We live in a very mobile society where family members don’t always live in the same town or even the same state. In fact, according to the National Institute on Aging, approximately seven million Americans are long-distance caregivers, mostly caring for aging parents who live more than an hour away.
“It’s only natural that adult children of seniors will have some concerns about how their aging parents are doing, especially if they are apart during the holiday season,” said a member of the Right at Home office. “Identifying strategies for long-distance caregiving will make the challenges of caring for aging parents or loved ones more manageable.”
Below are tips from Right at Home for long-distance caregiving:
1) Establish Support Contacts in Your Aging Parents’ Community – Make a list of family, friends and neighbors’ phone numbers and addresses. Ask if you can check in with them to find out how your loved one is doing. They may also be willing to stop by your loved one's home for regular visits.
2) Stay in Touch With Your Parents – Keep in regular touch with your loved one by phone, letters, and e-mail. Record any changes you sense in his or her personality or ability to function day by day.
3) Make Observations During Visits – When you are able to visit your parents, pay attention to any changes in grooming, eating, or social activities. Look for changes in the way he or she manages money, cleans, shops, and gets around.
4) Keep Track of Important Information – Find out where your parents keep important documents such as his or her insurance policies, bank account numbers, investments, living will and power of attorney (for legal, financial, and health care purposes). It’s also beneficial to have a list of physicians that your relative is seeing, and any hospitals or clinics that are involved in his or her medical care, and any medications he or she is taking.
5) Look into Professional Help Options – There are several options for aging parents who need additional assistance. In home caregiving agencies, such as Right at Home, provide services such as companionship, meal preparation, and light housekeeping to help seniors continue to live independently with the help of a caregiver.
6) Identify Community Resources – Research local area agencies on aging, senior centers, churches, synagogues, or other volunteer organizations about available resources for seniors. To locate the area agency on aging, individuals can call Eldercare Locator, public service of the U.S. Administration on Aging, toll-free at (800) 677-1116 or visit www.eldercare.gov.
7) Involve Your Parent – Allow your parents to retain as much decision-making ability as possible. Remember that your primary objective is to help your loved one to fulfill his/her needs, not to take over your relative’s life. In some situations, when your loved one is unable to make decisions, you may need to do so on his/her behalf.
8) Take Time for Yourself – Caregiving can have an emotional and physical toll on caregivers, especially when done long-distance. Make sure you are eating right, getting enough rest, exercising regularly and keeping up with your own medical needs.
Remember, the holiday season is a time for family, togetherness and making memories. By taking the time to address these long-distance caregiving issues, your family will have the much-needed sense of security, comfort and hopefully the ability to create new memories with your aging loved ones for many years to come!
Showing posts with label TAX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TAX. Show all posts
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Swingvote
Active Grannies: the New Soccer Moms?
In the publication Politico on Tuesday, Democratic strategist Mark Penn wrote about the enormous importance of the senior vote in the race for president, especially in states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Penn declares that key swing voters in this election may be “active grannies” - empty-nesters who have found a new freedom in their lives after their kids have left, and who look at the world very differently than do their kids graduating college. Top issues in these “older grannies’” lives include: making income after the age of 65, fighting age discrimination, getting plugged into technology, having access to the latest medical treatments and good doctors through Medicare, and dealing with their families’ being torn apart by career-driven migration. In the coming months, active grannies are expected to be major viewers of cable television, the conventions and the debates. Fifteen percent of seniors surveyed in a recent poll were undecided, and 4 to 5% of undecided senior voters could be enough to tip the election.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
MIDDLE CLASS
The Middle Class in America Isn’t Happy
Posted in: individual
There has been a lot of talk about which presidential candidate has the best tax plan for “middle class” America. It’s an interesting question because I’m not sure that anyone can actually define “middle class” anymore - my readers seem to feel that it’s all over the place.
Middle class - as it’s widely defined - is generally defined as those families who are in the middle of income brackets. That can be confusing. Based on 2005 Census Bureau reports, 40% of Americans earned less than $36,000 a year (the bottom 20% earn less than $19,000). The next 40% - the so-called middle class - reported betwen $36,000 and $91,705 of earnings. The top 20% of earners, making $91,705 or more, earned 50% of the income reported in the US.
