By Grant Lucia
If you have an elderly loved one who isn’t doing well mentally, may soon be moving into an assisted living facility, and needs some help with some of the most basic things of life, one area that you might be needing to quickly take over for them is their finances. If not managed appropriately, someone’s finances can quickly diminish and cause them tremendous hardship. So to help make sure that this doesn’t happen to one of your loved ones, it’s important that you know what to do if the time comes for you to take over this part of their affairs.
To help you in figuring all of this out, here are three tips for taking over the finances of an elderly loved one.
Get Your Agreement In Writing
If your elderly loved one still has enough presence of mind to ask for your help with their finances, it’s important that you get all of your agreements about where you’ll take over and when down in writing.
Ideally, you should try to get things done through a power of attorney, as their guardian, as a living trustee, or some other legal way. Hopefully your loved one has already planned for the end of their life in this way and can give you all of the power and access that you’ll need easily, But if this hasn’t already been thought through, this could be an arduous process to complete, especially as they begin to decline.
Give Them As Much Autonomy As Possible
Once you and your loved one have decided that having you help them with their finances would be advisable, you might want to start with just taking over the big picture stuff. By doing this, you can still give them autonomy without having them feel like they need to ask you to spend their own money.
Try to set some guidelines and boundaries together. For example, they may want to have access to a certain amount of their money by moving it into their own checking account that they can spend through card or check. But by having you move money in for them, you’ll be able to ensure that no large sums get moved and spent on a whim.
Plan With Their Future In Mind
One of the main reasons why older people may want to have someone younger in charge of their money is to help them ensure that they have enough to last them through the end of their life. So with this in mind, you should try to help them plan for their future. This means ensuring that they are investing wisely and that they aren’t spending more than was budgeted for certain periods of time.
If you’ll soon be taking over the finances for an elderly loved one, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you do so effectively.
