EP 165 | When Your Parent Has Dementia

16 Jun EP 165 | When Your Parent Has Dementia

Welcome to episode 165 of The Retirement Years on Profit Boss® Radio! In this episode, we’re talking about how to deal with dementia in our families and in our lives.

Dementia is an unfortunate topic that touches many of our lives. When a parent starts to show symptoms of memory loss or erratic behavior, you need to have plans in place, to be able to have difficult conversations, and to be able to take action without getting overwhelmed.

However, with the right preparation, you can take a compassionate approach to your parents’ care without straining your relationship or becoming exhausted – and you can take actionable steps right now to know the red flags, warning signs, and even determine if something is a medical issue and not dementia at all.

Today, I’m joined by Kay Bransford. She’s the author of the award-winning blog Dealing With Dementia and creator of the MemoryBanc system, which has been named as a must-have in AARP’s Brain Healthy Gift Guide. She has also appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about her work.

So, if you want to know what to look out for, as well as how to prepare for the worst, check out today’s episode of Profit Boss® Radio!

Here’s what you’ll find out in this week’s episode of Profit Boss® Radio

• How Kay discovered that she needed lots of information to implement her parents’ plans once they developed forms of dementia – and why it took over half a decade of erratic behavior before they were diagnosed.
• How children can deal with parents who reject assistance – and how to take action without embarrassing or belittling them.
• Why certain medicines can trigger dementia-like symptoms – and the red flags you should bring up with a doctor if you notice.
• What people with dementia really need, how to prepare to be a caregiver, and how to tell if you absolutely can’t – or shouldn’t – be a caregiver.
• Why it’s so hard to determine when someone has to leave their home and be in full-time care.

MoneyWise Segment

Right now, we’re in the midst of a recession – the 15th to take place in the last century. It may not seem like it, but even now, the possible outcomes for you in the stock market are massively exciting. Within two years of 11 of those recessions, stock market returns were positive.

What does this mean? It’s simple: if you’re tempted to sell your long-term investments, don’t. If you’re thinking about adding to your investments right now, you’re highly likely to see positive returns in your near future. To help you better understand this, I’m sharing a report by the mutual fund company Dimensional, entitled Long-Term Investors, Don’t Let a Recession Faze You.

Resources and Related Profit Boss® Content

• Dealing With Dementia Blog
• MemoryBanc: Your Workbook For Organizing Life
• Long-Term Investors, Don’t Let a Recession Faze You

Call for Listener Stories

Hey Profit Boss® Radio listeners! If you reach a financial goal you’re proud of, tell me about it! I will continue to share listener win stories throughout 2019. Remember, the Profit Boss® community is here to support you and that includes celebrating with you when you accomplish something incredible. 

• If you crush a specific financial goal, I want to hear from you.
• If you’re thankful for something that has happened in your financial life or career, I want to hear from you.
• If you are making big financial or career plans, I want to hear from you!

Your financial success is possible and so many of you are already making that a reality! So, don’t keep your wins to yourself! Share them with me so that I can air them throughout the year on Profit Boss® Radio.

Email your audio clip to media@hilaryhendershott.com. And we’ll be in touch if we plan to air your story. Thanks, ladies!

#AskHilary

And let’s not forget that this show is powered by you and your stories and questions. Every month I’ll be doing an #AskHilary episode where I answer listener financial questions.

• So, what’s that top of mind money question that’s been pinging around in your brain?
• Where have you been stopped?
• What have you been arguing with your spouse or significant other about?
• What tip or tool aren’t you sure about?
• Do you have questions about saving? Spending? Budgeting? Investing?

Pick up your mobile phone right now. Yes, right now. And open your voice recorder app. Yep, go ahead and open that app and record yourself asking me that question. Just say your name, first name only is okay, and then what city you’re from, and then ask away.

Anything you want to ask. And once you’re done recording, export that beautiful little recording and email it to media@hilaryhendershott.com. I can’t wait to hear your questions!

