Your parents may insist they’re perfectly capable of handling their own money, and in many cases, they’re absolutely right. Getting older doesn’t automatically mean someone needs a child checking bank statements, questioning purchases, or taking over the checkbook, but new patterns in aging parents’ finances can reveal problems ranging from a retirement budget that no longer works to fraud, exploitation, or difficulty managing increasingly complicated financial tasks. In National Institute on Aging-funded research involving nearly 2.5 million older adults, missed credit-card payments began increasing as early as five years before a dementia diagnosis, and researchers found people were more than 34% more likely to miss a credit-card payment in the year before diagnosis.
That doesn’t mean a late Visa payment is evidence that your parent has dementia (financial difficulties can have many causes), but a new pattern deserves attention because the consequences can include late fees, damaged credit, lost savings, or unpaid necessities. These eight signs can help you recognize when offering financial support may be appropriate without assuming that helping means taking away your parent’s independence.
