My parents are separated, but legally still married and living under the same roof.
I was talking to my mother about money and I asked how they were doing. She told me she didn't know, and that my father refused to talk about it. Saying they were fine...
My mother just retired at 60 because she wasn't able to work anymore (psychologically). My father is 63 and disabled after two strokes.
So yesterday I went over to their place to make a budget with them to track their spending and see how much they had invested, etc.
Here is what I came up with:
Father makes 13k a year from disability, has 33k invested with BMO, spends 18k a year....
Mother makes 12.3k a year from pension/provincial pension, has 9k invested, spends about 4k a year.
The spending has been approximated since they don't track it well.
The house and car are payed off.
But from what I see, if everything stays the same and my mother pays for my father's excess spending they have about 4k extra money a year. Which probably won't be that since they are not tracking their spending really well, and I'm not sure my father is going to be pro-active in cutting the spending...
So budget wise, I can't really do more than try to find them better deals on what they have/use as services, and hope that my talks on tracking their spending and reducing it will have made it's way inside their heads. My mother is on board. My father seems to be too, but he can be saying yes to my face, and then not giving a shit a just doing what he wants.
For investments I was thinking of proposing that I open a questrade account for each of them, and transfer their savings there, using a CCP portfolio (
http://canadiancouchpotato.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/CCP-Model-Portfolios-Vanguard-2015.pdf). Either balanced or cautious, since they are older.
That way at least they won't have to pay high fees on their investments, but it's not like these amounts is going to do them any good...
If I can get my father to not over spend, I could persuade my mother to put more of her money in a TFSA, so she could at least pay for house/car repairs, which right now they can't...
Is my reading of the situation good? or am I missing something?
Right now they can keep living as is if my mother pays for my father's overspending, with basically no money left at the end of the year or for emergencies. They keep finances separate. My father pays for the house stuff and food, my mother pays for extras on groceries, some consumables, and her car/gas. But they have some repairs coming up on the house (roof, windows,...), and I don'T know how they are going to pay for them.
Thanks..
J-S