house and pull it up on their computer, pay bills, etc. Or maybe save to a jump drive and take that to their house?
Are they able to handle technology well enough to do this?
Frankly, it sounds like maybe they shouldn't have access as they might not be able to handle it and would massively mess it up.
Why don't you just keep it on your laptop and take that with you when you visit? They can see you do it, but don't have access themselves.
iris lilies
9-14-20, 8:06pm
That trick of printing the important information on the brightly colored paper is massively brilliant!
you are going to have to have to do this work. I think it’s a whole lot simpler for you to just do it then to try to involve them in doing it. They are going to fail soon enough and you’re gonna have to take it over and straighten out the mess anyway.
The next thing you need to be worrying about : are they going to be giving money to a Nigerian prince.? Hopefully both of them have enough skepticism of new people and products that they won’t be sending out money.
Would it be wise to have a visit with the bank and the lawyer/acct to give clear direction that you have power of attorney for personal and financial while they are reasonably able to do this. It may make life easier down the road when end of life issues arise as well.
My late DH and I had this conversation a number of time over years about end of life and finances and included our two daughters. Everyone was at peace. It is all clearly set with my lawyer, accountant and funeral director regarding me and I plan on living for another 25 years.
Sidebar - Have you planned for your later years as you are seeing the need with your parents?
+2 on this being your job, not theirs. Especially since the skill/custom of properly tracking expenses and paperwork is not well established.
I like Tradd's laptop idea (if, in fact, you have a laptop). I believe Quicken also can run on a tablet though I don't know what differences exist in the feature set. You could use a jump drive to keep the data, too, though you'd want to keep track of generations of jump drives since they can just frizzle out on their own for various reasons.
If I had to do this for my mom, I'd be bringing over my own laptop and making sure things were entered correctly/consistently and backed up appropriately. DW does the finances for her mother; that system is 100% paper. When they can figure out where DM put the paper. The only backup for that system is statements from the bank and the investment manager; not nearly enough but it will have to do.
What about automating the tracking with something like Mint. Once you get all the account information entered then everytime you log in it automatically updates everything by logging into the financial institutions for you and downloading any transactions.
Are they able to handle technology well enough to do this?
Frankly, it sounds like maybe they shouldn't have access as they might not be able to handle it and would massively mess it up.
Why don't you just keep it on your laptop and take that with you when you visit? They can see you do it, but don't have access themselves.
We don't have a laptop, but had been talking about getting one, that would make it much simpler. No, at this point my mom pays for a unused dead cell
phone that sits at the bottom of her purse (maybe). They previously used their computer, but I think they have given up on it. They can never remember their passwords or where is the little piece of paper they write them on.
That trick of printing the important information on the brightly colored paper is massively brilliant!
you are going to have to have to do this work. I think it’s a whole lot simpler for you to just do it then to try to involve them in doing it. They are going to fail soon enough and you’re gonna have to take it over and straighten out the mess anyway.
The next thing you need to be worrying about : are they going to be giving money to a Nigerian prince.? Hopefully both of them have enough skepticism of new people and products that they won’t be sending out money.
I don't know if it was a Nigerian Prince but they were victims of phone fraud.
Would it be wise to have a visit with the bank and the lawyer/acct to give clear direction that you have power of attorney for personal and financial while they are reasonably able to do this. It may make life easier down the road when end of life issues arise as well.
My late DH and I had this conversation a number of time over years about end of life and finances and included our two daughters. Everyone was at peace. It is all clearly set with my lawyer, accountant and funeral director regarding me and I plan on living for another 25 years.
Sidebar - Have you planned for your later years as you are seeing the need with your parents?
No we need to have that conversation - sooner than later.
dado potato
9-14-20, 11:53pm
Have you and your elderly parents considered a trust as a legal device to hold their assets and pay their bills?
One way to prevent elder scams is to administer the trust for legitimate expenses and replace credit cards and personal checkbook with a debit card, such as True Link. http://www.truelinkfinancial.com
I have not personally dealt with True Link, so this not an endorsement. In 15-20 years, I may be ready to depend on a fiduciary though.
iris lilies
9-15-20, 9:14am
...DW does the finances for her mother; that system is 100% paper. When they can figure out where DM put the paper. The only backup for that system is statements from the bank and the investment manager; not nearly enough but it will have to do.