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Transcript

Hilary Hendershott: Alright, profit boss, today we’re talking about an important but unfortunate topic that will touch many of our lives, and that’s dementia. I have with me today Kay Bransford, author of the award-winning blog, Dealing With Dementia, creator of the money bank system for a financial organization, which was named the number one gift in the Brain Healthy Gift Guide by AARP and Caregiver magazine named the tool’s accompanying workbook book of the year. You can find her articles on the Huffington Post, and she’s been a guest on the Dr. Oz Show. Welcome to Profit Boss Radio, Kay.

Kay Bransford: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Hilary Hendershott: How did you get involved in the topic of dementia?

Kay Bransford: Well, I had two parents that simultaneously ended up walking into different forms of dementia. I live near them. They used to come over for dinner. I noticed some things were a little bit different with their thinking and their behavior and it was probably over the course of about five to seven years before we actually got a diagnosis, but I just noticed some differences in the way that they behaved. And as we stepped in to do that, what we found was all the planning they had done, which they were super planners, my dad was military, so they were always ready for something to happen, I needed a lot of information to actually implement the plans that they wanted to have done. So, knowing their bank accounts, where they were, where cash flow came into, all of those things got really overwhelming as I was also trying to take care of them and so that’s kind of how I got involved in this topic.

Hilary Hendershott: What were some of the things that you noticed were different about them?

Kay Bransford: One thing I vividly remember was my mom always had parties so the military was always kind of hosting people over and socializing, and we used to do these onion tarts. And I made them one night when they came over for dinner and I served them and my mom was like, “Oh my gosh, these are delicious. Can I get the recipe?”

Hilary Hendershott: Oh, wow.

Kay Bransford: It was just like, wait a second. I made them exactly like I had made them with her for 20 years and she just didn’t even recognize them.

Hilary Hendershott: Now, can you get, I have heard that you can’t get a diagnosis for Alzheimer’s. Can you get a diagnosis for dementia?

Kay Bransford: Yes. So, Alzheimer’s is really just one form of dementia so dementia is really the umbrella term. So, my mom ended up having vascular dementia. She had a stroke and when they finally diagnosed her cognitive issues because of the stroke, they found that it was her second stroke. We never really noticed the first one. So, that just cuts off blood to the brain and so she had dementia from like having almost an aneurysm in your brain. Now, my dad had Alzheimer’s and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They do a neuropsychological test but they also did an MRI of his brain and see that there were some shrinking and some clusters in his brain. And that was about 2012 so they did actually tell me he had Alzheimer’s.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Wow. And so, as the disease progresses, what are some of the forms of care that your parents needed that you provided versus were their forms of care that you didn’t or couldn’t provide that they got elsewhere?

Kay Bransford: Right. I listened to your podcast last week so it was interesting hearing about the Medicare. So, my parents actually bought into a continuing care retirement community. So, they had a place to live that had assisted living and had the different services that they might need but they didn’t want them. They didn’t believe that they needed help. So, while I helped manage bill pay and they actually still had a property in addition to their continuing care retirement community and I needed to pay those bills and manage the water and upkeep, what they do need, I guess, needed help for beyond that was really they needed a caregiver because I couldn’t be with them 24/7. So, even though they were in a continuing care retirement community, they did eventually need assistance with cueing where you going, changing their clothes, washing things, preparing meals, so basic activities of daily life they did need help with and I just couldn’t be with them 24/7 to do that. So, we needed to bring in extra help for those things.

Hilary Hendershott: So, they did or didn’t go to the continuing care community?

Kay Bransford: Great question. So, my parents maintained to their townhome and so they actually lived in two places. They treated the continuing care retirement community initially as their vacation home until they moved there full-time.

Hilary Hendershott: And actually, the situation you’re describing, I’m somewhat familiar with. I have a client who’s my age and she’s managing her own mother who has pretty serious dementia to the point where she’s afraid if she leaves her mom home alone, she’ll like boil water and leave the stove on and mom doesn’t believe that she needs any help. And so, my client in this case hasn’t necessarily found a way around that. How can people deal with that? What are the ranges of outcomes, if that’s the situation, the patient is rejecting assistance, what happens then?

