Category: Important Organization for Caregivers

Organize your Finances and Accounts – Healthy Habit #19

Everyone who has had to step in and help a loved one knows how difficult it is to make sense of someone else’s finances.

Most couples can remember a time when they needed to access an account but were unable to because it was in the other person’s name. The phone and utility companies don’t care if you are married or on the home title or mortgage.

It will take some time and organization to make it easy for someone to access, but the reality is that for every adult I have worked with, all of your important information can fit into a 2” ring binder. Filing cabinets become organized dumping grounds for our personal papers and most people will admit they often have trouble finding their own information in the system they set up for themselves.

You can download a free guide to walk you through how to organize your binder here. If you want a workbook that will walk you through this process you can find it on Amazon (it’s less than $17).

Having it organized will save you time, and once it’s done, it’s easy to stay on top of the organization. One of the most important things you can do, is to create a simple roadmap of your finances. Many households have multiple bank accounts and often those people who would step in to help don’t know which account the income drops into and which account is step up to pay the mortgage, long-term care insurance, or even auto-pay utilities or other services on which you rely. Here is a simple example:

financialMap

It’s very basic, but can easily provide you with an easy way to understand your account set up and the interconnections between your financial assets.

Getting this done will benefit you now by saving you time in the long-run, and benefit you later if someone does need to step in and help you.

I started doing this organization when I was caring for my parents. It took me over a year to get a handle on all of the accounts and finances. I wanted to make sure that when my siblings visited, they could easily step in to help me. It was the origin of my business MemoryBanc. I  hope you will access the free resources to set up a system that will benefit you and your family. Shared.

Write or Print out Your Usernames, Passcodes, PINs, and Security Questions and Answers – Healthy Habit #18

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Passcode keepers and your browsers’ ability to save access codes are time savers. However, should you have a shared household, need to step in and help someone, or have someone step in and help you – without this information the inability to access your online accounts can be a huge roadblock.

I know we have been told NOT to write down this information for years; I get that for employers who have IT departments who can reset your access. At home, we don’t have that system and having this written down will save you time and frustration.

How many times has your answer to your own Security Question been rejected? Every time I do a public speech on What to Save and What to Shred, this question always gets an uncomfortable laugh as half the room raises their hand to admit this has happened to them.

Have you ever needed to contact your phone provider or the power company and the account is in the name of your partner, roommate, or spouse?  If so, you will know that you will be unable to make changes or service specific account needs if the person to whom the account is titled is not on the call with you. For the variety of accounts that fall into this category, I learned long ago to login as the owner of the account and handle our service needs in the portal. Saves ME time and allows both me and my spouse to fill in for each other should we be traveling or unavailable.

I have a book that my husband and kids are familiar with that includes all of my usernames, passcodes, security questions/answers, and PINs. I use the book every week to quickly look up or update my online accounts. The average consumer has 90 online accounts, and as a business owner, I have closer to 150 accounts.

My husband and kids also have documented and shared their information in case I ever need to step in and help them. For my kids I told them to put it in a sealed envelope I would only open in an emergency. It was an easy ask since they knew I had already provided them with an option to access my accounts. Parents have no online access rights to their children’s accounts.

The good password keepers have an option to print out a summary and I hope you will do that. In many cases, I have families that have shared this information in a document on their computer only to find out that no one knows the passcode to get into the computer. So I just recommend you have one option be paper access that can be stored in a safe or even hidden in plain site.

I guarantee having this will save you time and angst and be a huge help to those that may need to access your shared accounts when you are not home, or provide them with the keys to your digital legacy should they want to protect it and you are unable to do so. Advised.

Review Your Credit Card Charges Every Month – Healthy Habit 16

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Credit card fraud where a card is not present for the transaction was $4.57 billion in 2016 and increasing every year. Cyber pickpockets have made checking your statement monthly a necessity of being a credit card holder. I have set up an alert on my card so that every time it is used, I get a text notice.

The nonprofit Merchant Risk Council estimates that 80 percent of credit cards in people’s wallets have been compromised.  From a skimmer at the gas station to malware on a merchant card site to the data breach at Equifax – assume your card information has been exposed to criminals.

In the past few years, I have been able to save clients thousands of dollars in the first few months by just reviewing their past credit card statements. From monthly charges for services they don’t recognize or use, to purchases they never made but never reported. I shiver at the suggestion of setting up a credit card on an automated payment plan.

That automated system continues to roll and too often no one is minding the store. No matter what your financial resources, most of us would be upset to know we are paying for things we don’t use or never received. Warned.

Make copies of everything in your Wallet: Healthy Habit 10

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Should your wallet ever get lost or stolen, having copies of everything that was in it will minimize your stress. It will save you a lot of time when you need to call to cancel credit cards and follow up to request replacements of medical or insurance cards.

