I can’t imagine how many hours in last 30 years of banking I have sat with an elderly client going through their statements vs. The computer computer. Maybe 2x I found a youth that was the bank fault and it was a data entry problem or scanner read a number off. Usually it was “yes your statement that needed on 11/30 shows X but your check book register shows Z becuase A, B, and C checks or debits have not cleared the bank yet. See? If we add It up we balance. And the olds especially the older ladies love that.

My mom has managed the funds for a long time and is sharp as a whip at 81. I’ve been neurotic about my checkbook register detail as long as I e been in banking at 20 years old. And I’ve always worked for the bank where I could look at my own info.

Wife helps handle her mom. Same stories as above. Unread important texts, emails and even voicemails ( all legit ones) from utility co’s and other providers. She’s been trying to help her to get her things in order. She Has had the same bank account since she divorced my wife’s dad 40 years ago and god knows if it’s even close. Wife will ask me banking and insurance questions but she knows I don’t want to get involved. Some day I will I’m sure

I took over Mom's everything about 15 years ago. Bank, credit, POA, the works. She is now 100.

96 year old Mom. Have had power of attorney for the last 6 years.She was in a recovery home after COVID, went to a nursing home for about eight months and decided she wanted to come back to her residence.

She was fine for about four months and then had two falls, one which involved damage to her ankle and the other a minor spinal issue. She then went back to the nursing home and has been happily plugging away for over a year. She’s not very involved with outside activities and I’m not happy with her quality of life at this point.

The only issue with account security is her trying to do online shopping over the shared facility Wi-Fi. Have attempted to set her up with a VPN connection but but have just started doing any ordering with her over my phone when I visit.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue: 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.

This is great advice. After my dad passed in 2012, mom & I went to a family planning lawyer to update her will, advanced care directives, and powers of attorney (POA). In addition, she set me up as joint owner on most of her bank accounts and POD (Payable On Death) on all of them. Over the years any in-person banking she did we did together. Last year when she fell and broke both her hip and shoulder most of those documents came into play and I took over all the finances. I toted my folder of Directives and POAs around and never had a problem working with any medical or financial entity, including changing her Medicare Part D coverage to another company over the phone. Because we had done her banking together they already knew the situation when I needed to make some account changes concerning auto-pay for things she had insisted on paying by check, as well as establishing the over $5k/month auto-pay for her assisted living facility.

One more potentially difficult conversation to have is funeral planning, including pre-paid funeral plans. I was lucky that mom & dad had already done that prior to my dad's passing. Now that she lives three hours from the funeral home she has her pre-paid funeral plan with, I reached out to them and asked what do we do now. They were great to work with and we have an agreement in place for both situations of knowing the end is near or a surprise passing (the details are probably worthy of a separate thread). Since she now "owns nothing" (home, vehicle, big ticket items) probate should be easy after she passes.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
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.

We have spent the past 5 years assisting with elder care for parents. One set in a 55+ community. The stories I could tell!!!
Seek the POA's as soon as you can and while it's easy to do. Get you or your wife listed on all financial accounts that you can. It's so much easier to deal with when you have the proper access.
Curtail access to online scammers and phones as much as you can. We moved my parents to an Apple based computer to help limit the MS exposure and to provide a bit more protection.
Set up all the financial accounts to two part authorization and had the phone number be mine. Told dad we could look at it anytime he wanted to and always did.
We are now down to my mom alone. When I used her phone the other day to set up her airline check in she had 379 open tabs.
Take control of what you can because when you don't you open yourself up to spending hours on the phone cleaning the messes up.
Mom is still very independent and wants to do things on her own. But when she does so she has about a 7% success rate and I or my sister gets to clean up the mess. Again, usually hours on the phone.
She gets pissed when we just do things for her instead of showing her how but I'm frankly at the point that I'd rather deal with that than the cleanup on Aisle 2.
Final straw that set me into motion was a call from dad saying the MS guy needed access to the computer and how does he do that? This despite literally hundreds of conversations about scams and that we had the computer security under control. That resulted in having to proactively change the dozen or so Fidelity accounts as a precaution. Fun times.
Fast forward to today. My sister runs the bank accounts. I run the Fidelity accounts. Mom is still a net saver but is convinced she has no money. Numerous conversations telling her otherwise, with bank/financial statements won't convince her otherwise for more than a couple of days. In case you haven't picked up on it, it is rather frustrating.

Anyone who takes on the role of "caretaker" has my respect. I spent the past two years caretaking for both of my parents.

