Best way to support a parent?

[secondchance]

I recently found out that my mother is going to need financial support.

Without getting too deep into the details: she has some savings and expects SS and a pension to kick in soon. However, she's young for a retiree because she's disabled and does not/cannot work. The women in our family are long lived and she could easily require 30+ years of support. We are working with her to figure out if she can reduce her expenses, but it's likely she'll need help from us in 10 years, definitely in 20.

Incidentally, these are the most meaningful investment years for my sibling and I. When she needs money, we'll be at the peak of our careers and according to my spreadsheet, I might even be done saving. It feels like we should ask her to wait on support, but I'm not sure if that's true or just selfish. How can we inspire her to trust us and spend down her accounts now? Should we? Is there anything we can do besides pay for long term care insurance?

She's aware she doesn't have enough. We've offered to help but she isn't ready to hear it. If she panics and tries to live out of her car in some attempt at noble poverty it's definitely going to cost more money, take more effort, and undercut everyone's good faith efforts at making sure she's comfortable. :/

[kei te pai]

Not sure about the tax/legal side for the US, but could you and your sibling set up an account which your mother can access if she needs. Regular small payments going in which your mother knows is there for her to use.
It may give her peace of mind to use her own funds for now.

[Linea_Norway]

Before you should start giving your mother your money, I think you should be able to talk to her. Maybe there is something obvious she could save on?
Is there for example an option for her to rent out a room in her house?

[Catbert]

If she's disabled now I'm guessing she won't be able to get LTC insurance.

Before you panic get the facts figured out.  Needing money in 10 or 20 years gives you time to plan.  Things to figure out before you decide how much and when to offer up:

How soon is "soon" as far as getting SS/pension?  6 months or 2 years?
How much SS/pension will she get?
What can she do to her reduce budget?
What senior/disabled benefits can she get?  (e.g., low cost housing, food stamps, free phone, etc)

[GizmoTX]

OP, you certainly don't have to share details here, but your mother owes you a complete disclosure of her income and expenses before you and/or sibling provide any support, money or otherwise. Expect pushback, but disclosure is the price for considering what support you will or won't provide.

My experience with this is that the person asking for help is doing a lot of wasteful spending that is erroneously thought of as required, either because it's been the status quo or someone else will now pay for it.

[ejmyrow]

Geoarbitrage!! Do you live in the same city as Mom / need her to be close by? If she can be a flight away, depending on where you live, folks can live abundantly for super cheap in Mexico! Perhaps also consider cheaper US cities like Buffalo, NY and Indianapolis! Even parts of FL can be cheap...  If she can't/won't leave her home city, I would try things like AirBnB a second bedroom or even couch. I knew a lady who actually slept on her own couch and AirBnBed her bedroom (or slept at her sister's) 1 night per week, and she made enough to keep her home.

[reeshau]

If she is disabled, has she applied for SS disability, so it can start immediately?

Do you know how she got to this situation?  It would be very different if she was a professional but a spendthrift vs. if she has always had a modest income or depended on her spouse for income.

If there aren't specific bad habits involved, if she will not talk with you about money, the best help you might give now is to set her up with an hourly-rate financial planner to help her work out her situation.  She might take objective observations about how dire her situation is as a kick in the pants to take action.  And with 10-20 years to work out, a small change now could avoid disaster situations.