Would anyone else like to scream?

cpegaso, you certainly deserve to enjoy retirement too. If she objects, remind her of her past. My MIL complained that her daughter didn't call her every day or see her every other day, insisting she saw her own mother every day.
"Oh really?" I asked her " How did you do that when you were in Florida for 4 months in the winter and in Canada for 4 months in the summer?" Busted!!

cpegaso...oh wow, do I understand that...Mama had a pretty substantial policy for that as well...paid it diligently every time..until she just stopped paying it and I guess I feel guilty because I didn't know she was forgetting, because at that time I was living a good way off and just did not see her day to day activities..By the time I discovered it, just as you said, too bad, so sad...I was able to get a tiny pittance but it was nowhere near the value of the policy and such a pity...I feel like a lot of the insurance plans like this are almost a scam because our folks buy them when they are vibrant, pay them promptly and keep them paid and sometimes I think the insurance companies literally count on them becoming mentally incapable of keeping up with them...and all of the policies like this I've seen clearly state that it is fully in force as long as the payments are made in a timely manner...they put in very tiny print what happens when you begin to lose your faculties and no longer can...

Yes, I very much would like to scream.....

Sorry emjo23, that was $3500 to $7000 a month or higher. We are both her POA's and yes she has been diagnosed by a Neurologist with Alzheimer's stage 5. We did that so we would have it in writing if we needed it. He ran her through the whole gauntlet.

Can you spend down her assets so she would qualify for Medicaid? There are guidelines to follow and an elder lawyer who specializes in this kind of thing would be very helpful - maybe necessary. If she has that kind of money surely you can hire someone with her money to give you some respite. There are several on here who have a very good knowledge about Medicaid and getting qualified for it Igloo is one. You say ALFs are 35K that is 35,000 a month? Surely there are cheaper ones than that! In any case she can go into the ALF of your choice self pay and once her assets are gone, convert to Medicaid, or is the issue her monthly income from pensions and such is too high? If you ask the question about qualifying for Medicaid on a separate thread you will likely get some good and very specific answers. Are you POA and health care proxy? There are ways to get reluctant seniors evaluated for dementia. Others have done it.

Yes, I would like to scream.

Thank you for all your comments. My parents were comfortable for their retirement including nursing home insurance until Dad passed. Then Mom started slipping, mentally. She stopped paying on her nursing home insurance because she said it got too expensive, $7K a yr, which was true. Had she kept it, it would have covered everything.What she did not check into, or was not competent enough to consider, was collecting her balance of over $100,000. When I stepped in and it was too late. The insurance co said too bad so sad get lost. Had she gone into a home, 9yrs ago, she would have been broke after about 2-3 yrs and would have probably past. After moving in with us, she still has money left and is still, physically, going strong. Dad lasted 2 yrs being diagnosed, like everything else, Mother refuses to. The good lord will have to take her kicking and screaming before she goes. It took 5 dumpsters to clean out her house, none of it furniture, before we could clean it up and sell it. If nothing else, life has been interesting at least. With ALF's running 35K a month and up. She is not far enough gone for a NH. I just don't know what we will or can do. She is valued at too much for Medicaid for now. I will not turn her over to the state, but something has to break some how soon before we both go bonkers.

tryingmy best - yes - their needs and on your own terms. Some parents who were not supportive, in fact, who were abusive, seem to have a greater sense of entitlement than others. I don't think it is wise for anyone to truly sacrifice their well being for an aging parent. It does not serve society well, and it does not serve the family well. It may serve the aged parent in the short run, but who looks after them when/if the caregivers gets sick or dies. When it comes to the family dynamics of non supportive or abusive parents, like other things in life, only the ones who have been through it really understand.

sandwich and ff - as I understand it, there are various reasons for people working longer - one of them being financial. I have not read about the impact on the following generation and maybe that has yet to be analysed, but without doubt there is one.

My parents enjoyed their retirement without any family burdens. My grandparents had a great retirement too, then my grandmother died fairly soon into it. My grandfather came and visited for a couple of weeks a year, did projects around the house, built bird houses etc. and left when he ran out of things to do. My father died over 30 years ago and mother travelled into her 90s.