It will help if you make notes on the credit cards in your wallet that are set up for auto-payments for other services. A few things you should know about this:

  • Some credit card companies will ask that you pay for charges made on a lost card if you never called to report it missing. When they added the chip to our credit cards, they now have the ability to know if the credit card was physically used. If your card is not in your possession, but you did not report it missing, the credit card company fairly has the right to hold you liable for those charges.
  • Many larger vendors have dozen’s of 800 numbers linked to the specific credit card account. If you have a copy your card you have quick access to the direct number to report the card lost/stolen as well as the identifying information they may request from you about your card.

If you are incapacitated when your wallet is missing, this gives your loved ones an easy way to step in and help you.

Recently, I had a client whose wallet was stolen while he was in the hospital. Unfortunately, I had not made a copy of everything in his wallet and had to wait until he was well enough to talk through and figure out what he was carrying in his wallet.

It’s now one of the first things I do when I work with a new client now. Warned.

Healthy Aging Habit 1 – Use ONE Calendar

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Having more than one primary calendar will get you into trouble. I have a book that I carry during my work day and sits next to my computer that is my “master” calendar. I sync it up at least every Sunday with my digital calendar that is shared with my family and coworkers. When I’m out and someone asks to schedule something, I can quickly check it on the digital calendar I can access from my phone (if I don’t have my book calendar with me).

I’ve always had a paper system. I like to take notes and also use my “master” paper calendar as a To-Do List. Some people may use only digital, others only paper. Just make sure you have ONE MASTER Calendar.

I watched my parents and now my clients that have more than one paper calendar. They invariably double book or miss appointments because its difficult to manage appointments consistently in two paper versions.

If you are assisting a loved one, I recommend getting them a small format desk calendar (11×17) that can sit in the kitchen. Not only does it offer more space to write down information, but it’s too big to get picked up and moved. Here is a link to the one I have given to a few clients – it’s attractive and offers space to list important phone numbers and key tasks for the month.

I don’t recommend the wall calendars because they aren’t easy to use. Invariably, they get taken down to write down appointments and seem to move around the living space instead of being kept on the wall.

My favorite planner for the past few years is the Action Day Planner.  Please check out the different formats and sizes, there are quite a few.

No matter what you chose, I just hope you will find a format that works for you. Experienced.

** Please shop around. I don’t get any incentives or kickbacks on these links – I’m just sharing some suggestions that have worked well for me and my clients. 

Delirium and surgery common after 65

I am guessing that more doctors liked when patients were not armed with so much information. However, between whole sections of our daily newspaper that cover health issues and the internet, we can probably be everything from better patients to difficult to help. As an individual with the need to constantly learn, I love pouring over the Health & Science section of the The Washington Post. Today, it includes a story from Muriel Dobbin who talks about the delirium she experienced after surgery. Apparently, up to 46 percent of all surgery patients are struck annually by “postoperative delirium” that is marked by confused thinking, disruption of mental faculties, and anxiety. In older patients, the figure hits 70 to 87 percent who end up in intensive care. It can last days, weeks, months, and in some cases years.

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Do your loved know how to access your digital accounts if you were temporarily unable to manage for yourself?

In general, we are bad at making up a plan B for ourselves should we be incapacitated if only for a few days or weeks. It’s why more than $60 billion is sitting with state and Federal treasurers — no one documented their money or assets and how to get to it and eventually it ends up in the unclaimed money pool.

While I walked into this recognition because of my time as a caregiver for my parents, it made me realize how fragile my own household information was and how important it was to create a roadmap of our accounts, document all my user names and passcodes, as well as write down the answers to all of my security questions.

Once a week I hear from an adult child that is frustrated that their parent doesn’t have this information together and they are overwhelmed. My first recommendation is to do it for yourself … and maybe do it with your loved one so you are both organized. This is not just something you need to do when you hit 40. The complications of our digital word make this something every adult should do.

Most often, I end up walking into an older adults home and sorting through piles of mail to try to quickly build a financial profile. I’m typically working with a spouse who has no idea how to even begin on top of the grief and worry they are feeling as a loved one is in a hospital or rehab facility. For many baby boomers, I am finding that they manage their own accounts and often divide and conquer and don’t have a shared vision of their household assets.

I hope this will give you the incentive to now do it for yourself. You can get a free checklist of what to organize here. It won’t require more than 2 inch ringer binder to get it together. If you would rather be walked through the collection process, you can order the workbook on Amazon for $17.16. Recommended.

To see if you have money in the missing money pool, visit www.MissingMoney.com

How often is a Doctor Available?

As the primary family care partner for my Mom, I was often taking her to a variety of medical appointments. While both of the communities she lived in had visiting doctors, they usually were unable to see her in a timely manner or did not have the type of expertise needed. For instance, after a fall sent my mom to the Emergency Room with a goose egg sized lump on her forehead, we were told we would need to schedule a visit to an Ear/Nose/Throat specialist. For that we needed to travel to a local provider.