My sister and I had huge challenges with Dad when he was losing capabilities, but fighting for his indpendence every step of the way. When he finally picked out an Assisted Living place they had him sign a POA as part of the move in process. He was an Attorney and might not have given up any control otherwise. I didn't use it till absolutely necessary, but he got so sick it became time for me to take over.

I have Deslexia. I check my balance several times a day. Some days I see the same thing. Some days I see a different balance each time I check it. Al long as it’s not in the red,which doesn’t happen I’m good. I see some pretty strange Billboards too!

quote:

Originally posted by Tailhook 84:

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue: 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.

This is great advice. After my dad passed in 2012, mom & I went to a family planning lawyer to update her will, advanced care directives, and powers of attorney (POA). In addition, she set me up as joint owner on most of her bank accounts and POD (Payable On Death) on all of them. Over the years any in-person banking she did we did together. Last year when she fell and broke both her hip and shoulder most of those documents came into play and I took over all the finances. I toted my folder of Directives and POAs around and never had a problem working with any medical or financial entity, including changing her Medicare Part D coverage to another company over the phone. Because we had done her banking together they already knew the situation when I needed to make some account changes concerning auto-pay for things she had insisted on paying by check, as well as establishing the over $5k/month auto-pay for her assisted living facility.

One more potentially difficult conversation to have is funeral planning, including pre-paid funeral plans. I was lucky that mom & dad had already done that prior to my dad's passing. Now that she lives three hours from the funeral home she has her pre-paid funeral plan with, I reached out to them and asked what do we do now. They were great to work with and we have an agreement in place for both situations of knowing the end is near or a surprise passing (the details are probably worthy of a separate thread). Since she now "owns nothing" (home, vehicle, big ticket items) probate should be easy after she passes.

This is really good advice. The situation of parents getting to this point and allowing such to take place is difficult on many levels. Especially with other troubled siblings involved. It can be a real challenge.
I told my mother the other day that my only interest is to help make life easier for you and less challenging. It is hard.
And scammers and all the TV, internet, phone, QVC, PCH, etc. bullshit can get them in a lot of trouble. They are easily trapped in to shit like that.

Apparently, mom-in-law has a subscription on a yahoo account that she no longer has access to. See, she makes new accounts when she logs out and forgets the password. Yahoo system mechanic or some bogus garbage.

I just can’t imagine typing in my credit info into every online form that I come across. She may as well get extra copies of her credit cards and just hand them out to everyone she meets.

My Dad made me his executor, not my sibling, because we are night and day different, he could trust me.
Left a mess! Died early and unexpectedly, took years to sort it out, affected my well-being.

Mom gave me advanced directive, I got signed on to all her accounts and managed her day-to-day needs for the last 2.5 years of her life with dementia. Big job keeping her safe and fed and in her own home.

My sibling was the source of all problems. Guarding mom's money to pay for her upkeep was a constant issue with the sibling. The litigation after her passing from this sibling was a struggle. I won out at the end of the day, but only because we caught the sibling forging documents and outing their thieving plot.

Money doesn't change people, money reveals people.

quote:

Originally posted by Snapping Twig:

Money doesn't change people, money reveals people.

Exactly this. Perfectly stated.

My dad started helping with my grandma's several years before she passed away in 2018. When I was going through my grandma's stuff I discovered that her own beautician she had been seeing for years had been scamming her. Dad uncovered it and confronted her about it but nothing came of it. She had been taking thousands of dollars as "loans" from an old widow living off social security. For some reason my dad never told me about it when I was an attorney, I assume both of them were embarrassed about it or grandma didn't want anything to happen to the beautician. Dad was fine handling his finances all the way until the end, but after he passed away my brother and I discovered the $40,000 in casino losses he had (when he of course only told us about his "winnings.") I think he had hid that from my mom.

quote:

Originally posted by Scuba Steve Sig:
For some reason my dad never told me about it when I was an attorney, I assume both of them were embarrassed about it or grandma didn't want anything to happen to the beautician..

Seems so typical. For whatever reason, older people have poor ability to work through these things, and they are embarrassed to ask for help.

My dad was somehow scammed out of a shit ton of money in his 70's. Maybe he got caught up in the Bernie Madoff scandal which was around that time. Maybe it was a honey pot situation. I only discovered the brokerage account paperwork after he died which showed the money vaporizing somehow with no trail.

He kept saying he'd lost a lot of money, but implied it was related to the various market crashes in the 2000's. Clearly he moved his money out of established firms to some untraceable private dealings. Idk if any of it could have been recovered, or at least the fraudster caught, but he was too proud to do anything.

Mom-in-law also has been paying for disability insurance for her husband that died 9 or 10 years ago. New things just keep popping up.