What can widowed MIL have now?

Pollycat

Your MIL is lucky she has you to sort things out for her.

My sister & I look after Mum's stuff, but I sometimes wonder how people who have nobody to help manage.

atush

If you want an answer faster, ask your mother to call them with you there with her.

margaretclare

Pollycat wrote: »

Your MIL is lucky she has you to sort things out for her.

My sister & I look after Mum's stuff, but I sometimes wonder how people who have nobody to help manage.

We just have to be on the ball, be methodical about personal finance matters, make sure our affairs are all in order, check bank statements as a matter of course, that kind of thing. Bit like Jackyann's mum!

Pollycat

margaretclare wrote: »

We just have to be on the ball, be methodical about personal finance matters, make sure our affairs are all in order, check bank statements as a matter of course, that kind of thing. Bit like Jackyann's mum!

That's fine if you can manage, I was thinking about those people who may not be on the ball or methodical.

Maybe they aren't so confident on the phone, maybe not used to dealing with finances (especially if OH used to do that) etc etc.

margaretclare

Pollycat wrote: »

That's fine if you can manage, I was thinking about those people who may not be on the ball or methodical.

Maybe they aren't so confident on the phone, maybe not used to dealing with finances (especially if OH used to do that) etc etc.

Yes, there are people like that, especially women. I'm reminded of a woman at CAB, a very competent type, one of the long-term experienced volunteers, who said that 'she had to go and get her housekeeping'. I looked at her gobsmacked. I asked her what housekeeping is meant to cover. It was her turn to look at me gobsmacked. Groceries, the paper bill, the milkman. That was it. Her OH, who was a retired bank manager, did every other financial thing, and he allowed her weekly housekeeping.

I also got involved with another woman at CAB, a very sad case this, who'd been widowed suddenly and had no idea about bills, insurances, utilities, the normal nitty-gritty of life. Because his estate was going through probate she had no money apart from the 60% state pension and was getting 'final demands' through the door. Up to then DH had resisted our having a joint account for household expenses because of history in his former life. I went out of there and insisted that we open a joint account. We deal with things between us now.

When I was widowed and redundant in 1992 however, there wasn't anyone who could deal with things for me in the way you describe. The best advice I ever had was from my late younger daughter, who introduced me to the Quicken personal book-keeping programme. I've used it ever since.

However, I agree with Jackyann and others, that personal finance is really not a topic you can leave to anyone else, and I strongly agree with Martin that it's something that everyone needs to learn.

Pollycat

I'm not just talking about money, margaretclare.

I arranged for my Mum & Dad to have a water meter fitted (to their council-owned, warden-contolled, senior people's flat).

It has saved them a fortune over 7 years.

Mum was talking to another resident about how much she pays for water and was amazed at how much she paid in comparison.

I rang the water company on her behalf and arranged the same.
She could not have done it herself.
That's not really about personal finance, it's about dealing with official bodies - a lot of older people are not confident in doing that, especially on the phone with the 'press 1 for xx, press 2 for x' etc.

There's also those people who aren't claiming all the benefits they should do, simply because they don't know how to go about it.
Again, that's not really about personal finances, it's having the confidence (and maybe knowledge) of where to go to for help.

When I talked about 'stuff' in my earlier post, I was talking about all sorts of things, not just personal finances.
Like making sure Mum gets to appointments on the right day at the right time, that her medical prescription is filled before she runs out of medication.

My Mum always had far more money sense than my Dad, she still checks her bank statements carefully.

Mojisola

margaretclare wrote: »

We just have to be on the ball, be methodical about personal finance matters, make sure our affairs are all in order, check bank statements as a matter of course, that kind of thing. Bit like Jackyann's mum!

This is how we hope to manage but I know, from watching my parents decline, that there may come a time when we can't cope. The problem is if the decline is gradual that we may not realise that we're not coping until we're in a mess.

I was able to step in and take over as my parents lost capability. I hope someone trustworthy will be able to do that for us.

margaretclare

So you are saying, if you did not do those things for your Mum, they would simply not get done.

Likewise, if I did not do those things for myself, they would simply not get done. Because, apart from DH who is the same age as me, there is simply no one else. And there must be others who're in the same situation.

I agree about water meters. I discovered these some 20 years ago after widowhood, I don't know who told me it might be a good idea, but it has certainly saved us a fortune over time, because we pay only for the water we use and not according to council tax band. But I've no doubt there are a lot of older people living in these 1930s bungalows around here who're still paying according their council tax band.

Mojisola, if DH and I become incapable, there will be no one. There is no one closer than 150 miles to us, that's my stepdaughter. So we just hope that we have set up our affairs so that we need minimum outside input. I think the GPs from time to time look at our regular prescriptions - one of them phoned me recently and said 'you haven't been taking your soluble aspirin, why not?' - so they obviously do keep an eye and would want to know, if we weren't renewing our prescriptions (which we do by email and the pharmacy delivers). Other than that, money is dealt with electronically and we don't have to do anything. However, some people don't want to do it that way. DH recently went to a neighbour's house and set up her laptop which her son had bought her. He set up an email account for her but when he said 'you can do everything now, shopping, banking, paying bills' she reacted with horror. 'Oh no, I like to do it in cash'. You can imagine that she'll be one of the people who, if she can no longer do it in cash, either it won't get done or someone will have to do it for her.

Mojisola

margaretclare wrote: »

Mojisola, if DH and I become incapable, there will be no one. There is no one closer than 150 miles to us, that's my stepdaughter. So we just hope that we have set up our affairs so that we need minimum outside input.

However, some people don't want to do it that way. DH recently went to a neighbour's house and set up her laptop which her son had bought her. He set up an email account for her but when he said 'you can do everything now, shopping, banking, paying bills' she reacted with horror. 'Oh no, I like to do it in cash'. You can imagine that she'll be one of the people who, if she can no longer do it in cash, either it won't get done or someone will have to do it for her.

Some people certainly don't help themselves. The world is changing around us and it's down to us to take advantage of the changes that can make our lives easier.

My poor Dad is sitting in hospital at the moment - all the medical assessments he has had say that he needs to be in residential care; the funding panel have decided that he should go home with carers visiting three times a day.

Without us to fight in his corner, I think he would have been sent home and ended up falling and being left there for hours before the next carer arrived.

Errata

GP good practice is to review all repeat prescriptions every six months with the patient.