A story in The New York Times, Where There’s Rarely a Doctor in the House: Assisted Living, dove into this topic and it is worth reading if you are in the process of looking at a community.

Getting to medical care can be both a time and monetary issue to manage for loved ones that are not addressed by many Assisted Living Communities.

The current communities are having to adapt to the changing demographics and health issues. Most of the Life Care Communities planned on having their residents span a few decades and start moving in when they were in their 60s.

Today, the average resident is over 85 and 70 percent of them have some form of cognitive issue. The community did not plan for their residents being unable to manage their own medical care needs due to cognitive issues. On top of that, there is a cost to get the resident to a doctor in both terms of staff time and transportation. In the metro-DC area, a trip to the doctor for just the transportation averages $110 and this is for individuals who can walk.

When you are visiting, be sure to ask how they deal with the minor health issues like a cold or flu. Do they have regular visits by a doctor and how often? What types of doctors visit? Most communities are going to be unable to handle these issues but it’s better to know before you have an issue than learn about the advocacy and transportation needs after you have made the move. While you may still need to leave to get to a specialist, it is helpful to know they have a robust option for on-site medical care for many of the minor issues that may faced a loved one. Advised.

P.S. Ask to speak with the families of other residents and ask them to share how they have found the doctor. One reader reminded me that you may need to verify what the community sales person tells you.

How to Protect a Loved One’s Finances

If you find you have a loved one who is in failing health, has hired caregivers in the home, or is living in a care community, minding the day-to-day finances and spending is a simple task you can manage from a computer. Unfortunately, this can also happen to very health adults who get fooled by clever fraudsters as well. 

After caring for two parents with dementia, I remind myself how much the checkbook meant to my mother. She had always managed the household finances and the suggestion that she was unable to manage a checkbook safely was something that needed to be left unsaid. I found that out after I said it a few times. ; <

 

The biggest problem I faced was a lost purse that contained the checkbook. She thought she left it in a cab, a store, at a bridge game … I couldn’t manage the hours each week spent looking for her purse. Today you can at least get a tile which would have been immensely helpful in keeping track of her handbag, but it wasn’t an option yet.

There are several simple ways to help track the daily spending from the convenience of your computer: 

  • Get a tile and insert it into the wallet so you can easily find it if it get’s misplaced. You can use their online portal to track it’s location.  
  • Open up a new checking account and fund it with a small amount of money that can afford to be lost. You can easily move money into the account in small amounts as it needed to be replenished. If the checkbook is lost or you suspect fraud you can easily close the account.
  • Consider setting up a TrueLink card. It is basically a credit card where you can set up limits on how much can be charged as well as products and services that it won’t fund. There is a fee for it, but the small expense is worth the money it will most likely save in potential losses.

Unfortunately, I have recently had clients both at home and living in communities be a victim of caregiver exploitation. One got my client to write her a small check, one purchased some face cream for my client and asked her for repayment of $85, and another apparently kept asking for gas money. Most agencies and communities require their caregivers agree to never accept money or gifts from clients. Should a client give them money, it needs to be reported to the community or agency. In the past month, I have reported three caregivers for violating this condition of employment. Sadly, I know they will just turn up at another agency.

What I struggled with was that this was one of the few remaining freedoms for my mom. She could no longer drive, or run the bridge games she loved, and that checkbook gave her an empowered sense of self. Now as a Daily Money Manager, I see all the ways that people are trying to get at the money of my clients.

Ultimately, someone needs to be vigilant about minding the finances as well as considering how to layer in these protections. A few bad apples spoil the lot. I hope these options help you and your loved ones. 

$58 Billion Reasons Why to Organize Your Information & Online Passcodes

bag of moneyMost American’s are unaware that more than $58 billion is sitting in state and federal treasuries — it’s money that got lost in the shuffle of a move, crisis and even death. Family members and loved ones don’t know about it and it ends up in dormant accounts help by State and Federal Treasurers.

I used the MissingMoney.com website when I was caring for my parents. You can do one search and see if any of your loved ones money ended up in a state treasury. Every year, I do a quick search to see if anything slipped through the cracks. A few years ago, we found a record for my dad and claimed $2,500. Turns out, something was left behind in Kansas when we moved away in 1969.

Given the amount of accounts you accumulate today, it’s easy to understand how easy it might be to forget about a stock certificate, utility deposit, or even a small retirement account. I even found some of my money that was for an over-payment to the county water utility that I never received.

HOW TO SEARCH FOR MISSING MONEY

To do a quick search to see if you are entitled to missing funds, visit MissingMoney. Enter your name and state and you will get back a list of possible matches. You should make the claim directly to the state treasury. Every state website has a simple portal you can use to initiate the process.

