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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One thing that is consistent with my boomer relatives who weren’t recently working or running a business is that they grossly over value their assets and grossly underestimate their spending. Several are convinced that they are sitting on goldmines of stuff when in reality their children will have to spend money to haul it away. Several own properties but grossly over estimate what it’s worth. They don’t understand that their homes are tear downs and the value is in the land. [/quote]
I really think that people in the 50 to 75 year age group are able to manage their own lives. If there is an exception to this, it is due to a specific problem such as early onset dementia, or even possibly mental illness, and this is not common. I don't think this age group needs help from their kids to make financial decisions for them, but the younger generation can ask about their general situation is in the case they will need to know as next of kin. They can also ask that estate planning be more streamlined, such as having things payable upon death or setting up a trust. 
Let's get a grip on reality. Offspring may not like the choices, but their parents are certainly capable of making them.  [/quote]

As an adult you get to do anything you want IF you don't expect anyone to rescue you or take care of you. If you plan to depend on your kids in any way, you need to be collaborative and realistic. These conversations should start long before you need help. Burying your head in the sand seems to be all too common.

Choices have consequences. It's not a matter of whether we like them or not, it's a matter of whether we can jump in at a moment's notice as we expect. My own mother was LIVID with me for having health issues the 100th time she needed me and then no longer being willing to be her verbal punching bag. She hates that people are now hired to manage everything for her. All those years she spent traveling with dad and gaslighting her siblings who told her the parents were a disaster. The parents had angry, hostile mean dementia, but my mother insists that is not true. She refused to accept dementia runs in her family. Her siblings saw the writing on the wall and refused to make life hell for their own adult children. They are in continued care and their children can just enjoy visiting them. She refused to consider continued care communities and rots at home stewing and plotting and refusing to stay on her meds. Her neighbors see her and make an excuse to run inside or quickly get in their cars. These were her choices. Denial caught up with her. now her favorite past time is writing nastygrams via text and email and leaving them by voicemail. Her siblings have plenty of friends where they are, seem to not be on the dementia train yet and they enjoy the kids bringing the grandkids because nobody has to protect the grandkids from abuse, they aren't abusive....yet.[/quote]

Try to understand my point. 
No one is saying that people shouldn't plan for the future and all its possible consequences.  I am saying that people in the 50 to 75 ish group are perfectly able to do this without their kids helping them  or guiding them or taking them by the hand to these resources.  They are perfectly able at this age to be completely cogent  and probably better at this than their kids who are in their 30s 40s and even 50s.  And their opinion about what happens to them matters, not how your life can be made easier. Can you suggest? Yes. Can you voice concerns? Do you need to mollycoddle and patronize? No. You are way off.

Don't conflate your personal issues with your mother into advice to the larger population. Your family, and all their "mishegas" ( quirks) is pertinent only to your family. [/quote]

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