My wife and I have recently started tracking our mothers’ banking to help them out. Here’s what we’ve found so far:

• neither have ever balanced their checkbook
  
• my mom’s account was $3000 off from her check register
  
• her mom has been paying monthly fees for things she’s never used including two accounts to yahoo mail plus, yahoo stock market tips for $39/mo (she’s never bought a stock in her life), Norton antivirus (i guess that’s ok but she never installed it anywhere), lifelock (she’s never checked it and doesn’t even know what that is), renters insurance in another state for a place she no longer lives at, and some sort of HP ink subscription
  
• her mom bought almost $1000 worth of games and “iPhone cleaner” apps last month.

We both nearly had a stroke looking at all that stuff. I’m glad my mom is too cheap to pay for anything as opposed to my mom-in-law who just whips out her debit card for every form presented to her. She has also fallen victim to a windows popup scam because Microsoft needed her bank info to fix her computer. That one was $700. She also claimed she had to pay for yahoo mail or it doesn’t work. I’ve removed all but the renters insurance because they won’t talk to me but I’ve taken her debit card out of her apple account. The problem is that she will just type it in again unless we take it from her and she does still shop for herself. I’m not even going to get into how many solitaire games she has on her iPhone. I stopped counting at 30.

We’d have never known any of this was happening but her mom moved and my mom got put into physical rehab at a nursing home.

Can you imagine never balancing your checkbook, let alone all the other stuff.

If i have a nervous breakdown, I’ll have Shirl let you guys know. Of course, she’ll probably be in the same room with me rocking back and forth in the corner.

My dad still manually balances his checkbook to the penny every month. He's 79. But I do have to help a lot of my customers go through their bank statements. I'm going to see one today, who wants me to identify other insurance companies drafting her account. Earlier this year a customer's daughter called to ask me to go through her mom's bank statements to ID the insurance companies. The mother is in hospice and barely hanging on. She had 11 life insurance policies drafting her account. Took about two hours to call them all and find out all the policy info. But in the end, I told her daughter to keep it all. She'll collect on all of them and her mom can afford the payments for the little time she has left.

I just started. It’s not going to be pretty

My mother was the same way as she neared the end of her life, and her mental abilities were failing alongside her physical abilities. She'd whip out her credit card for anything and everything.

Luckily, my father was able to stay on top of it to keep it mostly contained, and cancel/return a lot of the stuff she impulse bought.

I'm now a joint holder on my dad's accounts, and while he's still competent, it may reach a point later down the road where I'll have to do the same for him.

Oh, I should clarify that my mom’s account is $3000 off in the bad way. The bank says $3000 less than her register.

There’s no way for me to figure all the errors so I’m starting fresh from her last statement and keeping it from there.

I’m pretty much in the same situation as RogueJSK. I’m helping, but not handling, yet. It’s an awkward position to be in.

My parents handled bill paying and the like with the stamps and envelope approach. A lot of work for them. Introducing the automatic debit approach saved them time and money and made life easier for them.

Not my mom, and she will never relinquish it! She is determined to keep control.

She recently had some kind of computer scam that nearly took her. A pop up message saying her computer was infected, call this phone # and don't shut down the computer. I called her as she was on the phone with them, so she hung up on them before giving them remote access to her computer.

I do manage my older sister's finances (and everything else) as she has lifelong intellectual, physical, and emotional disabilities. She has nothing titled in her name except one bank acct with very little $ in it.

She's had all kinds of scams in the past when she was more capable. Luckily she has always been afraid of computers. Two fraudsters tried to have her buy a smart phone so they could "help" her with her banking.

We as a family did for the last few years of my Dad’s Alzheimer’s. Everything was fairly well set, no particular issues for the day to day.
Where we did have a potential glitch, was when he passed. Before Alzheimer’s took hold he had taken steps to ensure a smooth transition. We were authorized on his back accounts, we had POA’s, directives, etc. He assured us his bank accounts were payable on death, with the siblings all included. Turns out we only had check writing privileges only, and at his death we were technically frozen out until probate was completed. Fortunately for us , we’re at a small town bank, long time known customers, so they were able and willing to work with us in paying his bills until the estate was settled.

My dad was hyper-organized, and taught my mom enough that she manages her own affairs. She did fall prey to a phone scammer, but that was a matter of being gullible, not disorganized.

My wife did take care of her mother's accounts, but she has now passed away.

My mom was sending checks for $5 or $10, whatever was the lowest "checkbox" amount to every charity that sent her mail. After sending money to some "Save Social Security!" charity she got mailings from 10 more. Probably all same thing with different letterhead. And each check required a stamp for $0.50 or whatever it was. It was like she was treating them as bills.

Then there was all the Publishers Clearing house junk. I swear the entire purpose of that company is to rob elderly people who think they will win the sweepstakes. Chinese junk selling for 10x the value but with a 10% discount "reward" they "won". Call them, say "diminished capacity" get a supervisor and you can send all of it back for a refund.

