If You Want to Help Out Family Members Financially, Here Are Some Ways to Provide Support Without Making it Awkward
It’s a noble thing to want to help out when family members are in financial need. But is it the right thing? And is there a way to broach the subject and offer assistance without making the beneficiary – or you – feel awkward or embarrassed? Because this topic affects so...
The Price of Silence: The hidden cost of not sharing your preferences in advance
No one likes to think about the day when they are incapacitated due to a sudden illness. Even fewer people like to talk about it. Just try bringing it up with your spouse or your kids. It’s not easy.
Let’s say you have a stroke, the kind that takes away your ability to...
Battle Over the Estate of Artist Bob Ross Once Again Shows How Poor Planning Can Rob Family Members of Their Inheritance
The list of celebrities whose poor estate planning has created nightmares for their family is long and growing. We’ve read about Casey Casem, Tim Conway, Aretha Franklin, and Prince. Now we need to add the late Bob Ross – the PBS painter who coined the phrase “happy little...
In Sickness and in Health: Being Your Spouse’s Caregiver is “the Biggest Challenge Your Marriage Will Ever Face”
Most marriage ceremonies include the phrase, “in sickness and in health” – usually just after “for better, for worse.” This recent article on the website Considerable.com has opened our eyes to the fact that, for about 3.7 million men and women who are caregivers for their...
Is Your Aging Parent Safe Living at Home? Here are Four Signs the Answer Might Be “No”
When you ask mature adults where they want to live out their lives, as AARP did in this 2018 survey, an overwhelming number – 76 percent – give the expected answer: they want to remain in their own home. A similar number say, even if they can’t keep the same house, they want...
A Loneliness Epidemic: One in Three Seniors Feels Alone and Isolated, and the Health Consequences Can Be Devastating
We live in one of the most socially connected societies in history, or so the experts tell us. Facebook alone claims an astonishing 1.5 billion users worldwide, and it along with a constantly-growing collection of other sites and apps is supposed to ensure that we’ve always...
Can People Find Joy Living with Alzheimer’s Disease? A Growing Number of Patients and Families are Learning How
Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise in the U.S. We’ve shared the statistics before: today about 6 million Americans live with dementia, mostly Alzheimer’s, and by 2050 that number will soar to more than 14 million. The typical narrative describes Alzheimer’s disease using...
Kiplinger: Beware of these Four Dangerous Assumptions – They Could Devastate Your Retirement
None of us has a crystal ball, so when we look ahead to our retirement years we have to make some educated assumptions about all sorts of things – where our money will come from, how healthy we’ll be, and how much our kids will be involved in our lives, just to name a few....
Can Adult Kids Be Held Legally Responsible for Parental Support? In Some Countries – and Some States – the Answer is Yes
Here at AgingOptions, we feel we’ve seen it all when it comes to relationships between aging parents and adult children. In some cases, these relationships are wonderful models of love, respect and support; in other families, plagued by bitterness and old wounds, parents and...
Need Help With Long-Term Housing Solutions? It’s Probably Time to Hire a Geriatric Care Manager
It’s a dilemma that almost every family faces sooner or later: an aging parent or spouse can no longer live at home and has to move into a care facility. Sometimes the move into long term care is planned, but often – due to a health crisis, accident, or lack of preparation –...
