Wednesday, November 8, 2017

The High Cost of Caregiving

Caring for the elderly usually means caring for their finances as well. A new Merrill Lynch study finds that 92 percent of caregivers say they are also financial caregivers, performing at least one aspect of financial caregiving during their caregiving journey. After two years of receiving care, 88 perent of care recipients are no longer managing their finances independently.

The report finds that financial caregivers are responsible for a wide variety of tasks. The most common include: paying bills from their recipient’s account (65 percent), monitoring bank accounts (53 percent), handling insurance claims (47 percent), filing taxes (41 percent), and managing invested assets (21 percent).

According to the report, caregivers on average spend $7,000 on caregiving per year, which goes toward paying for personal, medical and household needs. But it can be higher than that: Caregivers for people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia spend, on average, 54 percent more than the average caregiver.

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