Everybody Dies. It’s Time To Have The Talk
Everybody Dies. It’s Time To Have The Talk
June 28, 2016 Bloomberg News
As an e-vite it’s a guaranteed loser: It’s summer! Come talk about the financial and long-term caregiving needs and eventual death of your parents! Doing that, though, could make later life a lot smoother for both parents and kids. An improved economy may be having something of a perverse effect here: The prospect of the parents’ comfortable retirement—parents had to have investable assets of at least $100,000 to qualify for the survey—appears to have people pushing off these uncomfortable discussions, according to Fidelity Investments’ third annual Family & Finance study. The study surveyed more than 1,200 parents aged 55 and older, along with one of their adult children at least 25 years old, on topics that range from elder care, estate planning, and the ability to cover living expenses in retirement, to see if parents and kids were in agreement. This year, the survey included new questions about the role children play as parents get older, which revealed that four in 10 families “disagree on the role their child will play as parents age.”