5 Tips to Start Managing Your Aging Parents’ Money

Nothing truly prepares you for the day you’re sitting across from your aging parents, trying to piece together a financial picture they have spent a lifetime likely keeping private. For many adult children, that conversation often comes too late, triggered by a diagnosis that changes everything.

Mine came when we learned that my 86-year-old father had dementia, and I was living 200 miles away from my parents. I am an only child. And I had no idea if they had enough money to pay for a home health aide and memory care.

I knew that my father had a pension, that he and my mother collected Social Security and that they had a generous health insurance policy. I knew nothing more.

Eventually my mother revealed something big: She had managed to sock away half a million dollars. When my parents sold their house on Long Island and moved to a 55-plus community in New Jersey in 1998, she realized their tax bill had plunged. She opened a money-market account and saved the difference every month.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/06/business/retirement-managing-parents-money.html