This is Chapter 6 in the series. In the Introduction to this series I provided a brief background on the passing of my mom and why I’m writing this. In Chapter 1, I covered my mom’s growing hoarding problem and our attempts to help her out of that hole. Chapter 2 told the story of when Mom’s urinary tract infection made her delirious and how I called the police to check in on her. Chapter 3 discussed aging and medical care, and Chapter 4 dove into some things I learned while helping her through medical issues. Chapter 5 covered options for living locations. In this chapter, I discuss managing finances.
Reflections: on Caring for an Aging Parent:
Chapter 6 - Managing Finances
Mom had a savings and a checking account, a state pension, Social Security, and—most importantly, as it turned out—a paid-off home. However, other than monitoring her bank account balance, Mom didn’t really have a budget or track her spending. On the bright side, despite all the online shopping, Mom at least bought mostly cheap stuff and did not spend extravagantly in other ways.
To understand what type of assisted living she could afford, we needed a consolidated picture of her finances. That meant identifying all her accounts, downloading bank and credit card statements, studying spending patterns, and building a spreadsheet showing income, expenses, and projected future costs.
Account Access
My brother was essentially Mom’s on-call IT department. He could remotely access her computer, knew the systems, and could troubleshoot issues as they arose--which they did frequently. Even after he’d put safeguards and firewalls in place, she would accidentally find ways to disable them or download some new app. Many times, he’d call me to tell me that he had absolutely no idea how she had accidentally managed get around the electronic safeguards he put up. I was incredibly grateful that he was able to help with all the computer support. I know it was, at times, frustrating for him.
Another benefit of my brother’s remote access to Mom’s computer was that he helped her manage all of the usernames and passwords for her accounts. He had set her up with a Norton password vault that kept usernames and passwords all in a safe place. Through this, I was able to access all her accounts while she was in the hospital recovering.
I know this level of access to usernames and passwords isn’t an option for everyone, some people may not keep this information on their computer, and others may not feel comfortable providing all this information and access to someone else. But it’s at least worth considering and having a conversation with loved ones about. This access was critical to all the behind-the-scenes support we provided to Mom the past couple of years. Consider the fact that you likely know how to get into all your accounts, but would your loved ones know if you weren’t there to tell them or show them?
A complicating piece to all of this is two-factor authentication (2FA). It is nearly ubiquitous now when you try to log into an account. It’s not enough to simply have a username and password; instead, you will also be sent an email or a text to your cell phone for you to log in. At first, to log into an account, I had to either be with Mom (and her phone) or call her and have her tell me the code that was texted to her. After a while, I was able to add my cell phone number as an additional option. Once she passed, I kept her cell phone plan active because it would still receive 2FA codes for accounts that I needed to log into on her behalf.
The Financial Picture
After downloading her account statements, I was able to review all her income and expenses for the past few years and then build a spreadsheet to capture the important pieces. Using that, I then built a future budget that took into account which items would increase in cost, which ones would decrease, and which would remain the same.
After calculating the estimated cost of assisted living, we could then do the math to determine how many years of assisted living Mom could afford based on her income and other expenses. It was clear that her pension and Social Security would not cover the monthly expenses, so each month she would be drawing out of her savings to make up the difference.
This led to a rather sober conclusion—that her savings wouldn’t last long. To extend the length of time she could pay for assisted living, we would have to sell her house. Even with that, her money would not last forever.
I showed her the spreadsheets and graphs, specifically the graph estimating how many years she would be able to afford to be in assisted living. I tried to be as realist as possible with my projections, taking into account inflation and increasing prices due to increasing help needed with acts of daily living that I talked about in the previous chapter. These were not comfortable conversations or truths, but I wanted to be transparent about it all. My brother and I then also assured Mom that if her money ran out, we would continue to support her.
After she agreed to sell her home, we then considered whether we should sell it as-is (it was not in great condition) or renovate it to try to get more money out of it. My wife is a realtor, so she was familiar with the Austin housing market. She also has a good eye for renovations and what changes add the most value. So, we had a couple of renovation companies come out to give us quotes, then, after crunching the numbers, we concluded that it would be worth renovating—the expected payoff would be more than the money spent.
Spending thousands of dollars on renovations was, understandably, scary for Mom. She would be spending money in hopes of getting it all back, and then some, when the house sold. We discussed it at length, showed her the math, and looked at comparable home sales. In the end, she trusted us and agreed to do the renovations. I’m grateful for that trust, and she was better off for it.
Because Mom bought her house at a cheaper price than what she would be selling it for, she would have to pay taxes on the profit from her home.
(First, a quick note: the following section only covers federal taxes; I won’t discuss state taxes here, since each state has different laws, but know that you may have to pay state taxes as well.)
