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Helping others Age GRACE-fully
- 1. 1 The Joys and Challenges of Helping Your Family Members Age Gracefully Michelle Gomez AVP – Employee Engagement, Development & Labor Support October 25, 2014 As presented to the Society of Women Engineers annual conference in Los Angeles, CA © 2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the AT&T logo and all other AT&T marks contained herein are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. The information contained herein is not an offer, commitment, representation or warranty by AT&T and is subject to change.
- 2. Starting the Journey of Care Introduction • About Me • My Journey © 2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of 2 AT&T Intellectual Property.
- 3. Approaching this GRACE-FULLY is the key G R A C E FULLY – ive Unconditionally – emember the Details – cknowledge Their Needs & Listen – ompassion, Competence & Care – ngage Extra Help when needed – Document and Plan Now © 2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of 3 AT&T Intellectual Property.
- 4. Document and Plan Now Income/Bills/POA • Income • Pension • Social Security • 401K • IRA • Bills (autopay?) • Home • Cars • Insurance • Prescriptions • Tax Accountant • Power of Attorney © 2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of 4 AT&T Intellectual Property. Personal • DOB, SSN#, Mother’s Maiden Name, Birthplace • Address/Contact List • Trust/Will/Attorney • Personal Items • Jewelry/Tools • Home Safe • Keys • Medicine List • Medical Directive • End of Life Burial, Service, Guests Accounts • Bank • Safe Deposit Box • Credit Cards • Social Sites • Email Document the Details: • Account # • Password • Security Q&A • URL • Contact Name • Address • Telephone # TheEverythingBinder.com
- 5. Discuss & Decide Future Care Needs Options: • Own Home / Your Home (with visiting nurse or live-in support) • Apartment* (independent 55+) • Apartment* (with visiting nurse) • Retirement Community* (assisted living support) • Assisted Living Unit* (small to medium care home) *Know the Low Income Rules © 2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of 5 AT&T Intellectual Property.
- 6. Ultimate Goal © 2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of 6 AT&T Intellectual Property. Approaching this opportunity GRACE-FULLY will help both CARE-GIVER and CARE-RECEIVER treasure the JOYS, have strength for the CHALLENGES, and be at PEACE throughout the JOURNEY.
- 7. 7 Thank You @michelleogomez mo.gomez@att.net © 2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the AT&T logo and all other AT&T marks contained herein are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. The information contained herein is not an offer, commitment, representation or warranty by AT&T and is subject to change.
Editor's Notes
- I’m in my mid-fifties with a 15 year old son, a supportive, engaged husband, a 77 year old widowed mother who lives about 5 miles away from me, and 91 year old in-laws that live across the street. The catalyst for my story today however, is my now 82 year old aunt that I was suddenly responsible for 3 years ago. I won’t bore you with the story of how she selected me instead of her 3 children, but when I said “yes” to the role of executor for her estate, I thought for sure that my uncle would out live her and that my “yes” was simply to remove her worry and help her sleep at night. Well, six months later she was a widow, living in a beautiful 3 bedroom home 2 hours away from me, and completely upside down financially. She had no clue about her financial situation, had never paid a bill, and was lost without her partner of 30 years. This is where the GRACE I needed was first bestowed upon me, and it is with a heart of gratitude I offer and share my learning with all of you today. NEXT SLIDE
- Give Unconditionally – if you approach this as a chore or a responsibility that give a choice you’d avoid, I guarantee you will experience stress and frustration. I suggest remembering when you were a child, fairly dependent on the adults around you until you were 4 or 5. This is who your loved one will become again. They will need the same patience, care and respect your parents offered you when you were trying to make sense of the world as a toddler. Remember the Details since they won’t – You may have to repeat the same things over and over, or even say them a different way to help them understand. Many times what you are having to make decisions about is something new for them too, and their brain isn’t as sharp as yours anymore. Don’t make them feel stupid. They need someone to help them understand, make sense of and remember the details. Acknowledge their needs and listen. It is really easy to get caught up in the swirl of your own life while trying to balance the extra tasks associated with caretaking. If you aren’t careful, you may not hear what they are needing, or you may gloss over something that is really important to them. Sometimes you even have to listen beyond their words to fully understand what they are saying. Just stay tuned in, you’d want the same courtesy and respect. Show Compassion, Competence and Care. Your heart, your head and your hands are all required to be most helpful and effective on this journey. The skills of bookkeeping, negotiating, organizing, driving, cooking, bathing, medicine sorting, laundry, cleaning and even feeding may be on the list of things you’ll need to support or do. When these activities are approached with a heart of compassion and care, they are indeed a labor of love. Engage Extra Help when needed. One of the secrets of staying in the state of Grace is to ask for help when you need a break. Help can come from other siblings, family friends, visiting nurses, church community and so on. If you try to do it all, you may begin feeling sorry for yourself and act more like a martyr. You will have lost your state of grace if this happens, with more focus on the challenges than the joys. The good news is you can recover fast if you get stuck here. Just ask for help and allow others the privilege of being of service too. So while GRACE is about how you approach this opportunity; FULLY is about what you need to do to be prepared. Fully documenting a plan is key to being able to stay in a state of grace. If you have written down all the important information you will need to be able to take care of someone’s affairs, the doing part is really easy. You’ll just implement the plan you’ve already discussed. To get you started on this, I’ve captured the many things I had to do when I was faced with this responsibility without a lot of warning time. NEXT SLIDE
- There is a lot here. You’ll need to decide how to best organize all of this for yourself, but I used a binder. I was extremely lucky that my uncle had documented most of the income and bill information, so I had a head start. He had also taken a simple address book – literally a little black book, and used it solely to write in the accounts by name in there. He had the credit card name by company, the account number, the security code, expiration and most importantly, the login information to sign on to the various websites. This included security Q&A as well. He had all the contact information for his pension, life insurance policy, social security, rental property, a copy of their trust and contact info for their attorney. This was huge! I had to add my name to everything as the Power of Attorney as soon as my uncle passed, and that allowed me to manage their assets completely. I was able to do a short sale on the house, find and rent an apartment for her, and put everything on auto deposit and auto pay. It made it really easy for me to keep watch on the bank account and credit card activities from my own home or device, and took the worry off of my aunt. I gave her a credit/debit card that she could use for gas, groceries, hair and nails, etc. She would get extra cash at the grocery checkout, and she never had to worry. Over time we tackled the list of personal items she wanted to ensure we gave to certain people, updated her insurance coverage based on less assets, set me up as the medical agent so I could also manage her prescriptions and so on. Now, if you think you need to make it even more easy, based on who will take care of you, or for yourself in caring for another, I’d like to refer you to a website. I had the pleasure of meeting Mary Higgins earlier this month as we were both speakers at another women’s event. Mary is a financial planner who put together what she calls THE EVERYTHING BINDER and it is just that, everything I have listed here and more and in PDF form to put it all in once place.
- The other area I recommend dealing with ahead of time is