But this method sounds fine to me. If I were doing my parents’ or even my own finances, this is what I would do.Actually, this is what the H does. We don’t do any financial analysis of our day-to-day activity on Quicken or anything like it.
DH's parents were in their early 80s when his father was no longer able to figure out how to take care of their finances. His mother never cared to learn about them so she was totally in the dark. One of the sibs stepped in, got all the passwords and made sure bills, taxes and RMDs were done. When their Dad passed, that same sib was given financial power of attorney and continues to pay their mother's bills etc. as she has moved to assisted living (but kept her house). We don't have a clue how he is managing her money at this point so that is one thing to consider if you have sibs. I wish he would at least keep us up to date on her financial situation and how he is "investing" her money. The whole situation fosters family mistrust.
SteveinMN
9-15-20, 10:53am
But this method sounds fine to me. If I were doing my parents’ or even my own finances, this is what I would do.Actually, this is what the H does. We don’t do any financial analysis of our day-to-day activity on Quicken or anything like it.
Oh, I don't think most people at that stage need any more financial analysis than determining income versus outgo.
My main issue with it is that there's no easy backup for paper. If DW's mom cannot remember where she last put the checkbook and register, everything stops until/if it's found. If SiL1 needs the checkbook to pay a bill for mom, she has to have it and if it's with DW or SiL2 because they're the ones who usually pay the bills, that's a hassle. *shrug* It's a system that works. I just find electronic record keeping so much easier and more complete and I can (and do) back it up until the cows come home.
iris lilies
9-15-20, 10:54am
DH's parents were in their early 80s when his father was no longer able to figure out how to take care of their finances. His mother never cared to learn about them so she was totally in the dark. One of the sibs stepped in, got all the passwords and made sure bills, taxes and RMDs were done. When their Dad passed, that same sib was given financial power of attorney and continues to pay their mother's bills etc. as she has moved to assisted living (but kept her house). We don't have a clue how he is managing her money at this point so that is one thing to consider if you have sibs. I wish he would at least keep us up to date on her financial situation and how he is "investing" her money. The whole situation fosters family mistrust.
That’s a good point about keeping siblings informed.
DH’s eldest sister took care of my father-in-law’s finances for last several years of his life. She didn’t formally notify the siblings of his financial situation, but they all knew generally about it and she would’ve opened books to anyone who wanted to know. My father-in-law was driving all of the financial decisions anyway, so it’s as though she had much decision making power in it. Lots of money went out to one sibling and his child including buying one of them a house free and clear, but those were decisions of my father-in-law.
Money and family in all its variations really needs transparency to keep peace. Of course, that does not prevent someone from butting in with an individual view creating tension if one so desired.
Simplemind
9-15-20, 11:22am
I am thankful that my parents made me trustee several years before I had to step in to do this. By the time I did my mom (who would never discuss finances) had passed and we found she had been stashing the mail and not paying the bills. I helped my dad get things squared away and as much as possible put on auto-pay. Within a short time I began to see that he was also in the beginning stages of dementia. Some days he could understand his statements and other days he would be puzzled by them for hours. He was very concerned that I was just as puzzled as he was. I would constantly reassure him I wasn't. I soon had all statements send to my address because I could see they were causing stress. I would print out a sheet once a month listing the bills and marked PAID next to them. Within a short time he didn't even track that anymore. He would just ask now and again "Are the bills getting paid?" and I would assure him they were. He was also scammed by phone (the grandchild in jail one) and I had to have the debit card removed and Visa # changed. Visa was so good at working with me on scam charges - bless them.
