Thursday, May 19, 2016

Do you have aging parents and are they starting to worry you?

                              

You will have many conversations like this title if you have aging parents. I am writing a book to help people with through this trying time. Right now I only have my mother still living. My husband and I have buried 2 dads and 1 mom already. That experience, plus the fact that I practiced real estate for 37 years, makes me an expert on moving people.


 Old people never want to leave their homes. My dad used to say. "They're going to take me out of here in a box." But the reality is that poor health, a fall or broken bones, dementia or Alzheimers will put a monkey wrench in their best made plans. I'll bet most people never think about their parents getting old and feeble, unable to take care of themselves. I am hoping to alert anyone 50 years or older to make some plans or at least have conversations about assisted living, finances, insurance policies, bank accounts, wills, etc. These are only a few subjects that I am going to touch on. We started most of these much too late, but thankfully we got some things done right. 


 I am the oldest of 4 children. We are reasonably intelligent, but we have a pretty typical family that doesn't always see eye to eye on important subjects. Our parents really did not talk about their finances with us. We knew their home was paid off, but we didn't know exactly where their money was or how much they had. We knew they had a will, because my brother is a financial planner and he made sure they did that. They never wanted to talk about death or funerals. They seemed to get agitated if we ever started talking about the future in those terms. I wish I could turn back the clock and educate them and my siblings on all the critical details that we were missing. I also think the interactions between us as siblings were difficult but often hilarious. We have 4 type A personalities, and that  was a recipe for some tough but funny conversations. 

I  will tell my story and show some emails that we sent back and forth. I also am going to explain how we had to learn about probate, trusts, Medicaid, VA benefits, hospice, funerals, different types of senior living communities, dementia, Alzheimers, banking, insurance policies, powers of attorney, fiduciaries, CCRM and more. Hopefully  someone reading the book will have most of their questions answered and laugh a little as well.

This blog will represent different chapters of the book.