Assisted Living - Caring for Family and Friends

In this weeks edition of Morning Quarter-Buck, financial planner Becky Eason discusses a topic that is near and dear to her heart, as well as many of us who are faced with the decision of balancing the safety of our loved ones, with their emotional desire to stay at home.

By: Becky Eason

We all love our friends and family and want to make them as happy as possible. If you were to ask your friends and family what one of their hopes/wishes in life would be, it’s safe to assume that they would respond with being able to remain at home or at least out of a nursing home for as long as possible. 

Being able to fulfill the goal of keeping loved ones out of the nursing home for as long as possible can be challenging. I know exactly how challenging this can be, as I’ve been witnessing it firsthand with the efforts my parents have been going through with my grandparents. If you aren’t able to provide the care that is needed due to time or resource constraints, there are many programs available to help assist you. In Steuben County, New York for instance, there is a wonderful program available, Forward-Thinking Home Solutions. You may recognize this name from one of Amy’s Wine and Dime Podcasts where Amy interviewed the founder of Forward-Thinking, Sue Gruber. Sue will go into someone's home and make recommendations on what changes should be made to help keep your loved one living safely at home. She will also provide you with available resources and grants that you can apply for to help fund the necessary changes. If you don’t live in Steuben County don’t feel left out. There are programs all over the country that are there to support you. One such program that is available nationwide, is Meals on Wheels, which provides meals to individuals who are unable to prepare their own meals.

Maybe you aren’t able to keep your loved one at home but they aren’t yet ready for a nursing home. Your loved one might be able to go into an assisted living home. These homes provide a more independent lifestyle than a nursing home, but there are still staff members around at all times to help. Services that are provided at assisted living homes include meals, medication monitoring, personal care assistance, social activities, and housekeeping/laundry. 

Unfortunately, there will likely come a point when you must make the difficult decision to put your loved one in a nursing home. When you get to the point of having to make this decision it will very likely be emotional and you will question whether you made the right decision. If you are faced with this emotion, know that you aren’t alone and remind yourself that you did it for the safety of your loved one and those around you. 

Building a Plan to Relax, not React

In this week’s blog, Financial Planner Kate Welker, CFP® shares her “money stress” story and provides some suggestions on how to plan for those unexpected moments so that when they happen, you can take a deep breathe and relax instead of react.

By: Kate Welker, CFP®

Relaxation. The word sounds so happy and peaceful. I recently saw that it was Relaxation Day on August 15th, and the thought of a day set aside for relaxation sounded great. Quiet, a good book, a comfy armchair, sunshine in a hammock, a massage; whatever your variety of relaxation, the thought is sure to bring a smile to your face. I am a huge proponent of taking down time to recharge, but sometimes if you are dealing with stress it can be almost impossible to relax. 

A 2017 report by the American Psychological Association lists money as the number two cause of stress in America. This means more people are stressed over money than they are over work, relationships, or their health. Financial stress can begin to go deeper and lead to problems with your health and relationships. I am sure many of you reading can relate to this - if not currently, you remember a time in the past. You may have experienced that moment when you try to relax and feel the panic rising thinking about the bills to pay or the tasks to be done.

When the problems are facing you it is easy to just try to avoid it. “Try to not think about it or talk about it and it won’t be real.” Obviously this is not a solution and will only make the situation worse, but it’s how we naturally want to work. It’s not fun to look at problems or talk about them so avoidance happens, but the only way to work through them and find some sense of control is to face your problems and make a plan. 

Following are a few suggestions of things you can do to help bring some breathing room and sense of control around your finances:

Face the situation. I mentioned you have to stop hiding from the situation, this means you will look at everything and have it in one place. Write down your bills coming up, the debt you might have to pay, and any long term goals you need to save for. Just seeing this written out and organized in one place should help with staying on track and making a plan going forward.

Missing a payment can be stressful. We all make mistakes and can miss things here or there, but if you find this being a consistent issue establish a system that works or you. Most vendors have online accounts that allow you to set up payments in advance. If it is scheduled you know it will be paid, there just needs to be diligence in leaving the appropriate funds in that account. A method here could be to have a bank account that is only for paying bills. This account gets funded first to cover all the bills to be paid each month and it is not touched for outside spending. Another method is a paper calendar where you write in everything on the due date and refer to that weekly. 

One of the things I think helps ease the anxiety around money is building an emergency fund. It is not always easy to do, but by making it a priority to build up those emergency reserves will eliminate a large amount of “what if” stress. Just knowing the funds are available if the car breaks down or your child flushes a toy down the toilet and your entire sewer lines need to be excavated and replaced (speaking from experience there) should help you worry less. Start with a small goal of $500-$1,000 and build towards a larger goal over time. Make it a priority to contribute to this and if an unexpected lump sum of money comes in like a tax refund use this to continue building that cushion.

Building a financial plan with clients, I will often state that one of my goals is to reduce their stress and worry over their financial picture. Choosing to look at your situation and take control can change your mentality around your finances. Sometimes it’s the little steps that are the hardest to take, but a series of them eventually gets you to your destination. 

Fraud Protection and Simplifying Your Life

Did you know that this week is both fraud protection and simplify your life week? I don’t know about you, but I feel like this is a contradiction of terms. It seems that in order to protect myself from fraud, I have to create very complex passwords, wary of whom my information is going to, and often increasing the complexity of my life. In this week’s edition of Monday Morning Quarter-Buck, Financial Planner Becky Eason (aka Partridge) discusses how to marry these two concepts.

By: Becky Eason

For many years now it seems that there are non-stop scams going around. Have you ever been a victim of fraud or identity theft? If you have, you’re not alone. If you haven’t been, then hopefully we can help you reduce your chances of having to go through that.

Simplifying will help you with so many aspects of life, including those that you may not have ever imagined. Stress is a very serious condition, often caused by being overwhelmed. I know that for myself that if I see clutter around me I get stressed and frequently ask myself “Where do I even start?” A great way to start simplifying, is to get in the habit of filing away papers/receipts that you know you will need, throwing out papers that you don’t need (but make sure there is no personal information on them), and shredding the papers with personal information that you don’t need.

Doing this will not only help with the overwhelmed feeling but it will also increase your security. For the papers that you need to keep, put them in a secure place, such as a locked filing cabinet. If you have documents that require extra protection you could consider a fire-proof safe, or a safety deposit box at a local financial institution. With having these documents in a secure location you are minimizing your risk for fraud.

Pertaining to documents, please be aware of what you are sending across email. It’s very easy for documents to be intercepted by the wrong party. Do your best to not send anything with your social security number, account numbers, or usernames and passwords. If you do have to send these items, you can use encryption to help keep the information more secure. 

Another thing to do to protect yourself from fraud is to change your passwords on a regular basis. It’s so easy to think “I’ll change my password later” but then forget. Maybe you intentionally don’t change your passwords because of the fear and or hassle of forgetting what you changed it to. There are a number of great secure password managers out there such as “LastPass” which allow you to store all of your passwords in a secure vault with just one complex password that you have to remember (and change). If you use a password manager like “LastPass” make sure that your password is very strong, as if someone figures out this password they have access to virtually all of your stuff.

When you take measures to protect your identity it may seem like you are making your life more complicated, but trust me, it’s much easier in the long run to take preventive measures than to need to take legal action. Please be aware of who is asking for your information and why they are asking. If you ever have a suspicion that something doesn’t seem “right” trust your instinct and ask someone you trust. It’s okay to ask why they need it and what they need it for!