[Kelly’s geeky note: From a math perspective, that’s pretty interesting: while the richest 20% took in nearly 50% of income, the middle class (representing 40% of Americans) earned a fairly representative proportion of total income (37.5%).]
So there you have it, statistically you are middle class if you earn between $36,000 and $91,705 (adjusted for inflation since 2005) per year. Easy, right?
Not so fast.
There are a lot of factors that pure numbers don’t take into consideration including the size of your family and the cost of living in your geographical location. Lots of folks who make more than $75,000 per year may live comfortably in some areas of the world - but that kind of money won’t take you very far in areas like New York City or San Francisco where housing costs alone can easily reach $1 million for relatively modest homes.
The reality is that almost everyone thinks that they’re middle class, though of course, you can’t be. And realistically, you don’t want to be right now. Here’s why.
Elizabeth Warren, professor at Harvard Law School, just testified before the Joint Economic Committee in Congress that the middle class is suffering. How much so? Adjusted for inflation, median household income for middle class families has dropped by $1,175 between 2000 and 2007 - that represents a significant decline. While income is dropping, expenses are rising. The average family is spending $4,655 more each year on basic expenses, such as gas, food and health insurance.
Let’s talk the bane of my existence (as most working parents): child care costs. Families with children under the age of 5 spend $1,508 a month more on child care costs (yes, do the math, that’s more than $18,000) - older children cost about half that much. You don’t escape during the teens, either: the cost of sending a child to college has more than doubled over the last 20 years, far outpacing increases in income.
Also in the news these days are those folks who cannot afford housing. The proportion of families who spend more than 35% of income on housing has quadrupled in a single generation - a disproportionate number of middle class families spend nearly half of their income on housing. Two “middle class” Americans earning an average salary could not afford to pay the mortgage of a median-priced home in 2/3 of the nation’s metropolitan areas including my own Philadelphia (which is reasonably priced, I might add). In addition to the increased costs of housing stock, real estate taxes have also increased. Most municipalities have not tweaked their systems to account for a disproportionate increase in property “value” (albeit somewhat artificial) - this means that taxpayers are often paying too much (for reassessed properties at historic rates) or too little (for properties that have not been reassessed) in real estate tax from neighbor to neighbor. The high costs, as much as $10,000 in some middle class neighborhoods, are hitting folks in the pocketbook.
According to Warren, if you include real estate taxes, along with Medicare and other taxes, the total tax burden for a two income family today is 38% more compared to one income families a generation ago. And yes, I realize in a progressive tax system, that was bound to happen. It’s not so much that it happened that’s surprising, it’s what it means. It means less money in the pockets of middle class Americans at the end of the day.
Income is decreasing and expenses - including taxes - are increasing. So what are people doing? Charging up a storm. Credit card debt for middle-income families rose 75% between 1989 and 2001, according to Demos, a non-partisan public policy organization. Warren’s report claims that 10% of total disposable income in the United States goes to paying off credit cards. This, of course, jives with much of what you told me you would do with your economic stimulus check.
There has been a clamoring for a second stimulus package to offer some relief. Despite the rumors to the contrary, no such package has yet been seriously proposed. Jared Bernstein, senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, has advised that a package should rely on getting funds together for the states, particularly for infrastructure projects, and not into the hands of taxpayers. Infrastructure means jobs - this was made abundantly clear when Congress thought about tinkering with the gas tax.
Second stimulus package or not, it’s clear that something needs to change. What is the breaking point before the middle class is no longer middle class?
Tags: America, cost of living, Economic Policy Institute, economic stimulus, economy, Elizabeth Warren, gas-tax, middle-class, second stimulus package
Posted in: individual
There has been a lot of talk about which presidential candidate has the best tax plan for “middle class” America. It’s an interesting question because I’m not sure that anyone can actually define “middle class” anymore - my readers seem to feel that it’s all over the place.
