NYT: Basically, caregiving ruins your life!

I think the effect on 50 something females is staggering.
As mostly women are becoming caregivers and especially silent generation still expecting daughters to take care of them, often, all alone. And it could be 10 years average not 2 if I read the right article. A woman who has career and give it up, and making over $50,000 to 100,000 annually could lose over million and contribution to pension.
Parents or partners should consider how to mitigate losses.
In case of spouses too, leaving job at 50s to take care of husband and making good salary, plus contribution in Canada to CPP, Canada Pension Plan and RRSP, registered retirement savings leaves somebody with 10 years average with 20,000 a year contribution to RRSP and pension plan reduction of 60%, as person can take reduced by 40% at 60 but not contributing maximum years will reduce pension further 20%, so total approximately 200,000 + interest, and 80,000 less in pension. I wonder how many will be impoverished and unable to retire in comfort.

I believe you endure the hard days while praying for the good days that will be ahead afterwards. With dementia, there are two "afterwards": one when you place your LO in MC because one person cannot meet all their needs and a second when the LO's death closes the door. Placing my father in MC allowed my mother and I to sleep through the night and not spend everyday coping with the unpredictable events and attacks. Later his death allowed calming; his suffering and our torment was over. My mother became wheelchair bound and not able to be left alone for very long and with covid, we both became mostly house recluses. Her death started a healing path. First several months of getting accustomed to not listening for a call and sleeping until I woke rested. Then I restarted the things I had put on hold to a degree: taking the kids to local events, going to the musical events, lunching with friends, seeing a movie, etc. This next year I plan on traveling to visit some cousins and take a couple of vacations.

Life begins again. Maybe not the way we originally planned and maybe not all the things we planned. Maybe something new we hadn't planned on at all (I took in a couple of foster sons). We need to be flexible and embrace what life offers "afterwards". Our road is difficult and no one really "plans" to walk it, but it can be survived with some good times during the journey and many more afterwards.

I don't have some of the anger many caregivers have about the changes to their lives caregiving "forced" on them, I think because I actively choose to care for my parents. I didn't know or appreciate all that would entail but when things got bad I would tell myself I choose to be here and I would not abandon my parents just because things were more difficult than I expected. Others have experienced a lot more difficulty than me and they survived. You can also.

Caregiving is not easy and it is expensive. I planned as much as I could but retiring last year at 58 when I could have kept going a lot longer has been difficult. I lost a part of my identity as well as an excellent income. My DH (58) has younger onset Alzheimer's and is in a late middle stage. Planning is not reality, however, and what I thought and planned for did not happen and will not at this point since DH is progressing rapidly along the Alzheimer's path. I should have listened to my gut vs my heart. Frankly, the hardest thing for me is adjusting how we planned our retirement to what the reality of what retirement is for us.

Here are quotes from the NYT article illustrating the impact on working caregivers by focusing on one caregiver's experience:

At first, Dana Guthrie thought she could help care for her parents, whose health had begun to decline, and still hold onto her job administering a busy dental practice in Plant City, Fla.

“It was a great-paying job and I didn’t want to lose it,” Ms. Guthrie, 59, recalled recently. So she tried shifting to a four-day schedule, working evenings to keep up with the office demands, and she began spending a few nights a week at her parents’ home instead of her own nearby.

Ultimately, though, her mother’s liver disease progressed and her father was diagnosed with dementia. The family learned that the cost of hiring home aides for two ailing 82-year-olds exceeded even a middle-class retirement income and savings. “They really needed me,” Ms. Guthrie said. In 2016, she left her job “and moved in full time.”

After Ms. Guthrie’s parents died, she relocated to Radcliff, Ky., where her sister lives. She found positions at dental practices there but has never matched the compatibility or the salary of the job she left in Florida.

Currently unemployed, Ms. Guthrie has been interviewing for jobs and wondering whether she will ever be able to retire, although she doesn’t regret the sacrifices she made to care for her parents.

“We were a close-knit family and I would do it again,” she said. “But I took a beating, emotionally and financially, and I haven’t really been able to recover.”

“Caregiving ruins your life”

Sums it up.

(I understand for some people, it’s a wonderful experience. It all depends on how long it was, how many years, the timing…Are you in the prime of your life when you should be getting married, having children, building your career, your dreams: aka living!) (Are you retired and had plans?) (Do you feel your life’s being sacrificed?) (Did you gladly volunteer to help? Or were you forced by the situation to help? “Volunteered” by others? Pushed by others to be sacrificed?)

(Was your LO grateful? Horrible to you? Abusive? How many emergencies? How stressful? Was ALL the stress dumped only on YOUR shoulders?).