Kay Bransford: Right. And I wish that the doctors had clued me in on this very early because I didn’t understand that there’s a term for it. It’s called anosognosia. And it’s a medical term for individuals that have a disease, but they can’t recognize that they have this disease or medical condition. So, for people that have had a stroke but the majority of them will have this anosognosia, they won’t recognize that their thinking has changed, not remembering things. It’s also quite common in individuals with Alzheimer’s. They just don’t recognize that their thinking and behavior have changed but they might say things like, “My brain is bad,” or, “I can’t come up with this word.” They’ll notice some things are wrong but they don’t think it’s impacting the way that they’re living their life. So, what I finally learned to do is, one, stop reminding them or telling them that there’s something wrong because it just really builds distrust because they’re angry with you because they think you’re telling them a story.

We had two family interventions over the course of our navigation with our parents, and they just thought the four kids, we were just nuts, that we were making all these things up. So, what I eventually learned to do is I would just tell them once we’d have a conversation and say, “Here’s what I’m seeing. What do you think about that?” And then as actually one of their doctors said to me at one point, he’s like, “At some point, you’re just going to have to be sneaky.” And I really struggled with that concept and he didn’t mean sneaky in a cruel way or a dismissive way. He just meant you might need to do things for them and they don’t need to know about it. So, how I dealt with it as their primary caregiver since I was the one adult child living here is I would tell them once we’d have a conversation about something, and then I would implement it behind the scenes and just move forward with it and try to navigate around it without embarrassing them, belittling them, or making them feel like they didn’t have any control over their life.

Hilary Hendershott: And some of those things were like the banking things and probably filling prescriptions, things like that?

Kay Bransford: So, it didn’t even come to the prescriptions because it was more the banking. So, like, for instance, my mom kept losing her purse and leaving it in a cab or something. She just left it all over the place with a checkbook in it and my dad actually went with me to the bank and I said, “You know what, we’re going to create a second bank account for mom and it’s going to have $800 in it. So, if she loses a checkbook, there’s not a lot of money at risk but she’ll always have that checkbook in a wallet because I know that’s important to her and we can always fund it when she needs more money.” So, he got it, he understood it, and so we just swapped out the checkbook for her. So, there are simple little things like that you can do to still help them feel whole but also help kind of put a protection around their assets.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And I have a mentor of mine in the business said forgetting that where you put your keys isn’t necessarily a sign of dementia but finding them in the microwave that might be. So, for some of us who are watching our parents age and, yes, people change as they get older, how do you know if the changes you’re seeing are warning signs? What are some of the things to look out for?

Kay Bransford: So, I think the big things are changes in their thinking and behavior or if you saw an incident or you shared an experience and their recollection of it is very different than what you recollect. So, those were the things I started noticing with my parents was just a perception of things change. The one thing that I’m pleased about is that I still have kids at home, I have one still at home, really, and it’s nice to know that kids forget too and because I have two parents with dementia, I did a lot of research and then took a total brain health training course to learn a lot more about it. So, things like misplacing your keys is more you’re not putting attention or meaning to something. So, don’t take those things as you’re having signs of dementia. But you can’t come up with words, you really can’t remember something that just occurred, or if you’re having people around you telling you that something’s different, bring it up with your doctor or at least have a discussion with them because there are actually a lot of medications that could create symptoms like dementia that are totally reversible.

Hilary Hendershott: It’s funny that you bring that up because actually my stepfather-in-law, well, my stepmother’s father had a dementia event but it turned out it was because he was on Zyrtec. And as soon as he came off the Zyrtec, he went back to being completely healthy and capable and he’s in his 90s. And I had no idea that Zyrtec was a thing that did that. It was a big deal for him. Other meds like that, did you know about Zyrtec thing?

Kay Bransford: I did not know about Zyrtec, but I do know that I feel like 70 and maybe when I’m 70 I’m going to say the number’s 80, there’s like an age when because the brain is changing and it does shrink some, medications just operate differently in it. So, something that might impact one person doesn’t impact the other. I don’t know that there’s a consistency to some of the medications. I know I had an issue like that with my mom and a medication called Tramadol. It was very devastating to my mom, where it’s normally a pain medication, but in someone with dementia, she was almost like she was on an acid trip. It was devastating and put her in bed for three weeks after one medicine course over one day. Medicines can just have a very different impact on us as we’re aging in general. So, that’s why I say if you start to notice those things, people need to bring it up with their doctor. It’s one of those things that I think we’re all afraid to admit or confront or discuss but it could be very treatable, so people really need to have that discussion with their doctor.