I take care of all the money now and have her on a cash allowance of $200 whenever she needs it. Her checking account is growing since I took over in 2019 after she almost approved an international "service charge" to process a supposedly "free" $100 Wal-Mart gift card. Bank caught it, cancelled the debit card, which notified me by email and then I had to step in.

She also tried to have state taxes withheld from distributions from an investment account, for unknown reasons. Federal taxes were withheld. She didn't want to have to pay a state tax bill, and wanted a "refund". But she screwed it up and they were overwithholding by thousands a year. Took a few years to sort all that out.

I guess I was fortunate my mom's body gave out before her mind. Her getting scammed was what kept me up at night worrying. She never fell for one and she was comfortable calling one of us kids to ask for our input. It helped that my one brother and sister are in IT and she was used to calling us for any computer issues.

If you have parents that are still managing their own finaces, please make the effort to start the conversation about money. Even if they are doing well, start talking about it now so they will already be used to talking to you about it later on when they may need help.

I ended up having to manage my parent's finances while they were still alive. I was about 35 years old at the time.

My dad who was proud ended up asking for my help with his finances. Turned out he ran out of checks and when he went to the bank, a new checking account was opened. He was writing checks against the new account which had no money while his pension and social security were going to the old checking account.

Discovered many contributions were made to blood sucking politicians who kept sending letters about how they were fighting to protect his social security benefits and they need his money to do it. Discovered he's been paying off a credit card every month that thieves were using; he thought it was his wife who was charging. After all the reconciliations, there was about $50,000 that was unaccounted for.

I ended up getting powers of attorney for both of them and putting myself as a joint owner on their accounts. I also had all the bills sent to my house and I paid off their bills.

At least money and numbers are my strong suit so it wasn't overwhelming; just the thought that once my dad was the family caretaker and now I was taking care of things for them.

Fortunately my sister handles whatever financial matters are beyond my parents. She's an accountant, so it was kind of a no-brainer. Me, I get the computer (and gun) questions when they have them.

My aunt and uncle slowly declined.

We gradually took over their finances as they could no longer do it.

When my uncle died, I found several 50-gallon garbage bags full of statements and uncashed checks.

It took months to short out the chaos.

I cleaned up the mess and my aunt came to live with us.

Near the end, all she did all day was sit on the living room couch.

Dementia is ugly.

Fortunately, before the decline was really bad they had given me power of attorney and health care proxies.

Without those, it would have been impossible to help them.

That’s another thing, my mom keeps telling everyone that I have power of attorney for her but I don’t. We never signed any paperwork for such a thing. I get all kinds of calls from health care pros asking me what they should do.

I'm right on the verge of demanding they handover their passwords. My dad has always managed the finances and ...his spending habits and fiduciary acumen has been very questionable. He's 84 now, constantly battles with entering passwords and insists on holding onto a number their existing accounts because they have safety deposit boxes and free checking with them. I'll be reading how everyone else manages because I'm about ready to wade into this world and I'm not sure I'm prepared.

My mom outlived her eyesight. (98 yrs) She is competent enough (sorta) but can’t see anything on a computer or phone screen. Lucky for me, she lives a simple life. I pay her rent and Discover card, transfer money from one checking account to the other to maintain minimum balances and avoid fees. Pretty easy.
She was a depression baby, hates to part with a nickel if she can avoid it. Her spending activity shows it.

We manage Dad's now, since Mom's passing last summer. They were ~$2,500 off balance in the checkbook (to the good). I honestly think Mom liked it that was as cushion. What surprised me was all of the insurances. Water tank, utilities, "cancer insurance". Etc etc. I think they were close enough on their finances that they just couldn't risk bumps in the road. But if they'd skipped those insurances for decades on end, perhaps they wouldn't have been.

I also have the VA providing a lot of services for Dad now that he could have been getting for a while as a vet during wartime.

Advanced care directives, power of attorney, and take over what you can as soon as they'll let you. That's my advice to those who can see it coming.

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Then there was all the Publishers Clearing house junk. I swear the entire purpose of that company is to rob elderly people who think they will win the sweepstakes.

My mother subscribed to many magazines, convinced it would increase her chances of winning the PCH sweepstakes. One year she was convinced she had won, then convinced she had won a Ford pickup. I guess that was better than when she was depressed though.

She recognized her mind was failing and asked me to get her to an attorney where we got a trust with me as trustee; later had to have her declared incompetent by two physicians so I could take charge.

She outlived her savings, which were amazing for someone who dragged herself out of poverty after her divorce from my Dad. Most of the savings form an insurance settlement. She left the surviving kids (3 of 5, that's two other sad stories) the house she got from my Dad in the divorce, which he and my older brother had built in 1954.

Surprisingly, she had investments in junk bond funds, bond funds, other high-yield savings accounts which she had gotten into after bank savings accounts yielded nothing. A surprisingly adaptable lady.