So Sunday was the day. I finally had “The Talk” with my parents…
I had talked to my dad in Thursday and asked if he knew when mom had signed up for Medicare, he wasn’t sure. Any progress on her signing up for SS? Nope. Ok, how about I come over on Sunday and we talk about things all together. He let my mom know that I would be over to talk.
Sunday comes; my GF and I have lunch/dinner with my parents and brother. I talk to brother and we figure out a time on Wednesday that he has a break in classes and I can take lunch and talk to him about finances, credit cards, savings, etc. My GF then went upstairs to do some work and let me talk to my parents.
The three of us sit back down at the table, and I kind of dive in. I bring up dad’s health scare and that I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and we need to talk about these things because we never do. I don’t know how much you make, how much things are costing, and we need to make sure things are covered. If you want, we can go over all income coming in and try to budget things out.
I ask mom when she first signed up for Medicare, a few months after she turned 65 (now 66.5). Ok, we need to look at supplemental insurance for you, with dad’s recent health scare, this is important. She makes some excuses that when she signed up she tried to use the same person that my dad did for supplemental, but never heard back. Grrrrr, but ok, can’t change the past, it’s done. She pulls out a flyer she received from someone cold mailing about supplemental and is going to contact them. Good, some sort of acknowledgment that this does need to move. *(Side note, any recommendations on seniors signing up for supplemental insurance?)*
I ask her about SS, and she says that she has always hit a block in it. Ok, we can sit down together and take a look at it, we can do that today.
I bring up that one of the other things I have been thinking about is that GF and I would like to get married and have a family, to which both parents are in agreement, they would like to see that happen. I don’t want my GF to ever have to worry about having to support them, and if we were married and anything ever happened to me, then it would all go to her and any children we might have, and so we should get them signed up for some low income senior housing. There is most likely a long wait list on that, and we have 2 years before I have to make a decision on selling or renting out the house. But it would be good to make a plan and at least be on the list and decide what to do when it opens up.
I went over the mortgage and utility costs, so they know for sure now that it averages about $1200 a month.
I bring up SNAP (food stamps) and that we should look into that. Do you have any idea how much you spend on food each month? Mom replies with a stressed out worried look on her face, too much but working on bringing it down. “Food” does include all cleaning/misc/dog food that you get at the grocery store. Again, I say, I don’t know how much you make, if you want, we can go over all income coming in and try to budget things out. (I have probably said this a couple more times in the conversation up to this point). Dad gets up, walks out of the room and comes back a minute later with a large binder that has their financials and tells me how much SS income he gets. Progress!!!
I pull up a spreadsheet on my phone that I had premade, and start entering in numbers. Then I say let’s enter these in the assistance calculator, though at this point I’m pretty sure that the SS income pushes them too high. This though leads me to getting some concrete numbers for yearly income for both of them. They do not qualify for food assistance. This is a relief to me. Plus, one of the questions was household savings. They have $7k! Huge relief. We are on a good track.
I download the spreadsheet I made to their computer, and plug in the numbers for them:
Before Changes Budget Monthly Annualized Income Dad's SS $1,318 $15,816 Mom's SS $0 Dad's work $307 $3,684 Mom's work $500 $6,000 Total Income $2,125 $25,500 Expenses Cellphone $155 $1,860 Car Insurance $387 $4,644 Supplemental Insurance $280 $3,360 Gas $173 $2,076 Food $600 $7,200 Dog Medication $25 $300 Miscellaneous $250 $3,000 Subtotal Expenses $1,870 $22,440 Gross Margin $255 $3,060
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The food and miscellaneous aren’t great, but this conversation and follow ups should help.
We try to sign into SS site, and my mom goes through the security questions too quickly, not paying attention that some of the credit history questions include past accounts. Locked out for 24 hours. That’s ok, you can try again tomorrow, and I can come over if necessary. She does have a statement from May 2017 stating what she will receive ($714). When my dad has his business, they put her on payroll for 11 years, so that helped tremendously. I estimate that based on growth, she should be around $756 a month now.