For a single person, if you’ve owned and lived in your home for at least two of the last five years, you can exclude up to $250,000 of profit from federal taxes (this is current as of 2026). That “profit” part is calculated by subtracting the price you purchased the home for from the price you sold it for. You are also able to subtract certain improvements you make to your home as well.
For example, if you bought your home for $50,000, then lived in it for 40 years and sold it for $350,000, your profit would be $300,000. As mentioned above, you can exclude $250,000 from that, which leaves $50,000 that you will owe federal taxes on.
But let’s say you put in new kitchen countertops and renovate the bathrooms at a cost of $20,000; then that $50,000 would be further reduced to $30,000 of profit that you would have to pay tax on.
I won’t go into the details of the home renovation, other than to say it took months to complete and required my wife and me to go up to Austin weekly to check on the status, meet with the contractor, and continue to make decisions on paint color, cabinet styles, flooring, and a thousand other things.
I’ve written before about decisiveness and momentum and the need to just keep moving forward on tasks in life. This was never more true than in the past couple of years. Decisions had to be made and forward progress was required…every, single, day. If there were days that we fell behind in making decisions or taking action, it would result in snowballing tasks and regret on my part. My wife has a saying: “Do what you can when you can.” This served us well. Got 15 minutes between events in your day? Then you better make that phone call, send that email, or do research on that thing. Your later self will thank you. Your later self will not thank you for scrolling social media when you could’ve been doing something productive.
After we sold the renovated home, I was able to put the proceeds into a high-yield money market account. From there, each month I started putting portions of that money into Certificates of Deposit (CDs) that matured over different periods of time. These had higher interest rates than the money market account. This “laddering” of CDs would require monthly tracking and management on my part, but it also meant Mom would earn higher interest while also having access to the money she would need.
Bank Accounts
But before I could establish the CDs, we had to open an account at a bank in San Antonio because her bank in Austin didn’t have any branches here. This, too, involved more phone calls, paperwork, money transfers, and switching numerous bills that had been set to autopay from her previous bank. Most of this could be done online, but other times it involved our coordination due to two-factor authentication on her phone or her signature being needed on forms. Ultimately, I think it took about three months for me to finally get all the autopay accounts fully switched over, and that was with me working hard to stay on top of it all.
With regard to bank accounts, you might consider either establishing a trust and have the bank accounts in the name of the trust, creating a joint account with the person or people you want to have access to the money upon your death, or creating your account with rights of survivorship to the person or people you want to have access to your money upon your death. The primary benefit to these, depending on what state you live in, is that you can generally avoid the accounts going to probate to access the money. I’ll talk more about probate in Chapter 11—just know that it can take weeks, if not months or years, to complete. During that time, the deceased’s bills (like mortgage, car payments, etc.) still must be paid by someone (usually the executor of the estate) with funds from somewhere (not the deceased’s frozen accounts).
Because of the complexity of readers’ finances and situations, I won’t cover the full pros and cons for a trust, joint account, or rights of survivorship. At bare minimum, though, I recommend naming beneficiaries on your accounts. No matter what, talk with an attorney and/or financial advisor to see what would be best for you.
Recently, my wife and I realized we needed to update our will and other documents. We met with an attorney (depending on what you need, this will likely cost over $1,000; if you do it online, it may be cheaper) and she recommended that we look through all of our accounts to ensure we had rights of survivorship between each other and that our children were listed as beneficiaries. I was very surprised to find out that I had never listed our children as beneficiaries on our primary checking and savings accounts. If my wife and I had died together, say in a car crash, that money would’ve likely had to go through probate.
Fraudsters and Donations
When my mom transitioned into assisted living, she also started allowing me to handle more of her day-to-day finances. As I’ve said about other things, I’m grateful for the trust. In the end, it saved her time and stress and ensured bills were paid on time (which wasn’t always happening when she managed them) and erroneous charges were corrected.
Once I began managing Mom’s accounts, I could see recurring donation patterns and small automatic charges everywhere. Mom had a generous heart, and many organizations knew exactly how to exploit that. They knew how to pull on her heartstrings, whether through mailers showing downtrodden people or animals, or through alarming emails declaring that she must “ACT NOW!” to prevent politicians from doing something that was going to threaten the future of humanity.
For some of the automatic donations, I had to go through a maze of online menus to turn them off. Some of the organizations didn’t even have phone numbers on their websites. The only way to contact them was via a form on their website. Even some of the political action committees (PACs) have sub-organizations with their own websites and donation portals. It was frustrating and confusing for me; I can’t imagine what it would be like to try to turn those off if you were elderly. And even then, there were donations that I could not figure out how to turn off. Eventually, the donations only stopped when we closed the credit cards. What a scam.