1) Go to the state web site where you believe you may have missing money

2) Search the state web site for “missing” or “unclaimed money”

3) Make a direct claim following the web site instructions.

You should never have to pay anyone money to claim money that is rightfully yours.

Happy hunting! Enriched.

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MissingMoney does not include all states and not all the information — in particular some very old records. To learn more about this topic, check out Mary Pitman who wrote The Little Book of Missing Money.

Even Savvy Adults Get Fooled by Imposter Scams

A girlfriend shared how her mom, who she thought was of sound mind, was fooled into thinking that she (my girlfriend) had been kidnapped. They tried to get her mom to a check cashing place to wire money for her release.

Thankfully, her mom navigated it well but it was a quite a traumatic event. Her mom lives in a condo and kept the fraudster on the phone while she went down to the concierge who called the police. However, she was wondering if her mom was really of sound mind if she fell for this.

I confirmed to her that really smart people can be victims of this scam because the fraudsters are so good. In fact the FTC reported that the kidnapping scam is the top “Imposter Scam” for 2017 and cost Americans at least $328 million.

As a Daily Money Manager, I work with older adults in their homes and one of the first things I do is implement a call screening solution. In metro-DC, I can implement Nomorobo which is free service from Verizon. The Nomorobo website can help you find out if you can get their free service in your area.

You will immediately notice the quiet once you implement this feature in your own home.

If you can’t get a service like Nomorobo, you can purchase a call blocking device like Sentry 2 that lets you blacklist numbers. It does require that you tag calls to the “blacklist” to block, and you can also add numbers and only get calls from those on your “whitelist”. It can fill the need but does require assistance to be effective.

Two other simple options include:

  1. Sign up for “Anonymous Call Rejection” with your local carrier. This service rejects calls from anyone that has blocked their caller ID information. It is usually something you can enable using *77 but varies by provider.
  2. Never answer the phone if they don’t recognize the number.  Real people trying to reach you will leave a message.

Eventually, I think the FTC might start requiring phone companies to offer more protections for their clients. They have admitted the “Do No Call” list is a total failure. Technology improvements are great … it just stinks that crooks are always looking for ways to separate us from our money. For now, it’s our job to help protect ourselves and our loved ones.

For more on this topic, check out this story:

How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of a Virtual Kidnapping Scam The Washington Post

When banks prioritize their interests over customer service, we all lose.

wells_fargo_realityI have yet to be convinced that the default process being used by banks put into place to protect our accounts is reasonable. Today reminded me of how frustrating it is to deal with Wells Fargo in particular.

My client wanted me to step in as POA to help on her accounts, so we went to the bank and set it up so I could easily act on her behalf. She was with me and we used the Wells Fargo form to set it up and the whole process took an hour–it should have taken 10 minutes. The first banker had no idea how to even do it, so we waited for the “senior banker”.  The “senior banker” had to call the “back office” to be walked through the process.

My client has estate plans and a trust in place, but her son is not in the area. I was stepping in to help while she was transitioning from her home into a life care community.  We are on the other side of the transition and now that Wells Fargo has the Trust and all the beneficiaries is in alignment with her plans, I wanted to step down as POA.

I visited the bank to resign thinking it would be relatively easy. The first appointment took over an hour as I first had to wait for the “senior banker”, and then we sat on the phone as he called the “back office” to get tutored on what to do. I was told I had to bring in a letter formally resigning. They didn’t have a form, or any further instructions.

When I returned with my “resignation letter” I was working with a different banker.  While thankfully, I was attended to right away, we then had to wait on hold in the queue for the “back office” for 25 minutes. This time the “back office” tells us there are specific things that had to be included in the resignation. My typed up letter put her name in the header, not in the sentence, so that letter didn’t work. After 45 minutes, I am really annoyed since the “letter requirements” were not provided to me on my first visit.

This banker understands my frustration and grabs a piece of paper and asks me to hand write the resignation.

Ummmm, you mean I could have done that on the first visit?

Yes, I could have. He is now talking with a contact at “document review” to finish the process to complete what Wells Fargo needs to complete the resignation.

Prompts to the banker who helped me on this last visit. He is the kind of banker you want, but the Wells Fargo systems are a hindrance to building a positive relationship with CUSTOMERS.

I am frustrated. Wells Fargo is doing this for THEM, not for my CLIENT, or for ME. We are both customers. For the millions of caregivers who are going to have to go through this laborious process, be forewarned and do it before you need it. It only gets harder.

I miss the smaller bank I used to work with. I came first. I’ve also seen this with my clients and colleagues. The big name banks prioritize their interests and procedure before customer service.   

** I left my smaller bank because their online banking was very difficult to use and unreliable. Open to recommendations for banks in the NoVA!