Category: Finances
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Getting Prepared to File Your Tax Return
One of the things I do for clients is help them gather and organize documents needed to prepare their income tax return, or to provide to their tax professional. With April 15 on the horizon, I thought it might be helpful to do a little refresher on the basic documents needed for taxes, especially as…
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Maintaining and Destroying Critical Documents
In my last blog I talked about the critical documents you should gather, update and organize for your aging parents and yourself. This time I’ll discuss ways to securely maintain those documents, how long you need to keep them, and the best way to destroy them once you no longer need them. Maintaining documents Some…
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Home for the Holidays? Signs of Concern?
The holidays are a great time to do a loving “check up” on your aging parents or relatives to identify areas of their life where they may need some help. If you are only able to see these folks a few times a year, you may actually be in a better position to notice subtle…
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Managing a Senior’s Finances – a DMM Can Help!
As people get older and their cognitive skills begin to decline, often one of the first skills to go is the ability to effectively manage household finances. For many seniors, this is a hard thing to admit. Managing their own money gives them a sense of independence and control. And yet, if they are not…
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Long Term Housing Options
If you are caring for an aging parent, at some point you should have a conversation about housing options for when they can no longer live on their own. Although most seniors say they want to age in place, often it isn’t practical to do so. The more you know about the options available for…
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Choosing a Tax Professional
Although Punxsutawney Phil declared a delay for spring this year, there’s one date he can’t put off: April 15. The dreaded income tax deadline. It’s March, and the countdown has begun. According to the IRS, about 60% of taxpayers hire a tax professional to prepare and file their tax returns, even in the wake of…
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Having “The Talk” with Your Aging Parents
So, perhaps you followed the advice in my last blog, and used your visits over the holidays to assess how your aging parents are doing. You identified a couple of areas where they obviously need help. Now what? For most of us, the answer seems easy. We’ve identified a problem, now let’s fix it. After all, that’s what…
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Spending the holidays with aging relatives?
The holidays present a great opportunity to check in on your aging loved ones to assess whether they need additional help. If you only see your parents a few times a year, you may, in fact, notice more changes than someone who sees them on a regular basis. Here are some specific things to look…
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Household Finances Too Much to Handle?
According to the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, nearly 44 million Americans – 1 in 5 adults – are caring for an aging loved one. Many of those caregivers live at least an hour away from the family members who need their help. This presents a significant burden to those distance caregivers, who often…
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Skilled Nursing Stays – Not Always Covered by Medicare
If your aging loved one spends three days in the hospital and then transfers to a nursing facility for continued recuperation, you may be under the false impression that Medicare is going to cover it. It’s not necessarily so; and the devil is in the details. Medicare beneficiaries must spend three consecutive midnights in the…
Love & Order 