"Mom! Where are all these packages coming from?" Some caregivers are pulling out their hair over Mom or Dad's shopaholic habits.
What do you do when your mother calls that shopping network 800 number and orders jewelry she has no use for, and worse yet can't afford? What do you do when she uses her limited computer skills to shop online, charging up the credit cards with who knows what? How do you step in when the money isn't yours and Dad insists he has a right to do as he pleases?
It used to be hard enough when the biggest problems were charity phone calls and the magazine companies. At least those weren't scams. My mother loved her magazines and had been taking a number of them since I was a child. As she aged, she enjoyed them even more. When a nice lady called from on of the all-in-one magazine order places with this amazing offer, Mom was hooked. She thought she'd made a cracking-good deal. I guess she had, if she lived to be 115 years old and could enjoy the magazines that long.
She had no idea that she'd signed up for approximately $1000 worth of magazines. Fortunately, I was able to bully the company into canceling the order and crediting the full amount back to Mom's card. That was the day we decided that she maybe shouldn't have credit cards anymore. I promised her she would have any and all of the magazines she wanted for as long as she wanted. And she did. We passed the barely read copies on to others at the nursing home after her basket got so full of back issues there wasn't room for more, and I brought the new ones as they came.
I was lucky with that episode. Mom was still capable enough to see, after she had made that disastrous $1000 magazine order, that she was vulnerable. But she felt the loss of power when she gave up her cards, which I believe is behind some of the shopping habits of many elders. The ability to handle one's own money is about adulthood and power. If age or disease takes away some of your independence in other areas, a person is apt to try to make up for this loss in another way. Spending is one of those ways. Spending can help a person feel powerful. Spending also can be like a drug to cover up the fear underneath those losses.
Adult children trying to curb their parents' spending habits can find it hard going. The parents will insist there is no problem. It's their money and they can spend it as they choose. Well, yes, they have that right. But when you see your dad can't pay the water and electric bill because he whipped out his credit card to buy another new set of golf clubs which he can no longer swing, you do get worried. When packages arrive daily at your parents' home and they swear its stuff they never ordered, yet the charges are on their cards, you worry more. Is someone else using their card fraudulently or are they buying and forgetting?
What can you do?