The "Sandwich Generation" is made up of many of us. We are part of a great group of families that are still raising children, and we also have to take care of our parents who are getting older. Most of the time, this doesn't come up until someone talks about money or health care. Most of the time, when we talk about money, it's because of a financial disaster or a health emergency that forces us to look through our parents' chequebooks to try to fix things.
Do you really want to wait for a crisis like this to happen before talking about money? Or would you rather wait until your parent is too sick to think straight to talk about money? Most of us would say "No!" in a big, strong way. But it can be hard to start a conversation about money with a parent at best. Most of the time, parents think they're helping when they keep their problems from you. When I talked to my parents about money, they would often say; "Don't be afraid of us. We're fine, kid." "We've taken care of everything, so you should just worry about your own family." That sort of thing. It drove me crazy.
My father didn't talk about money until after my mother died. He didn't understand why I needed to know certain things about his money and how he wanted his estate to be handled until he went through something really bad. I didn't talk to my dad about what he wanted done until 18 months after my mom's funeral. At first, he said no, but then he realised that I was asking because I cared about him and his wishes. After that, it was another 6 months before he sent me copies of his will and a list of who would get what when he died.
I saw my husband and his parents go through something similar. Both of his parents are still alive, but I saw my husband and his brother spend 3 years, every Thanksgiving and Christmas, trying to get their parents to make wills and living trusts so that the rest of the family wouldn't have to make decisions that were really theirs to make. I thought, "There must be a simpler way to deal with this!"
Then I read an article in "How to Get Your Parents to Talk About Their Money" that told me how to do that. The End of the Story Magazine (March 2007) It was written by Dan Taylor, an attorney who focuses on caring for older people. I think you should go to his website at http://www.parentcaresolution.com/ and look at the articles and questions he has set up to help the sandwich generation talk to their parents about health care and money.
He suggests six important conversations that should be had.
1-A Conversation About the Big Picture (What Do We Want for Long-Term Care?)
2-The Money Talk (What do we have, where is it, and how do we get to it?)
3-The Home Talk (How much is it worth? How do we use it? How do we leave it?)
4-The Talk About Property (What Do We Want to Keep? What do we want to do?)
5-The Care Talk (Where do we go, What do we need, and Who gives it to Us?)
6-The Legacy Talk (How will we be remembered, who will remember us, and when do we talk about our memories?)
I really think that anyone with living parents should talk to them about these things. They are busy and have found ways to make the changes that come with getting older a lot less painful. If you want to learn more about this subject, you can read The Parent Solution: A Legacy of Love by Dan Taylor.
