A Financial 'Temperature Check' for Aging Parents
The "sandwich generation." That's what they call the baby boomers, and now gen-Xers, who are simultaneously caring for their children while also lending a helping hand to their parents.Yet while your local bookstore is no doubt crammed with books on parenting, you'll see less on the task of lending a helping hand to aging parents, and even less on how to assist them with their financial affairs.
That may be because the topic of helping parents manage their finances isn't sexy, not by a long shot. And perhaps more importantly, members of the older generation are all different, making it difficult to generalise about who will need help from their kids and what kind of help they might need. Some will, as in Mary Schmich's famous sunscreen essay , "dance the funky chicken on their 75th wedding anniversaries," leaving their children with rich financial legacies and no financial headaches. Others, meanwhile, may struggle with health problems, including mental incapacity, or financial difficulties later in life, which in turn may require them to lean heavily on their children for help.