Middle class - as it’s widely defined - is generally defined as those families who are in the middle of income brackets. That can be confusing. Based on 2005 Census Bureau reports, 40% of Americans earned less than $36,000 a year (the bottom 20% earn less than $19,000). The next 40% - the so-called middle class - reported betwen $36,000 and $91,705 of earnings. The top 20% of earners, making $91,705 or more, earned 50% of the income reported in the US.
[Kelly’s geeky note: From a math perspective, that’s pretty interesting: while the richest 20% took in nearly 50% of income, the middle class (representing 40% of Americans) earned a fairly representative proportion of total income (37.5%).]
So there you have it, statistically you are middle class if you earn between $36,000 and $91,705 (adjusted for inflation since 2005) per year. Easy, right?
Not so fast.
There are a lot of factors that pure numbers don’t take into consideration including the size of your family and the cost of living in your geographical location. Lots of folks who make more than $75,000 per year may live comfortably in some areas of the world - but that kind of money won’t take you very far in areas like New York City or San Francisco where housing costs alone can easily reach $1 million for relatively modest homes.
The reality is that almost everyone thinks that they’re middle class, though of course, you can’t be. And realistically, you don’t want to be right now. Here’s why.
Elizabeth Warren, professor at Harvard Law School, just testified before the Joint Economic Committee in Congress that the middle class is suffering. How much so? Adjusted for inflation, median household income for middle class families has dropped by $1,175 between 2000 and 2007 - that represents a significant decline. While income is dropping, expenses are rising. The average family is spending $4,655 more each year on basic expenses, such as gas, food and health insurance.
Let’s talk the bane of my existence (as most working parents): child care costs. Families with children under the age of 5 spend $1,508 a month more on child care costs (yes, do the math, that’s more than $18,000) - older children cost about half that much. You don’t escape during the teens, either: the cost of sending a child to college has more than doubled over the last 20 years, far outpacing increases in income.
Also in the news these days are those folks who cannot afford housing. The proportion of families who spend more than 35% of income on housing has quadrupled in a single generation - a disproportionate number of middle class families spend nearly half of their income on housing. Two “middle class” Americans earning an average salary could not afford to pay the mortgage of a median-priced home in 2/3 of the nation’s metropolitan areas including my own Philadelphia (which is reasonably priced, I might add). In addition to the increased costs of housing stock, real estate taxes have also increased. Most municipalities have not tweaked their systems to account for a disproportionate increase in property “value” (albeit somewhat artificial) - this means that taxpayers are often paying too much (for reassessed properties at historic rates) or too little (for properties that have not been reassessed) in real estate tax from neighbor to neighbor. The high costs, as much as $10,000 in some middle class neighborhoods, are hitting folks in the pocketbook.
According to Warren, if you include real estate taxes, along with Medicare and other taxes, the total tax burden for a two income family today is 38% more compared to one income families a generation ago. And yes, I realize in a progressive tax system, that was bound to happen. It’s not so much that it happened that’s surprising, it’s what it means. It means less money in the pockets of middle class Americans at the end of the day.
Income is decreasing and expenses - including taxes - are increasing. So what are people doing? Charging up a storm. Credit card debt for middle-income families rose 75% between 1989 and 2001, according to Demos, a non-partisan public policy organization. Warren’s report claims that 10% of total disposable income in the United States goes to paying off credit cards. This, of course, jives with much of what you told me you would do with your economic stimulus check.
There has been a clamoring for a second stimulus package to offer some relief. Despite the rumors to the contrary, no such package has yet been seriously proposed. Jared Bernstein, senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, has advised that a package should rely on getting funds together for the states, particularly for infrastructure projects, and not into the hands of taxpayers. Infrastructure means jobs - this was made abundantly clear when Congress thought about tinkering with the gas tax.
Second stimulus package or not, it’s clear that something needs to change. What is the breaking point before the middle class is no longer middle class?
Tags: America, cost of living, Economic Policy Institute, economic stimulus, economy, Elizabeth Warren, gas-tax, middle-class, second stimulus package
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