Financial Planner for Retirement
Suzanne Wolfson, CFP® is the founder of For Retired Only™, a fee-based financial planning...read more
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- Financial Planning for the Elderly: Assisting Clients & Their Caregivers
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Financial Planning for Retirement
Financial Planning for the Elderly: Assisting Clients & Their Caregivers
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It’s no surprise that with age, seniors often experience increased limitations, the loss of certain abilities and require more assistance with the activities of daily living. It is equally unsurprising that one’s finances largely influence the types of services and long-term care available to that individual. An experienced financial planner for the elderly can provide seniors and their families with invaluable advice on money issues and more, to help seniors find the appropriate solution to their particular situation. Some of the questions a financial planner can address include:
- What type of long-term care can I afford?
- Will I outlive my assets?
- How much are my assets worth?
- Can I make my assets create more income to meet growing expenses?
- What do I sell first?
- What are all my options?
- What is the cost of selling different assets?
- Do I have to sell the house?
- Are there other financing alternatives?
- What impact will this have on my spouse and dependents?
- Is it too late to do any estate planning?
- What about inheritance issues?
Listening to Your Needs
Financial planners can assist you in understanding and evaluating your decisions, which will help you avoid confusion, frustration, major errors and family dissension. Financial decisions are more than about just money—I know from experience how difficult it is for everyone involved. Making major financial decisions can be even more daunting when you don’t have the detailed knowledge, experience, time or ability to handle them. What are the potential impacts and benefits of making one decision over another? What are the requirements to execute such decisions? Financial planning for the elderly begins with acknowledging and considering all present and possible future situations you might encounter. This can be very difficult as it requires both forward thinking as well as transitional realism. By “transitional realism,” I mean being realistic about your changing needs, and the impact of those needs on your life as well as the lives of your loved ones. When evaluating your needs, a financial planner should consider:
- Personal care—do you need assistance with activities of daily living?
- Services—what types of long-term care services do you require?
- Safety—are there specific concerns regarding safety?
- Transportation—are there physical or financial considerations?
- Priorities—what are your limitations and desires?
- Interpersonal relationships—how will financial decisions affect your loved ones?
Assessing Your Needs
Following is a list that comprises the elements you should consider in identifying and evaluating your needs. You may want to think about these things before talking to a financial planner to ensure the time you spend in conversation is well spent. If you have questions about any of these elements, a financial planner who works with the elderly will be well versed in all of these issues and should be able to address any concerns.
- Financial needs
- Insurance coverage and limitations
- Income sources
- Expenses (present and future)
- Assets availability
- Real estate needs
- Human resources—health care, personal and quality-of-life issues
- Legal concerns
Assessing Your Resources
After you’ve identified your needs, think about the resources that you will need, and the ones that you already have at your disposal. This will help you develop a plan of action. Make a list of the following resources that you might need:
- Public resources, including prepared food services, community activities, religious and charitable assistance/support, etc.
- Private resources, including family members and/or caregivers
- Service providers and advisors
Planning can make a huge difference in finding the best solutions. Knowing all of your needs and resources is paramount before making any major financial changes. Financial decisions generally should be holistic in nature, therefore recognizing that everyone—seniors and caregivers—all have different needs and resources, unique to their particular situation. Making financial decisions based only on your present situation, without full consideration of everything, can have disastrous results.
Helping to plan your future—
Suzanne Wolfson
Editor’s Note: for more about financing long-term care, visit Duane Lipham’s expertcorner.
Posted in Advanced Planning, Financial Planning for Retirement: Suzanne Wolfson, Paying for Care, Planning for Long Term Care
This is a lot of information and I can see why someone would need a financial planner to help them because it would otherwise be overwhelming! My husband’s been handling our retirement planning. He handles all our finances…I’ve never even written a check to our electic company! I may suggest this idea to him. Do you know any good financial planners in Atlanta, GA?
Clara;
Yes, this is a good idea for you to meet with an experienced Financial Planner (fee based and CFP) preferably one that specializes in working with the elderly. My best recommendation in to contact the Certified Financial Planner organizations for a recommendation of several for you to check out.