Speaking of scams, I have a friend whose aging father received a telephone call from someone saying that the father’s son (my friend) was in jail and that to get the son out of jail, the father needed to send money. The son was not, in fact, in jail.
The father drove to the bank, withdrew $9,990 ($10 short of triggering federal reporting requirements), then went to a Coinstar kiosk and sent the money via cryptocurrency to the perpetrator. The fraudster kept the father on the phone, instructing him what to do each step of the way. The bank teller even asked the father what he wanted to withdraw that much money for, but the fraudster, who was still on the phone with the father, told him not to tell them, so the father simply told the teller that he was on the phone and couldn’t talk to her.
After sending the money to the fraudster, the father called his son and asked if he got released from jail.
“What are you talking about, Dad? I’m not in jail,” my friend said.
After the father explained everything, my friend asked why he didn’t just call him to begin with. It was an elaborate scheme, even to the point that the fraudsters had someone pretend to be the son on the phone. According to them, the son had been “hit in the face” and lost some teeth, so he was mumbling and that’s why he sounded different. Because the money was sent via cryptocurrency, there was no way for the police to track it, and the father was out nearly $10,000.
Just this last week, while I was at the bank, sill handling finances for my mom’s estate, I saw a sign on the counter listing things to do if you think you are being scammed. I told the bank teller the story above and she said that this is scam is increasing in frequency. So, beware. From the bank, there are three common fraudster tactics: credibility, urgency, and authority.
Thankfully, for Mom there wasn’t anything so egregious as this, but the many other smaller donation transactions did add up. I explained to Mom that at this point in her life she needed the money more than these organizations did, and for the most part she agreed, and we turned those automatic donations off.
More Day-to-Day Management
The last couple of years, Mom really fell behind on keeping up with the mail. This happens when you’re a hoarder and you feel the need to read every catalog, magazine, advertisement, bill, and package that comes to you, but can’t get through it all. Bills would get buried under stacks of junk mail and wouldn’t get paid on time. I did my best to manage her mail, to include trashing all the junk mail, but she would still squirrel some of it away and would’ve tried to review every single piece that came in had I not gone through it first.
Regarding junk mail, I’ve found that it, and frequent donations to organizations that send pleas via junk mail, cause the junk mail to increase at an exponential rate. We had a lull of incoming junk mail when Mom moved into assisted living, but once the address change kicked in, so did all the junk mail from companies that were still sending mail to her previous home. After she passed, we changed her official address to my home so I could receive any important items that would arrive in the mail. Now, when I go to my mailbox, 75% of our household mail we receive is for her, and nearly all of it is junk. If an organization provides a postage-paid envelope for a donation, I return the donation slip in their envelope with the words “Nancy Rendell is no longer alive. Stop sending these!” It seems to be working. At minimum, I’m using up their prepaid postage envelope and costing them something for their greediness.
Toward the end, I managed all of Mom’s finances. She still had access to credit cards (which she continued to use to buy stuff online), but I could monitor it all and ensure bills were paid on time. Like I said before, I’m grateful for that trust. And, ultimately, she was better off for it too.
Advice
#1 – Make sure your will is up to date.
Online access
Digital access is now part of estate planning. Access to usernames and passwords can become essential—do not wait until hospitalization to start figuring out how your executor (or loved ones) can find your logins and passwords.
Keep the decedent’s phone active for a while after death if 2FA codes are still needed.
Finances
Don’t assume fixed income will cover assisted living; do the math on income and expenses and build a realistic care budget.
Simplify accounts where possible.
Review bank and credit card statements for patterns.
Get professional tax help if tax returns are behind.
Watch for scams, donation traps, and predatory fundraising.
Keep a list of recurring subscriptions and autopays. Last year I created a spreadsheet of my own subscriptions, to include cost, renewal date, and a history of past costs…it was a real eye opener.
Depending on what your situation is, and what an attorney or CPA tells you, you may want to:
Ensure your accounts are set up as joint with rights of survivorship between you and your spouse.
Determine what status would be best for those you want to have access to your money when you pass: a trust, a joint account, rights of survivorship, or simply beneficiaries.
Home
Selling a longtime home can create tax consequences, so do your research.
Keep records of major home improvements in case you need proof for tax write-offs.
Links to each chapter:
Chapter 6 - Managing Finances
Chapter 7 - Managing Tasks and People
Chapter 8 - The Purge
Chapter 9 - Finding a Place for Puppy
Chapter 10 - Life in Assisted Living
Chapter 11 - Her Final Hours
Chapter 12 - Afterwards
Final Reflections