[MONEYWISE]

Hilary Hendershott: Welcome to today’s MoneyWise Segment designed to empower you financially and to make you smarter than your neighbor. Today’s session is on long-term investing. Listen, I know talking about the stock market on a podcast is super boring. That’s why I almost never do it. However, the possible outcomes for you in the stock market are massively, massively exciting. So, I want to talk to you about a graphic, a report that a mutual fund company called Dimensional put out. I did send this out to my clients recently, so if you’re one of them, you just saw this report in your email. However, this report is titled Long-Term Investors, Don’t Let A Recession Faze You. You can see the actual graphic if you go to the show notes for today’s episode, but I’m just going to talk through this with you.

Basically, we are in a stock market recession right now. Wondering how many of those there have been? There have been 15 recessions in the US in the past century. In 11 of those recessions, stock market returns were positive just two years after the recession began. So, investors are often tempted to sell out of their stocks and go to cash when there is an increased risk of an economic downturn but the data tells us that stock prices already include the expectations of a recession, and generally have fallen in value even before a recession begins, which means you don’t feel the actual depth of the true recession. The average annualized return two years after the onset of those 15 recessions was 7.8%, in other words, positive. You likely to have positive returns in your near future. So, a $10,000 investment at the peak of the business cycle would have grown to $11,937 after two years on average. That means that $10,000 investment suffered the downturn and then grew back to almost $12,000.

And the data for today’s MoneyWise Segment comes from having invested in the Fama/French Total US Market Research Index over the 24 months starting the month after the relevant recession start date. For more data and backup on this report, go to HilaryHendershott.com/165.

[INTERVIEW]

Hilary Hendershott: Great. And what’s the earliest age range people need to start looking out for the signs of dementia in their loved ones?

Kay Bransford: I mean, there are people that are having early-onset dementia in their 40s now. I’ve even seen some cases in their 30s.

Hilary Hendershott: Oh my.

Kay Bransford: So, I would just say in general it’s…

Hilary Hendershott: Be vigilant.

Kay Bransford: The biggest jump is usually after 65 and then 75 is when they start doing the age ranges for testing. So, I believe after 80, it’s like 50% of all people will have some form of cognitive issue. And even just a dementia, it just might be our brain slows down. So, it just takes us longer to recover information. And if you find you can never recover information that you know you should know, that’s when you really need to talk to your doctor.

Hilary Hendershott: You’re talking about me. Everyone who works for me knows I can’t remember anything. I tell myself it’s because I’m a mom of a toddler who has cancer and I’m running a business. It’s busy. But I’ll talk to my doctor.

Kay Bransford: That’s good too. But also give yourself a break and know that a lot of it is attention and meaning. And I know I do this just as a habit, it’s like if I don’t think it’s an important piece of information, I just discard it because it’s easy to retrieve somewhere else. You don’t need to remember everything because adults can really only remember, even healthy adults like in their 20s, five to nine pieces of information can be in your short-term memory. So, give yourself a break. If a lot’s going on, we have phones ringing, texts coming in, we have a computer in front of us, you might not have put attention or meaning to a piece of information.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. It’s amazing to me how much I can forget and yet I never once forgotten where I parked my car.

Kay Bransford: Great.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. It’s a good sign. Right?

Kay Bransford: Yes.

Hilary Hendershott: So, I know that, for example, some of these genetics testing and diagnosis services, they can come up with an outcome that says you’re likely to have Alzheimer’s. A friend of mine got that. She’s likely to be obese and likely to have Alzheimer’s. Are there other ways to know if you’re likely to have dementia? Any form of dementia in your future?

