Is there a better way to ask your parents if they are doing okay financially? The timing of our content partner’s article “Probing your parents’ finances” could not be better because just the other day, I agonized over how to ask my mother how she is handling her credit card debt.
Fortunately, my mother is very smart and she takes advice from a very control-freak daughter gracefully (which is so much more than what I can say about myself taking advice from someone else!). Besides, it appears that my 70-ish mother is a financial wiz! (Yey!)
Many of my friends, however, are also wondering how to find a way to get their parents to open up so they can help before it is too late. It really is a diplomatic dance, so goes one article. They could shut the door on your face forever if your tone of voice doesn’t sit well with them. There is also the greater question of whether you can handle the additional financial burden of helping out your aging parents.
Curiously, another article today says older people don’t want to retire and that is actually in the interest of companies who will lose talent and experience if they let go of their senior workers.
Our personal finance article for today gives very good tips. Some questions that you may ask include:
- What are their assets?
- Do they anticipate needing financial support?
- What types of insurance do they have and who are their beneficiaries?
- Have they signed a power of attorney?
- What are their liabilities?
Whew. In the Philippine setting, just talking about this will raise ire, fire and indignation. Good luck to us all.
October 1st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Salve, Jap mentality n values will 4ever be a big mystery and landmine to gaijins (foreigners) so I’ll just attempt an answer. Yup, money’s an even more sensitive topic 2 talk about for Japs or Chinese, theyre matipid n conservative as investors since there’s less social tolerance for bankruptcies in the East. In d West, financial distress is given court protection w/ no qualms. In d East it means loss-of-face (big deal!) n even suicides! This explains why China n Japan rack up trillions of $ in US govt securities.
About ur Xmas post, young single women are Japan’s real economic heroes, if not 4 their super kikay spending habits Japan be in far deeper recession than they are now!
October 1st, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Anonymous, good points. This is even bigger proof that talking to them about money is really a diplomatic dance, compounded by the fact that they might have warred all their life about it. Tough, huh. How DO you handle that? What about using someone else’s experience as a conversation piece and going from there?
October 1st, 2007 at 6:42 pm
ei Japanese hachiko
sexsmarts huh, that’s a nice way of putting it hehe. what about the Japanese society, are they that way about money too? They can be even more patriarchal and secretive about it right? Although I heard that while the wife is mainly quiet, it is up to her to provide when the man of the house finds it difficult to do so. Uhmm..I think James Clavell said that hahaha.
October 1st, 2007 at 6:39 pm
val, that’s so inspiring! thanks for sharing. If you are still young, you can make it easier for your family to take care of them as they age by saving and investing well. Good luck ha
I wish you all the best.
September 27th, 2007 at 2:41 am
Same with us too, we are also 7 and luckily all of us were able to finish college.
Both our parents did not graduate high school but they were able to send all of us to college with their small business and even when they got buried in debt. After everybody graduated nothing was left of their little property.
They are now “pensioners” of their children…