That car insurance sure seems high at $387 a month. Yes, even for including my 22 year old brother on it. They’ve been with Progressive 11 years. Have full coverage on a 2006 and 2012 Hyundais. Let’s look at Geico. Enter in all information, keeping coverage the same, but dropping comprehensive, collision, and roadside (wtf, it’s $10 a month and you have AAA, they didn’t realize it was on there). New rate with Geico: $150. BAM! $237 savings a month! I tell them that they can think about it and switch later if they want to. Mom says, can we do it now with you here in case we have any problems? Sure, done. Dad seemed hesitant to lose the full coverage, because you know, that 2012 that they bought a year ago was $7k. Guess what, $2,800 a year in savings is worth it, especially when you have $7k in savings. My mom is down with paying the full amount up front so that they saved $5 a month, and sets up the automatic renewal.
Time to talk about cell phones. They are on T-Mobile, 3 phones, $155 per month. I bring up the senior plan I have showed them before, $60 unlimited for 2 seniors. We can put brother on his own prepaid plan. They agree that they will go take care of that this week. Even if they continue to pay for his plan that is $50 savings per month.
I show my mom that if she gets SS at $756 minus the same $140 for Medicare taken that dad does, and gets signed up for supplemental at the same rate as dad (will probably be higher though), what their new income and savings will be.
After Changes
Budget Monthly Annualized
Income
Dad's SS $1,318 $15,816
Mom's SS $616 $7,392
Dad's work $307 $3,684
Mom's work $500 $6,000
Total Income $2,741 $32,892
Expenses
Cellphone $105 $1,260
Car Insurance $150 $1,800
Supplemental Insurance $280 $3,360
Gas $173 $2,076
Food $500 $6,000
Dog Medication (seizures) $25 $300
Miscellaneous $250 $3,000
Subtotal Expenses $1,483 $17,796
Gross Margin $1,258 $15,096
Holy crap! They will have potentially up to $1,258 in savings per month.
My mom mentioned that her hours fluctuate, right now she probably brings in $350 a month, and it goes up in the summer. She also doesn’t think it is going to get renewed (the autistic kid she works with is doing great, and she doesn’t think he needs assistance anymore). She brings up that she thinks she would like to work at Kohl’s and I encourage her to apply before the other job goes away.
Dad for some reason was brought up to look down on “menial” labor. Too bad, because he has always been happiest when working with his hands. He also gets caught up on the “great” commission he gets from a sale, around $800…GRRR…He doesn’t make enough of them though, and despite what he says when confronted about it, he finds it extremely stressful. This is going to take some more work. He is doing really well though after his stroke. He can move around pretty well without a cane now, and my mom is now cooking more of a “Mediterranean diet” for them.
As we were going through all of this, I could see some of the stress fade away from them. I think when I showed them what the savings would be at if mom starts collecting SS made a huge difference. At the end I received a couple of big hugs and thank yous. I know they have always been grateful for the help I provide, but have been clueless about how to improve their situation. There will be more sessions, and I think I will talk to them about monthly or quarterly follow ups for a bit.
Their homework now is:
Cancel the Progressive insurance today
Get signed into SS and most likely sign up
Switch T-Mobile plans this week
Sign up mom for supplemental insurance
Sign up for senior housing
Look at insurance options for brother. He is 22 and uninsured. *(Any pointers in this area are appreciated)*
At this point, I have not brought up them paying anything for utilities or rent. I wanted to focus on getting things squared away financially so that they will see they can help. They were interested in the mortgage and utilities, so I am hoping they will bring it up, but I will in a month or so if they do not. I want to keep the positive momentum going for now. I did bring up wills and power of attorney, and they agreed that they need to revisit this. Anything they have is probably about 20-30 years old. I feel we are on a good path forward at this point.
I would like to say thank you to everyone who provided advice, well wishes, and support. Having multiple people chime in was extremely helpful, and I am grateful for it. I do not think this would have gone as well, or perhaps even at all if I hadn’t had the different points of view on here. This was one of the hardest conversations I have ever had to start, and because of the support I receive here it went extremely well. I was prepared, and able to stay calm. In the beginning it was hard, but I powered through, kept repeating myself to fill the space in the beginning, and got through it. I realize that every situation is different, but if you are lurking, or have your own situation that you aren’t sure how to address, try posting it here. The community here is extremely helpful. If you have shit that needs to be called out, they will. If you have people taking advantage of you, you will be told. If you aren’t sure how to approach a situation, there are people here who have had to do it before and can provide guidance.
TL;DR
It went extremely well!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you. I will update again with how things progress and how my talk with brother goes.