Kay Bransford: So, I don’t know if there’s as much as likely but they do. I mean, there are so many things that go back to what are some things you can do to prevent it because a lot of things are our lifestyle choices. So, there are some genetic things that give us a tendency for something, your diet, Mediterranean diet, the amount of alcohol you drink, or even you decided not to drink at all but getting exercise. There are things that you can do to actually just help prevent bad health consequences in general. And those are the things I think people should focus more on is what can I do to have better brain health?

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And is it primarily those things, minimize alcohol, eat a good diet, and exercise?

Kay Bransford: Yes. Those are the biggies that you should think about.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Any indications about and this is something I’ve read and maybe you don’t know, but about fake sweeteners, Splenda, things like that, saccharin.

Kay Bransford: I have not seen that because, well, I use Truvia so does that count?

Hilary Hendershott: That’s stevia, right?

Kay Bransford: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: I do too.

Kay Bransford: It’s still processed.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah.

Kay Bransford: We could find out that it’s the cans. You know, the reason why kids have more peanut allergies or people have more dementias is not just because we’re living longer, but it’s because we’re getting things through canned food or our food source. So, I think it’s really hard to know and I think watch the science and just make smart choices.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. What do people with dementia need from their loved ones? I imagine sort of walk us through the journey because I think your parents’ needs got more intense over time and it’s upsetting to realize that the person who birthed you and raised you may be declining or becoming sick. How can someone prepare themselves to be a caregiver? And really how can you know if you shouldn’t be a caregiver?

Kay Bransford: Wow. That’s a great idea. Well, I think a lot of it is we figured out in our family who it ended up being me just because I was close. So, I mean, it’s funny because there’s four of us. My sister was actually she’s a lawyer, she was named power of attorney. We all know that my brother was really my mom’s favorite, favorite one, but I was the one that was here so I really didn’t have much of a choice. I knew them like so I had been the last kid in Iowa. I still lived around home. So, I spent most of my adult life with them. They were over our house all the time. So, it was easy for me to step into the role in some ways because I was familiar and I also knew a lot about their preferences. And so, I think the biggest issue is making sure you give them purpose and meaning because what I see so many times and I say this from experience is the first thing you do is when you start seeing a loved one make a financial mistake is kids take away the checkbook, “Mom, you can’t do this.” “Dad, you don’t want to drive anymore,” you start taking away things from them.

And to me, what I learned is the longer I could help them preserve the lifestyle they were living, put bubble wrap around it, made me feel good and it also helps them. And so, I think it’s hard to think about that way because we’re also busy doing these things but I think that’s one of the reasons why I ended up becoming a daily money manager is I realized you can hire people to do the basic work. You could have someone take them to doctor’s appointments and help navigate some of those things. Do you have the amount of money in your retirement planning to help bring in these resources so your children and your friends can remain friends and children and not helpers? So, I hope that’s something that you can include in thinking about retirement is how do they maintain those relationships? And I think as a caregiver, that’s a really important thing to think of. So, a lot of people don’t have time. So, if you don’t have time, is there a way to pay for those services and bring someone in that will be patient with them, and help them maintain their dignity and their sense of self?

Hilary Hendershott: And so, how do you know when they need to leave the home and go to a place where they’re cared for full-time?

Kay Bransford: I wish there was a simple answer for that one. I mean, it’s interesting because I grew up with a mom that told me she never wanted to live with her children. So, they’re in the community. My dad passes away and that would have been a great point to go, “You know what, mom, why don’t you just come live at home?” Because I was driving to go see her quite frequently, we’re trying to find caregivers, it’s really hard to find a good caregiver and someone that clicks with, especially with someone with dementia who doesn’t think they need help. So, it’s just so much conflict that goes on there. But I think it’s knowing that your parents are lucky to have someone that loves them be involved and you’re going to make the best decision you can with the information you have when you need to make that choice. And you’re just going to have to be comfortable with the choices you’re going to have to make for someone else who’s really not able to do it.