You are moving into a tough role. It can be delicate parenting your parents and they are grateful on one hand and resentful of the loss of independence on the other. I was horrified to find the depth of my mom's money mismanagement. My dad was so upset that he didn't want to hear about it but some things needed to be discussed in order to be fixed. An example, they had rental property which he always bragged that the rent covered the taxes on several properties. These renters were horrible... I found that my mom had been stashing their checks along with the bills so they had in essence been living rent free for a couple of years. She was also not paying the taxes and we had to get that all cleared up and pay penalties. I had to go through the Department of State Lands to scoop up money that had finally landed there from uncashed dividend checks.
It is uncomfortable. It wasn't until I stepped in that I could see that they had been struggling for a long time but I hadn't seen it. It wasn't for lack of trying to ascertain the situation. As trustee I knew I was going to have to step in at some point. It was because they were both so private as well as secretive with us kids and with each other. There were some ugly secrets to be found once I started turning rocks over.
It was a huge lesson for me and one that informed us about making sure our kids knew everything and we now have our own trust, the kids are trustees, we have had the hard conversations, everything for every contingency is written down and revisited once a year in case changes need to be made.
Edited to add - My sis and brother also got a copy of the monthly statement and were in on all meetings with dad about future decisions with property and finances. We ended up being much closer for it and there were no misunderstandings.
Well stated, Siimplemind. I am amazed how many basically well-adjusted people deny the possibility of death or compromised situations. I am a broken record saying: If you have family, young or old, talk about death as a matter of fact. It seems that they believe that denial means it won't happen. Dysfunctional families have additional problems.
Teacher Terry
9-15-20, 12:30pm
Luckily not one person in our families have been unable to manage their bills. No one had dementia. I hope that lucky streak continues.
iris lilies
9-15-20, 6:02pm
UGG All of this makes me want to move to assisted living now where I have only one bill every month, the assisted living facility.
I remember when my brother started picking up all of my mom‘s Mail it was such a relief for her. I thought she would be resentful of it but she wasn’t instead she thought it was great. By then he had already been paying her bills from her accounts of course, but just The mail itself caused her stress.
I appreciate all this input, I am gleaning lots of ideas - and support. We are visiting this week and will start asking some more direct questions - my wife is better at that than I am!
My Mom has vascular dementia, but is in serious denial that anything is wrong with her. My sister tried to take over the mail/paying bills but my mother wasn't having it. So my sister has to painfully babysit her for bill paying. Mom has a history of hiding things, even before the dementia, and puts her check book in various places and can never find it without a search even though my sister put a pretty box in her kitchen for her to keep it.
Mom never knows the date, doesn't know the names of the vendors to which she owes money (every week: what is Eversource? Its your electic company Mom), struggles with filling out a check correctly, doesn't remember what was and was not paid and is completely confused by the whole process. But refuses to give it up because she thinks my sister will then steal from her. My sister has informed delivery so she knows what arrives at Mom's at least. Mom got a couple of refund checks recently from getting rid of cars but she promptly lost them that day, and denied that any checks came. Sister walked into one of the bedrooms and found the smaller check on the dresser and showed Mom. Mom still refuses to believe that there was a second check which is still missing.
Mom hid her will, which we can no longer find, and so sister had a lawyer draft a new one (the original will was from a long since deceased lawyer). Mom refuses to sign it. Even when I read her the letter my Dad wrote to my sister and I (executors) explaining what he wanted and why. She'll agree that yes, that sounds reasonable, but when any authority figure is around (aka lawyer) she freezes up and refuses. We did badger her to at least let my sister have power of attorney, but we really had to bully her for that and I felt bad even though it is so so necessary.
Dad tried to wrap it all up neatly before he died, but it hasn't turned out that way.
That is heartbreaking to go through, herbgeek. At what point would an assessment take place to determine her cognitive abilities? Is this triggered by the MD or how is this managed?
Simplemind
9-16-20, 12:22pm
Oh Herbgeek, I so feel your pain. My mom in her dementia is much like you have described. We count our lucky stars that she went first because dad was so much more reasonable and even in his dementia much easier to deal with. I don't envy anybody having to do that tap dance.
My mom, too, Herbgeek. Just like that.
It is too late to get her to sign anything, unfortuntely.