The questions in this blog are realistic and should be thought about before something happens wherein you will be making decisions in a reactive manner. Also you might consider the issue that you husband handles everything,… what would happen if something unfortunate occurs to him?
Good for you for researching and reading this website!!
Good luck,
Suzanne Wolfson
tons of great information. would love to see you dissect and break down each of these points separately. Sometimes it’s overwhelming in a giant list but could be much more digestible in smaller doses - so to speak!
would be great to start with how to assess your resources. I bet i think my resources are worth more than they are but would be interesting to have some concrete guidelines to determine. I can definitely see, though, why a financial planner would be a good addition to the mix.
Can you suggest a solution? My grandmother had a stroke, has recovered quite a bit, but not making good decisions. She has lost/possibly had stolen 2 Discover cards from the assisted living facility in which she lives, but calls Discover and they just send another despite my Mom and Uncle now being listed as the Power of Attorney for her accounts. Mom told Discover they have the POA now, but my grandmother calls and Discover sends another immediately. Help! How can we stop Discover from doing this? Thank you.
It seems your grandmother will continually re-order cards if she is able. So my first suggestion would be to terminate the account with Discover card. As theft is a possibility it is best if she is stopped from re-ordering credit cards by closing the account.
Additionally, power of attorney doesn’t take away your grandmother’s rights, but merely gives your mother and uncle additional rights. This situation needs to be examined closely as it is dependent on two major factors. One would be what kind of legal documentation you have now—and therefore which rights and provisions are afforded by them. The second would be if you need additional documentation, which would be dependent on your grandmother’s mental capacity.
If your grandmother has lost some cognition due to the stroke, then I would suggest asking the credit card company to send their mailings to a different address, i.e., the POA’s. The company probably is not voluntarily going to stop the card. The credit card companies *want* a person to have and use their credit cards.
As long as the invoices, new cards, and advertising come to another address, your grandmother hopefully will not be tempted to use them—and they will be safe from theft. Your grandmother can still use the credit by simply saying she does not have her card with her; merchants can access her credit line by looking her up via her drivers license or other identifying information. If your grandmother calls the credit card company again and ask for a new card then you might need a different strategy, which could include having an attorney write a letter ending the line of credit.
Thanks to everyone for their helpful replies. We will certainly try some of these ideas and hopefully meet with success. My grandmother is very headstrong, always been feisty, and is now evolving into some bitterness..very sad to see, but I guess it is just part of the aging thing. She will NOT be happy when Discover won’t comply with her request and realizes that we are the ones that have stopped everything, but it seems to be the only safe thing to do. Thank you again for everyone’s suggestions.
The straightforward answer here is it’s either time to cancel the account or to discuss the wisdom of the caregiver holding the card for the elder. The emotional question is more difficult—how do we know when an elder can no longer make financial decisions and when are caregivers ready/able to let go of seeing their loved one as someone who can make these decisions? This requires a delicate balance. That balance may shift and not always be clear. I think it is helpful to think about solutions in terms of fluidity and in maintaining the elder’s dignity and sense of self. Cancelling is easy, but hard to undo. It can always be done later. If canceling needs to happen, a discussion about how the elder can make purchases can take place. Perhaps there is an open checking account that can be used? The overarching principle is—what can be held onto/saved as our loved ones lose these important aspects of their lives? And how can we assure that dignity is maintained all around?
We all worry so much about my grandmother’s dignity, as she has always taken care of her own bills–very smart, capable, but the strokes robbed her of that capability. My grandmother thinks she should keep the card “for emergencies.”Mom did call Discover to cancel but they would not let her do it without some secret answer to a secret question that no one knows.Mom is going to have her attorney send a letter and copy of POA to Discover and see if that works. My grandmother called the bank a few weeks ago and authorized, over the phone, a payment to Discover. The bank wasn’t supposed to but did it anyway.Mom has gone to that bank and made them aware of the situation and that these actions are unacceptable.