As a child, one of the hardest things to watch is your parents aging process and the issues that they have to endure with their health and many other things. One issue many elderly individuals commonly fate is struggling with their finances. Elderly individuals are often taken advantage of by investment advisors and many others that do not provide them with the proper type of services that they need in order to manage their money correctly. Sometimes they deal with investment advisors that put them in high risk investments, which is awful for elderly individuals as they should have low risk stocks and other investments. Sadly $3 billion is lost each year to elderly financial abuse. Here are some tips that can help you protect your elderly parents from financial abuse:
- Get on their accounts. One way to help your parents properly manage their money is by becoming a signer on their accounts. You can become a member to manage their money or to monitor it so you know who they are writing checks to and other things. This is a great way to ensure that they are not wasting money on things like political campaigns and other things and to make sure that scammers are not swindling their money.
- Set up automatic deduction. To help your elderly parents with certain accounts, have them automatically deducted so they don’t forgot payments and they don’t have to worry about writing checks. You can set up automatic withdraw with utility companies and many others.
- Put a no soliciting sign on their door. A lot of scammers know where the elderly people live and they try to take advantage of them. You need to make sure that you are trying to protect them the best you can by adding a no soliciting sign to their door. Enroll them in the opt-out messages for things like credit card phone calls and other phone offers and mailed offers.
- Hire quality and trustworthy caregivers. You need to know the people that are caring for your parents and coming into their home. When you meet all of them and you interview them, you can hopefully prevent people from abusing them and swindling them out of money.
- Lock up their valuables. Make sure you are placing their valuables in a safe in the home and that they are not having valuable items out where untrustworthy individuals may see them.