So, now that my parents aren’t here anymore and I help other families navigate these things, I know, one, they’re keeping the dad at home because he wants to stay there. He has two cats that are important to them. Cats can’t go into the retirement community. And now we’re in the middle of quarantining in place so he’s basically locked in his own all by himself and we’re trying to put things around him to keep him entertained. It would be great if he was in a community, but he still would be by himself. So, you just have to kind of look at the individual and understand what is the best place for them to live the life they want to lead and make those choices as you can. So, it could be if they’re starting fires, could you disconnect the stove and have food brought in if they really wanted to age in place in their home, which a lot of people still want to do.

Do they have the ability to pay for a live-in caregiver? So, someone that can be in the background and be more of a roommate. If they do thrive on more social interaction, it might be a good time to move them into a community. I actually saw my mom dancing and doing things with other people that I never thought she would do once we got her into a memory care community that really was a good fit for her. It’s really personal to the family and to the individual to look ahead and maybe go, “What’s the right choice for them right now?” and those things could change. It might be good to and you’re planning on keeping them in the home but if they need more skilled nursing, they might need to go into a facility that has more nursing resources because it’s kind of not affordable to bring that into your home and it’s really hard to find nurses now.

Hilary Hendershott: It is, and it’s really tough for the kids. If you’re the child in the position of watching your parent age or get sick, because you probably have children of your own, you have a life, you have a retirement of your own you need to prepare for and so being a caregiver is not an easy choice. It takes a lot out of people. So, I just wanted to acknowledge that. Not all people are in a position to offer that to their parents. And I know that comes with a lot of guilt, usually.

Kay Bransford: Well, there’s guilt if you’re the caregiver and there’s guilt if you’re not local to do it so everybody feels guilt.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. it’s just a bad…

Kay Bransford: There’s no getting away from that.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. Okay. Your website says you offer daily money management and just a few minutes ago, you referred to yourself as a daily money manager. What does that mean?

Kay Bransford: So, we are not financial advisors. We don’t do investing. Our goal is to go into someone’s home and help them manage their finances if they’re either too busy or overwhelmed to manage it for themselves. So, I specialize in doing those services for families that have someone with a cognitive issue to go in and we sit in side-by-side with them to help them keep that checkbook in front of them and be involved in the finances for as long as they want to be. We end up doing home maintenance and I refer to us most of us are professional sons and daughters.

Hilary Hendershott: Understood. Okay. And you say we. You have a team of people that do this?

Kay Bransford: I do. After doing it for about a year, I realized that I’d be a single point of failure if I wasn’t around or I wanted to take a vacation. So, I started bringing on other colleagues to support me.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And so, I imagine you offer those services where you can physically be in the home. So, is that in the state of Virginia? Or are you more remote than that?

Kay Bransford: Well, now everybody’s remote hopefully with the social distancing. So, we serve people in Maryland, DC, and Virginia. So, we’re in the metro DC area in-person to do this person services but we also do have remote clients. So, we do some services where we download their data on Quicken and we do monthly reports for them and we manage their bill, pay them, so it really depends. Every customer has a different service that we offer. We’ve learned to do it remotely now.

Hilary Hendershott: Out of necessity, right?

Kay Bransford: Yes. Out of necessity.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. It’s amazing what we’ve learned to do on Zoom. And tell me about MemoryBanc.

Kay Bransford: So, MemoryBanc actually I started this as more of a product solution to help companies or individuals really and caregivers manage all the information you need to manage for mom and dad or for a loved one. So, personal information, bank account details, health information, online password, security questions, and pins, birthdays, and anniversaries. So, it was all the stuff that I needed to really help my parents even though I had power of attorney and we ended up having a trust and all those things. It’s really all the other information in their life that you’re going to need to be someone’s advocate for them personally or medically or financially.

Hilary Hendershott: So, is it a spreadsheet? Is it a password-protected vault? What is it?

Kay Bransford: Sorry. So, we started out with a binder system because I figured it needed to be adjustable. So, we have a binder product. We have a workbook that you can get on Amazon. It’s MemoryBanc: Your Workbook For Organizing Life and we also have a flash drive system for people that want a paperless tool.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. So, you can get it in whatever form you like it. It’s essentially a list of all the things that you needed to take care of your parents and you just aggregated it for people.

Kay Bransford: Yes.

