Synopses & Reviews
Because caring for your parents' health also means caring for their wealth...Watching your parents decline and assuming the burden of caring for their physical needs is difficult enough, but you can't allow that to overshadow the importance of their financial needs. After all, what will happen if your parents outlive their savings? In order to be a financial caregiver, you'll need to know how to deal with legal and financial paperwork; government agencies and regulations; a host of insurance, investment, and estate planning issues; and the inevitable emotional and psychological issues that arise whenever money and family mix.
In this indispensable guide, two family finance experts who are caring for their own parents' finances provide a basic primer in personal finance for those who are involved in their parents' financial lives. Filled with checklists, worksheets, resource lists, and other essential tools, this comprehensive guide supplies the knowledge and confidence you need to
- Decide who should manage your parents' money
- Communicate with siblings and caregivers
- Establish budgets and write annual reports
- Manage your parents' stocks, bonds, real estate, and other investments
- Deal with health insurance, Medicaid, and other insurance issues
- Protect your parents from elder fraud
Synopsis
One in four American households cares for an elderly parent, and that number is expected to rise steadily over the next two decades. While there are plenty of books offering emotional and spiritual support for caregivers of elderly parents, there are virtually no guides to managing the financial aspects of parental care. Packed with checklists, work sheets, resource lists, and other indispensable tools, this comprehensive guide fills readers in on what they need to know about:
-- Budgets and annual reports
-- Legal and financial paperwork
-- Managing parents' stocks, bonds, real estate, and other investments
-- Health insurance, Medicaid, and professional care
-- Estate planning
It also helps readers through such daunting emotional challenges as telling parents that they can no longer manage their own finances and defusing the conflicts that can arise between siblings in these situations.
About the Author
Sharon Burns, Ph.D., C.P.A., counsels families on the financial aspects of caregiving. She is executive director of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education.
Raymond E. Forgue, Ph.D., is the director of graduate studies of the University of Kentucky Department of Family Studies