At what point would an assessment take place to determine her cognitive abiliti
She had an assessment a couple of years ago, and failed the cognitive test. There really isn't anything we can do yet, as she is so incredibly stubborn that she's staying put in her house, refuses to allow my sister to be her guardian/conservatorship and hasn't done anything stupid to catch the attention of authorities. At this point, she is considered "competent" unless we take her to court and we aren't willing to do that just yet.
So the 3 siblings within a reasonable drive all visit at least once a week, have meals with her, make sure the bills are paid and she has food to eat. That's all we can do.
iris lilies
9-16-20, 2:21pm
And the lesson we can take away from all of this is — do we see these tendencies in ourselves? Without naming names, I can see a few here who will likely be be difficult to “manage” in their old age. Just sayin’
And the lesson we can take away from all of this is — do we see these tendencies in ourselves? Without naming names, I can see a few here who will likely be be difficult to “manage” in their old age. Just sayin’
No, that's not the lesson here. Vascular dementia is not a behavioral issue or a personality disorder.
It's really sad, and it is a unique kind of pain. Both my husband and I have said we would much rather die tomorrow than live like my mom lives, in her universe of pain, fear, and suspicion.
But we don't really get to choose, do we.
iris lilies
9-16-20, 2:48pm
No, that's not the lesson here. Vascular dementia is not a behavioral issue or a personality disorder.
It's really sad, and it is a unique kind of pain. Both my husband and I have said we would much rather die tomorrow than live like my mom lives, in her universe of pain, fear, and suspicion.
But we don't really get to choose, do we.
OK, I’ll give you that —we can’t control how our mental health makes us perform in life. But we can work towards keeping our lives simple, our physical environment simple, our financial records clean and simple, so that those who have to take over for us will have less of a burden.
OK, I’ll give you that —we can’t control how our mental health makes us perform in life. But we can work towards keeping our lives simple, our physical environment simple, our financial records clean and simple, so that those who have to take over for us will have less of a burden.
Hell, yeah, could not agree more!!!
ToomuchStuff
9-16-20, 10:08pm
So is Vascular dementia what it sounds like? Dementia brought on by problems with blood vessels and lack of oxygen getting to where it is needed in the brain?
My mom's vascular dementia is the result of several strokes. She has particular difficulty with linear time (when things happened or when it is now) and remembering names and nouns.
On top of this I suspect she also had some degree of mental illness (based on my upbringing) and did a lot of gas lighting/rewriting the narrative of how things happened over my lifetime. If you were to ask her, she has always been perfect and has never made a mistake. This makes the dementia harder for her. She can't accept help because that would confirm she wasn't perfect. So it's not that she lost thousands of dollars this year in her house, it's other people are stealing it from her.
rosarugosa
9-17-20, 6:04am
I'm so sorry for what you are dealing with, Herbgeek. My mom is at least very cooperative, totally trusts that we are on her side and grateful for any assistance that we give her. Initially there was a bit of a struggle over some things (junk mail management, help with laundry), but I think that was a result of her feeling that she should be able to do things for herself and not wanting to burden us. Concern about burdening us seems to be her greatest concern.
iris lilies
9-17-20, 10:51am
...
So the 3 siblings within a reasonable drive all visit at least once a week, have meals with her, make sure the bills are paid and she has food to eat. That's all we can do.
And that is doing quite a lot! I think that’s a very good level of care for your mom.
I just went back through 5 months of transactions on my parents bank's website. Found nothing to out of the ordinary - I do have some questions to ask. She has lost confidence that she is doing it correct - then questions herself. I just hope when I go out there tomorrow she doesn't change her mind.
I just went back through 5 months of transactions on my parents bank's website. Found nothing to out of the ordinary - I do have some questions to ask. I think right now my mom can do her finances, but it takes her hours and hours to do something that could literally be done in 1/2 hour. She has lost confidence that she is doing it correct - then questions herself. I just hope when I go out there tomorrow she doesn't change her mind. She is getting a bit defensive about her memory lapses.
Do you have POA for both your parents? That is the best thing to do, to get that now while they can still sign legally.