For me, it sums it up:
“Caregiving ruins your life”

I think sometimes caregiving is so economically devastating because we don't realistically look at our options, at least not in time. When my father needed MC care, no one in my family agreed. Not Mom, and definitely not my estranged brother. One claim was there wasn't enough money; that was wrong. There wasn't enough money to pay for MC and keep everything together for an "inheritance". If we sold everything at a fair market value and used the funds to pay the difference between Dad's SS and pension income there was enough to pay for more than a decade of MC (including annual increases in costs). That meant my Mom would have to move into my home and be happy with just her wife's portion of SS. Her health was failing under the relentless pressure of taking care of Dad and her MCI, while very mild at the time, meant she needed to live with someone. I gained guardianship, Mom moved in with me, and I sold everything, including the small rental properties over a two year period (Dad had lots of collections and some junk too: guns, stamps, watches, tools, furniture, paintings). I sold some stuff within the family - at market prices. Our parents accumulating assets were to fund their care first.

Dad lived nearly 4 years in MC and Mom lived with me and benefited from some community medicare offerings from the state, such as Adult Day Care. At the time of her death, we were in process of moving her to an AL/MC near me because her spinal stenosis had limited her ability to assist in transfers and I couldn't do them alone but then she died. To my surprise there was some money remaining which was split equally between my brothers and myself.

I think in many cases the surviving spouse doesn't want to give up the home or the children want something from the parents, at least initially. Only after things have gotten bad are we willing to look at reality. Forced sales do not bring nearly as much money as market sales.

I took time off work when I was dealing with guardianship issues and getting my Mom settled, then I worked a couple of years after she came to live with me, left the work force when she fell lost mobility, and retired on my own disability shortly before mom's death. I'm lucky in that I made a good income in the 40 years I worked and saved 10-25% over the last 25 years. I had a paid for home and was able to support myself during the brief income lapses from savings. But my parents were able to sustain their own expenses by the fruits of their lifetime of hard work and sacrifice and the planning to use medicare resources when their money gave out.

I helped an older couple stay in their home while being able to add on to their home and meet medical expenses with a reverse mortgage. Not an option I would usually recommend but it worked for them.

Most time there is a way, but we have to be able to accept our parents may have to give up their home sooner than they wanted or may need to have a roommate in their new care setting. It is not what anyone wanted and it's hard on everyone.

My YB took a massive cut in pay when he moved mom & dad in with his family. He was also unable to work his 2nd job (he's an EMT and could only work PT).

So--he and his whole family suffered financially--he needs to retire, his health is so bad, but they cannot afford for him to do so. Ever.

Mom passed last week and within 2 hrs of her body being removed by the mortuary, he was purging the apartment of EVERYTHING. Just frantically throwing away everything that wasn't labeled to go to someone. It was a little horrifying to watch. He didn't wait for a single other family member to help. I went up within 24 hrs of mom's passing (the next morning) and he had been up all night long filling boxes and bags.

OK--yes, this is a form of grief, but it did cause some bad feelings. We talked to his wife and she got him to level out, but it was rough for a bit. A lot of stuff is simply gone.

He was NEVER 'designated' as the Primary CG, he wouldn't ALLOW the rest of us to do for mom. I did point out to him that he was no longer her POA and needed to let the executor work this out, but he blew up and said "This is MY house and I will do what I want."

Now the place is 99% empty, the funeral and all that is done and he is slowly calming down. It's like he had to erase mom's presence completely. (Also totally normal.)

I'm hoping he takes the advice of the grief counselor and gets some therapy. He really needs it.

I would never sugarcoat the enormity of caring for someone else, 24/7. Mom wasn't ever mean or bitter, but she was hard, at times to deal with. Just like all of us.

Thank you, SnoopyLove, for sharing the article. I tried to read it but even your thoughtful tip on how to access it by Google didn't work. I'll bet it was enlightening. And thank you, Fawnby, for your post! Totally agree that this saccharine articles needs to stop.

Fawnby your fake article themes have me laughing out loud ;)

At least the problem is getting some attention, even if only in the NYT. I am annoyed by so many of the articles I read about caregiving. Too many paint the situation as a high point of understanding and love between family caregiver and loved one. Such as, “my beloved husband and I had grown apart but as soon as he started pooping in his underwear, I realized that we indeed still had the sweet bond of our youth and it brought us together so that we could have many moments of sharing and understanding before he passed.” Or “Mom and I never got along especially after we moved her into our basement, but in hauling her wheelchair up and down the stairs after she broke her hip, I truly began to understand that even when she accused me of stealing her toilet paper, we’d been loving each other and now we’re appreciating each other’s faults as we never did when she was a mean-spirited witch hitting me with a ruler because I never cleaned my room.” I’d like to see more true articles about the realities of never getting enough sleep, of sadness because we had to leave work, the uncertainty of not knowing if the choice we made today on behalf of our loved one is the best choice, the pain of having family members criticize our care when we’ve given up so much to take care of them, etc. I could write those articles myself. So could a lot of us.