I’m in my mid-forties, which means my parents are fully retired and living off a combination of retirement savings and Social Security.
It’s also about the time when I probably should take a greater interest in their financial situation, but in casual conversations all seems well and I don’t want to pry.
In a few years, it’ll probably need to be more hands on, but until then I can just scare myself by reading articles like this one.
How boomers’ money secrets are a ticking time bomb for their kids [Sherwood] – “Now, on the cusp of losing our family home, the illusion of financial security crumbled as my siblings and I, for the first time, learned that our parents had taken out a second mortgage and were considering a reverse mortgage while still owing hundreds of thousands of dollars. We learned they’d been the victim of two Ponzi schemes and had lost much of their retirement money in soured investments.”
Oh wonderful.