Financial Caregiving 101: What You Need To Know Before You or Your Parent Gets Sick

Saving money on financial caregiving 101 what does not have to be complicated. We rounded up the essentials so you can spend less and skip the guesswork.

Key Takeaways

• Author and financial planner Beth Pinsker shares what happens when you suddenly take over your parents’ money management.
• It starts with a phone call.
• Suddenly, you’re the one in charge , not just of their care, but of their money management, their legal documents, their online accounts, an...

Author and financial planner Beth Pinsker shares what happens when you suddenly take over your parents’ money management.

It starts with a phone call. A parent has fallen. A medical diagnosis arrives. Suddenly, you’re the one in charge , not just of their care, but of their money management, their legal documents, their online accounts, and the house they might leave behind.

That’s the position financial planner and columnist Beth Pinsker found herself in when her mother’s health took a turn. Despite a career spent as an expert in personal finance, Beth says she still “stumbled at every turn” trying to manage her mother’s affairs.

She joined Jean Chatzky on the HerMoney Podcast to share her story and walk us through the must-know lessons from her new book: “My Mother’s Money: A Guide to Financial Caregiving.”

Here’s what every daughter, friend, or partner needs to know about stepping into this role, and how to protect your own finances while doing it.

The Two Most Key Documents To Have Now

Jean Chatzky: Let’s talk about before the crisis hits. How do you approach the conversation with a parent who doesn’t want to have the conversation?

Beth Pinsker: There’s one email that would save you from a year in court and $18,000 to file a conservatorship over your parent who has dementia. If you are the person who’s everybody else’s person, you need to make a family map. But not all the lines are blood-connected. I have a lot of single women friends who I’m their person, I’m their emergency contact. 

You want to send an email to everybody who is on that list and find out where they are on these two very key pieces of paperwork: a power of attorney and a healthcare proxy. These are for emergencies. You have them in case something should happen, and everybody who’s a legal adult over the age of 18 needs these things, whether you think you do or not. You just have them in case something happens.

Money Management On Behalf of a Parent

Jean Chatzky: The goal that you had when you set out to write this book was to make it easier for the people who come after you. So let’s talk about the things that you had to do. What was your process from the time you took over through the settling of your mother’s estate?

Beth Pinsker: The first thing I had to do was get a handle on her ins and outs and how much money she had coming into the household, which I had no idea. And so I had to reverse engineer a budget and make sure that everything that needed to be paid got paid because she had premiums for insurance policies and household bills, and things like that.

If I get sick, I’m very careful to make sure that everything I do is automated. As long as money keeps coming in, as long as my paycheck keeps landing, my bills go out. And so if something happened to me, things could function for some amount of time on their own, on autopilot. 

Your 3-Step “Do Now” Caregiver Checklist

Ready to get started? Beth says there are three things every adult, and every caregiver, should do today:

1. Get the paperwork in place A healthcare proxy and durable power of attorney aren’t just for seniors; they’re for anyone over 18.
2. Secure access to phones and email With so much of money management tied to two-factor authentication, losing access can mean losing control.
3. Create or request a master info sheet A single-page document with account names, bill due dates, and emergency contacts can be a lifesaver.

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Final Thoughts

Before you check out, double-check financial caregiving 101 what against current offers and any coupons you can stack. Small habits like this add up to real savings over a year.

Originally published at savingswitch.com.