Showing Aging Parents You Care

Is it too late to consider long-term care insurance for an aging parent? If your parent is in good health, the answer is no.

Many healthy aging parents have no coverage for a simple reason: it’s just not a concern. But if the need for long-term care moves from being a remote possibility to a reality, the financial burden could be significant. Making sure your parents have long-term care insurance can be one of the smarter financial moves you can make.

The costs of an extended-care facility or in-home care can quickly deplete finances. Adult children may then be required to help pay the expenses, negatively affecting their finances, and perhaps their own family’s standard of living.

Financial Abuse Of The Elderly

Financial exploitation of older adults is a growing yet hidden epidemic. The media regularly chronicles outrageous behaviors involving awful and unlawful treatment of older adults. Gender, circumstances, the relationship of the perpetrator to the victim, and other elements of the stories change but the outcomes are similar - compromised health, wellness and safety of older adults.

Vulnerability to elder abuse increases as a result of age-related changes and challenges such as cognitive impairment, reduced sensory capabilities, mobility challenges, depression, isolation, and dependency on others for assistance with daily living activities.

What is “Financial Abuse”?
It’s using the elder’s money or assets contrary to the elder’s wishes, needs, or best interests - or for the abuser’s personal gain.

A Sandwich Generation

A lot has changed in our family cultures of the past 100 years.  In 1900, the life expectancy of an average person was around 50 years old, while today it is closer 80 years old.  In 1900, it was very common to have 3, even 4 generations living in a home.  Today, while it is more common for the younger generation to stay with parents until their late 20’s, the expectation is that they will leave, and over the past 50 years it has been pretty rare for people in their 50’s to have their parents living with them.  This is changing for many Canadians.


Canadian Baby Boomers are facing something that many have never really prepared for: the caring of their aging parents.  As Baby Boomers hit their 50’s and 60's and their children start leaving home, they are finding that some of their parents are in their 70’s or 80’s and are having difficulty living on their own.  Baby Boomers are starting to take in their parents, sometimes for health or financial reasons.  The health reasons tend to be obvious reasons for care, whether mental or physical, but the financial reasons are not always discussed.