Family get togethers can be eye openers. If you haven't seen aging loved ones in awhile, the visible evidence that they are getting older can be a wake-up call. It can be hard for all of us to accept the effects of passing years on our minds and bodies. We want our aging parents to stay how they used to be. For adult children, and I'm one of them, we understand that our aging loved one just needs more help as time goes by. In our family, it's about mobility. In other families with cognitive decline as an issue, it can be about taking charge of things you've never dealt with before. Finances are one of those things, always a touchy subject. But that's an area where we need to be ever vigilant.
If you have the opportunity to join aging family members this season, consider intentionally looking for some of these signs, possible tipoffs that you should get involved in helping monitor your aging parents' spending, giving and susceptibility to scams.
- Evidence of unpaid bills in the home. Older folks begin to lose the capacity to keep track of finances very early in the process of any form of dementia. If bill collectors are calling, or you see dunning notices at your loved ones' home, that is a red flag. They could be forgetting what to pay or when to pay a bill. Insurance can be cut off, utilities can be stopped and a lot of other consequences flow from this forgetfulness. You can help by offering to do the bill paying, putting it online or otherwise keeping watch over bills.
- Too much "charitable" giving to anyone who asks. Scammers can call your loved one and pose as anybody from anywhere. Unsuspecting elders believe them and do not check out the validity of the charity they claim to represent. Remind your loved one to ask for detailed information about anyone who solicits them, including name, address and phone number. Ask your elder to call the charity and verify that the solicitation was from them. Generally, discourage them from giving donations over the phone with a credit card. And be sure they are not writing duplicate checks to the same valid charity because they forgot a prior gift already given to the same entity.
- Evidence of a new "friend" who seems overly involved in your loved one's life, especially if he or she has access to personal information such as Social Security number, credit cards and bank accounts. While it is great that caring friends do help our aging parents when we live at a distance, some of those who cozy up to our elders are not their friends. They are predators waiting for a chance to get to the money and run. It is safest if you do not allow anyone other than a trusted family member or professional close to your parent's financial information. Particularly with a parent who has memory loss, manipulation and theft are all too easy for a person just hanging around waiting for an opportunity to steal. At AgingParents.com we suggest that you persuade your loved one to allow you online access to all accounts so you can closely monitor what is going on and question anything odd immediately.
We may not enthusiastically embrace the added task in our lives of monitoring what our aging parents are doing with their money but they can surely be harmed if we don't step up. No matter how educated, skilled, experienced and accomplished in business an aging parent was, no one is immune from the march of time. A caring adult child is the best protection a vulnerable elder may have. And we model the decent thing to do for our own children too. In my case, they're millenials and their Boomer parents getting "old" is the last thing on their minds. They're busy texting their friends. OK, but I want them to know what to do if I ever forget to pay my own bills. Not that any of us Boomers are getting old, of course.
Carolyn Rosenblatt, RN, Elder Law Attorney
AgingParents.com and AgingInvestor.com