Hilary Hendershott: Understood. Okay. And we’re definitely going to make that available on the website for the show notes for today’s episode at HillaryHendershott.com/165. And, Kay, in the pre-chat we were talking about some of the things that are coming up for you now. Would you share what you said about asking your son for his passwords?

Kay Bransford: Yes. So, one of the things I do, I do a lot of presentations on what do you need to save and why do you need to organize it. And for years, I’ve been asking my kids to write all their usernames and passcodes and put them in an envelope I hope I never need to open. They know where to find all my usernames and passcodes, but I just think it’s very important for your children because most people don’t know that we don’t have digital rights as an adult or as a parent. So, I always ask my kids to do that. Well, now my son’s 23. He’s actually home because he lives in San Francisco, but since everything’s closed, he’s working from home here. I mentioned to him, I’m like, “You know, it’s about time for you to update your spreadsheet,” and he kind of looked at me funny, like, “You know, I’m an adult and living on my own. Why would you need that?”

I’m like, “Well, if something happened to you, let’s just say, and your apartment is auto pulling money out of your bank account, how would we stop that?” He’s like, “That’s a good question. I didn’t even think about those things that I set up on AutoPay that you might need to access.” So, there are financial reasons that It would be helpful that someone had access to the information but it is also your social media that someone might need access to. Just to give updates to friends and family, if you were sick and you wanted to share that with people, you could actually do a post on their behalf. So, there are lots of reasons to ask for it and it was just funny that I’m glad that he thought enough of me and trusted me enough to give me the information, but he is going to write it down and put an envelope I hope I never have to open.

Hilary Hendershott: Right. And you keep those in paper form and you’re asking kids to update them about once a year or something? Because we change our passwords.

Kay Bransford: Right. I was doing it every three months when my kids were active on social media. And honestly, I know I haven’t done it for six months. So, now it’s time for me to ask them both. So, my daughter is going to be giving me a list of her stuff too. So, I would say every three months unless I just have them open it up and say, “Open it up, make a change, put it back in the envelope, seal it.”

Hilary Hendershott: And part of the reason why I explained to clients why I recommend that they do complete estate planning, which of course I don’t get paid to do, I just recommend they do it with an attorney is, this is how you make the hardest thing in life as easy as possible on the people that you love. And it sounds like adding a list of your current passwords to those documents for your loved ones is becoming a required piece of that, that if they don’t have that information, not only do they have to deal with their grief but all this sort of frustration and confusion and probably financial losses as well.

Kay Bransford: Right. And I’m sure you’re probably familiar with the $58 billion sitting in missing money…

Hilary Hendershott: Yes.

Kay Bransford: …in Federal treasuries because people just lose track of it. We’re not organized and there’s no reason for that money to end up in a big pool of money just waiting to be claimed.

Hilary Hendershott: $58 billion. Wow. That could fund half the CARES Act.

Kay Bransford: Yes, it could.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Great. All right. Kay, thank you. Is there anything I haven’t asked about today? Anything you want to make sure to include for my listeners today?

Kay Bransford: No. I guess my final thought is just this isn’t just for people as they’re aging, and they’re going into retirement but it’s really important for young adults to do it as well because we all have online information. We all have assets especially for millennials that keep all that stuff online. Even the screen code to your computer might be very important. I’ve had some families actually had something happen to their adult child and they couldn’t get into the computer where all the password information was stored. So, there is more information that you need to share with your family and I hope people will just take a moment to do that now.

Hilary Hendershott: Perfect. Thanks for everything, Kay. We’ll include links to everything we talked about today in the show notes for today’s episode. Once again, that’s HilaryHendershott.com/165. Kay, good luck with the rest of the quarantine and stay healthy, and thanks for being on the show today.

Kay Bransford: Oh, thank you. Be well.

[END]

Disclaimer

Hendershott Wealth Management, LLC and Profit Boss® Radio do not make specific investment recommendations on Profit Boss® Radio or in any public media. Any specific mentions of funds or investments are strictly for illustrative purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice or acted upon by individual investors. The opinions expressed in this episode are those of Hilary Hendershott, CFP®, MBA.