CPEGASO94 I can identify with what you write. My mother has never lived with me due to her mental illness, but I still have caregiving responsibilities at age 77. You wrote "I just hope we are not too old to enjoy it" meaning retirement. I am retired and have those thoughts and am trying to fit some retirement activities into my life, as time is passing quickly. As I get older and mother gets needier, more and more of my available energy is taken up with looking after things that concern her. I hope you can get out more with your wife. We don't know what tomorrow will bring.

My folks were not the supportive types. I was on my own at the age of 18. They could have helped during hard times but chose not to even when I was having trouble putting food on the table as a single Mom. They were well aware of how difficult things were for us and I did ask for help once when I was desperate. They brought over a few groceries but let me know they wouldn't be doing that again. I didn't ask again.
I'm finding it their sense of entitlement appalling. So yes sometimes I want to scream.
The best thing I can do to keep away the guilt and resentment is tell myself everyday that I love them, they are my parents, but I will not sacrifice my own well being for their happiness. I will help them with their needs, on my own terms and I will be kind. That's enough

sandwich42plus, I am pushing 70 and I still work for a person who just turned 80 years old. If I didn't work, I would go stark raving mad. But I can understand your frustrations about how the domino effect stops if the person near the top of the ladder doesn't want to retire. It is sure different than it was back in the 1950's and 1960's when one started in the mail room and worked up to being President of the company.

Well, I'm in my 40s and selfish entitlement sticks in my craw. I have anger.

My parents were in their late 30s & early 40s when I was born, so my parents are a good 15+ years older than my peers' parents. People thought I was out with my grandparents. Dad died suddenly when he was 56. Mom is going to outlast all of us, even though she's in memory care.

My parents didn't have the caregiving burden I do/we all do here.
They were free to do as they wished.

Mom wouldn't plan anything with anybody for her old age. Her "plan" was to be carried out of her home in a pine box in her 60s. She's 76 now. She refused to admit that we don't get to choose how we go out. She would become very angry at the idea she needed to make her preferences for aging known. Or adapt the house so she could get in & out in a scooter or wheel chair, or downsize, or look for a condo or senior apartment in her home community or bring in outside paid help. She is still the most stubborn person I ever met in my life. And she should have won an award for the most throw-rugs owned by one person in North America.

People my age are also doubly frustrated because there is this contingent above us on the career ladder who just will not retire. They put everyone behind them into a career dead end decades before that should happen. I think they want to die in the office at that desk before they'd let somebody else have a turn. When those folks were in their 30s/40s, they were zooming up the ladder into middle and upper management with promotions, bonuses, & lavish perks right & left. They have not created that possibility for those of behind them. I'm not whining, just stating a reality. There are a lot of social science articles about this problem out there to read.

What happens when you take away a whole age groups' dreams and remove the idea of possibility, regardless if it's from the caregiving demand or the career dead end?

As a society, we need to get this under control and give people in caregiving roles some relief, a way to safety that doesn't depend on them having a personal fortune.

I don't know what to do about Retirement Unwilling.

Something my mother says a lot that gets on my nerves is "Whenever I was your age I was still working and going hiking every weekend." I simply tell her that whenever she was my age she wasn't taking care of her parents. (I don't bother to add that I'm still working, too. She doesn't think of working from home as really working.)

CPEGASO94, I always remember hearing that one's parent want their child to have a better life then what they had, even if they had a great life.

It's like wait a minute what happened here, I was frugal all my life so that I could enjoy my own retirement, like my parents did, but I have yet to enjoy one day. Shouldn't they want me to enjoy the remaining years of MY life, too? Even though my parents are still living alone under their own roof, they are at the age where I worry myself crazy about them. They haven't been planning, and I have been nudging them to get their Will updated and to do a Trust and POA since they are OMG in their mid-90's.... they should have done this 15 years earlier when they had to energy to think about it. That makes me want to SCREAM :0

Funny you say "our sons".

My 33 year old boy just came to visit a few weeks ago... he KNOWS his mother is having a hard time and just wanted his support. You can bet your bippie his mama made him endure his grandmother and also had him help her to the restroom. There is NO shame in it. None. He's a better man to this day for it.

As far as everything else you said... yes yes and of course, yes.