How to Help Your Elderly Parent Build Retirement Money
Principle #3: Monitoring and reviewing is critical.
Unfortunately, there's no such thing as "auto pilot" when it comes to a retirement plan. Goals and objectives change; people pass away; healthcare eventually becomes necessary; and life has a way of throwing us curveballs that cause us to sit up, take notice, and act accordingly. Growing your elderly parent's portfolio during their retirement requires that their portfolio be regularly reviewed to ensure that it remains on track for success. Some tips for ensuring your elderly mom or dad's plan remains on track and keeps heading in the right direction include:
Promptly and proactively take action if your senior mom or dad's circumstances have changed. Have their income needs changed or have they incurred any major, unexpected cash outlays? Have they received any unexpected cash inflows such as an inheritance or have they recently applied for, or received, Social Security? Has your aging parent's health changed, causing you to divert other money you had previously earmarked for other goals? Have your elderly parent's charitable intentions changed and, if so, do you know their options and the gifting strategies available to them? Know their finances.
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Meet regularly. Sit down with your elderly parent's financial professional no less than semi-annually (preferably quarterly) during the first year of your engagement.
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Expect and require performance reports. Your senior mom or dad deserves to know how their investments are performing. Make sure they take an active role in knowing why they own the investments they do.
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Ask, ask, then ask some more! Never risk your elderly parent's retirement's security to uncertainty. Talk with your senior parent's financial planner regularly, make sure you have an open line of communication with him or her, and make sure he or she is responsive and receptive to you when you call or speak in person. Further, make sure the person you are dealing with is on the up and up. You don't want your parents becoming victims to any investment fraud.
- Educate yourself. You won't know all the tax strategies, investment techniques, or retirement tactics that your financial planner knows, but understand and learn what to expect when mapping out and monitoring your elderly mom or dad's retirement.
There are many ways to ensure your elderly parents continue along their journey of creating wealth both during their working years and while retired. The above are only three of those principles, which will prepare you both now and in the future while keeping your aging mom or dad headed in the right direction. However, doing so requires that you and your senior parents disregard and re-learn much of what you've heard and been taught because, in the end, growing and sustaining wealth while both employed and during retirement, is both necessary and critical to their retirement's chance for success.
Scot L. Stark, MBA, CMFC, CFP® is a Certified Financial Planner professional and owner of Stark Strategic Capital Management, Inc., an independent, non-affiliated financial planning company that specializes in retirement & income planning, investment management, and tax planning. He can be reached at 410.357.0668 or
Scot@sscm-inc.com
. For more information, vist www.sscm-inc.com.