If your mom has vascular dementia like my mom, she cannot handle the finance anymore from what you are describing. It will be more and more stressful and unsuccessful, so you are doing the right thing and it sounds like they are both okay with you handling the finances. Just make sure to get the POA now as you will need it to do things like make changes to utilities, etc. and access their accounts.
I know firsthand because I tried to get information on Medicare plans for my parents and to shut off their cable, and they would not talk to me without a POA, and only my brother has the POA, and he wouldn't do these things, and had asked me to do them.
So you are going to have your hands tied if you do not have that POA, you need it now to help them.
Simplemind
9-21-20, 2:10pm
Perhaps you could sit with her once a month and do the bills together? I noticed that my dad started to have problems reading. Some days it went really well and others he would just stare and stare at bills or menus. He just couldn't comprehend what he was reading and it really frustrated him. We both did bills for a period of time and as soon as he got comfortable with that, he handed it all over to me. POA is essential eventually. Get it while they still have the ability to give it to you. At one point even though I had it and was also trustee, I had to block my dad from doing any transaction by himself. I had to get a letter from both his GP and his Neuro stating he wasn't capable of making any financial decisions.
iris lilies
9-22-20, 9:48am
Have you and your elderly parents considered a trust as a legal device to hold their assets and pay their bills?
One way to prevent elder scams is to administer the trust for legitimate expenses and replace credit cards and personal checkbook with a debit card, such as True Link. http://www.truelinkfinancial.com
I have not personally dealt with True Link, so this not an endorsement. In 15-20 years, I may be ready to depend on a fiduciary though.
What does a trust do in this situation to help daily bills get paid? And what is a debit card for? I’m confused as to why you’re making this recommendation.
But also, I don’t know what the advantages are to having their financials tracked via Mint which is another recommendation. What does that really give the OP?
Simplemind’s solution seems the best to me: once a month pay bills While at the home of your parents and tally up available monies. Put as many things as possible on auto pay. And here’s hoping they have enough money that they won’t go into the red.
What does a trust do in this situation to help daily bills get paid? And what is a debit card to? I’m confused as to why you’re making this recommendation.
But also, I don’t know what the advantages to having their financials tracked via meant which is another recommendation. What is it really give the OP?
Simplemind’s solution seems the best to me: once a month pay bills While at the home of your parents and tally up available monies. Put as many things as possible on auto pay. And here’s hoping they have enough money that they won’t go into the red.
While I certainly agree that paying bills at their house and keeping them involved is great now, I would strongly urge you get their financial POA's if you do not have them already, for each parent.
Things can change very rapidly with dementia, and then you would be scrambling a lot more to get their bills paid and make arrangements for their care.
From the sound of it, your mom is already at a place where she needs someone to take over.
This situation is also complicated by fact there are two parents in this state of needing help with finances, and either could pre-decease the other.
iris lilies
9-22-20, 10:32am
While I certainly agree that paying bills at their house and keeping them involved is great now, I would strongly urge you get their financial POA's if you do not have them already, for each parent.
Things can change very rapidly with dementia, and then you would be scrambling a lot more to get their bills paid and make arrangements for their care.
From the sound of it, your mom is already at a place where she needs someone to take over.
This situation is also complicated by fact there are two parents in this state of needing help with finances, and either could pre-decease the other.
Oh agreed! Very much agreed to get POA. Sooner rather than later.
frugal-one
9-22-20, 2:10pm
Later? too late .....
100% agree; get power of attorney while you can, while you can still talk rationally to your parents and they love and trust you....dementia can lead to abnormal thought patterns that may make them refuse to sign anything for you, and if you wait until they're not competent, they're not competent to sign a power of attorney, either. There may be such a thing as a limited power of attorney, just for financial matters, but don't forget about medical power of attorney as well. Now is the time to discuss what they want done medically if they're put on life support, if they want to be "Do Not Resuscitate", etc. It's great they have you to help and be a good son!
Quite right; my mother can no longer sign anything like that, and we did not get a new one from her, although my dad has one from when she could sign it.
You are a good son, for sure. Dementia is horrible. My mother no longer recognized two of her children.
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