Introduction & Hosts

Madison: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Not Just Numbers, Honest Conversations with a Financial Advisor and Lawyer. I am Madison Demora and I’m here with Mike Garry. Mike is a financial advisor and a CFP practitioner and the founder and the CEO of Yardley Wealth Management. He is also an estate planning lawyer and his law firm is Yardley Estate Planning. Hey, Mike.

Mike: Hey, Maddie. How are you?

Madison: I’m good. How are you?

Mike: What could I have to complain about?

The Role Reversal

Madison: That’s great. All right. So, Mike, you mentioned there’s a moment that comes up in this practice more than almost anything else. A client calls, and what starts as a check-in turns into something else. They mention that their mom called three times about the same bill. Or their dad almost wired money to someone overseas. Or they notice their parents’ house needs work and they’re not sure their parents have seen it yet. And they don’t know what to do with all of that.

Mike: That moment has a name, even if most families do not realize it. It is the role reversal. The point where the child who was looked after starts to do the looking after. And it is one of the most emotionally complex transitions a family can go through. Because they’re not just logistics. It is identity. It’s grief, sometimes. It’s a parent who has always been capable suddenly needing help.

Madison: And here’s what makes it harder. Most families arrive at this transition without a plan. A 2026 study found that 27% of Americans have never discussed their end-of-life wishes and have no plans to do so. And 42% say they would not know what to do if a family member passed away today. So the conversation that needs to happen most often has not happened at all.

Mike: So today we want to try to change that. We’re going to walk through how to start the conversation, what documents actually matter and why, how to organize a parent’s financial picture before something forces the issue, and what the real risks look like, including one that most families underestimate. This is not about taking over. It’s about being prepared.

How to Start the Conversation

Madison: All right, so, let us start with what stops most families cold. The conversation itself. People know they should have it. They just keep finding reasons to wait. And behavioral finance actually has a name for this. It’s called the ostrich effect. When we anticipate that a topic will be emotionally hard, or that what we learn might require us to act on something uncomfortable, we find ways to look away.

Mike: And it runs both ways. Most adult children are quietly hoping their parents are fine and have everything handled so the conversation can wait. And most parents do not want to feel scrutinized or like they are losing their independence. So nobody brings it up, and then something happens.

Madison: And the framing matters more than most families realize.

Mike: That’s right. If you walk into the conversation focused on whether your parent can still manage their affairs, it lands as criticism even when that is not the intent. What works better is centering your own situation. Say you have been reviewing your own estate documents. Say your financial professional raised something that made you think about the bigger family picture. Make it a shared exercise, not an evaluation.

Madison: And keep the first conversation bounded. You don’t need to talk about everything at once. Start with something specific. Where are the important documents kept? Who is the contact at the bank? What happens if one of us is in the hospital and the other needs to make a call? One conversation that opens the door is worth more than the comprehensive conversation that never happens.

Mike: You know, a family meeting with a financial professional can also help. Having a neutral third party in the room changes the dynamic. It moves the conversation from a child appearing to question a parent, to a family working together on preparedness. We have seen that shift make all the difference sometimes.

The Legal Documents

Madison: So once the door is open, one of the first places to go is legal documents. Because most families don’t have what they think they have. And I want us to walk through two that come up most often.

Mike: Start with the power of attorney, because that’s where we see the most confusion. A durable power of attorney designates someone to manage a parent’s financial and legal affairs if they become unable to do so. The word durable is critical. A standard power of attorney becomes void the moment a person loses mental capacity. Which is exactly when you need it most. A durable power of attorney stays valid even then. And there is a version called a springing power of attorney that only activates upon a formal declaration of incapacity. It sounds protective, but in practice, it causes delays at the worst possible time. The ones that we do are always active right away. You don’t need it to spring, because for a springing, you probably need a court declaration before you can act and that takes time. And it means that the parents got to have someone in court saying that they have lost their capacity. Nobody wants to go through that. So have your durable power of attorney work so that it’s effective immediately. You know, most estate attorneys lean towards that is already active, like we do, because you don’t want to have to go through that court process.

Madison: The second is a healthcare proxy paired with an advanced directive.

Mike: The proxy designates someone to make medical decisions if the parent cannot. The advance directive documents specific treatment preferences in writing. Together, these ensure that whoever is making decisions knows both who is authorized and what the parent actually wanted.

Madison: And it’s worth flagging that even families who have documents in place may have outdated ones. A power of attorney they signed 20 years ago may not reflect current state law, current family dynamics, or a parent’s current wishes. It’s worth a review. Even when the documents are in order, there is another gap that catches families off guard. They don’t actually know what their parents financial life looks like. Account numbers, insurance policies, the location of the will, the name of the estate attorney, the list of automatic monthly payments. These are the details that matter the moment something happens. And they are nearly impossible to reconstruct after the fact.

Building the Financial Picture

Mike: Right. A lot of people call this like the financial inventory. A single organized record of everything a trusted person would need to step in. It sounds simple. But most families don’t have one. Bank and investment accounts, insurance policies, pension income, real estate, professional contacts. All of it in one place, updated, and accessible to the right people.

Madison: Digital access is part of this too, and it’s the part that surprises people the most. Most accounts are managed online now. If a parent loses capacity and a child does not have usernames or passwords, gaining access can take months, sometimes even longer. That’s a solvable problem, but only if you think about it ahead of time.

Mike: And here’s something most people don’t realize. Research suggests that cognitive changes affecting financial decision-making can begin in a person’s 50s. Not dramatically. Not obviously. But the capacity for complex financial reasoning starts to shift earlier than families expect. Which means the window for having these conversations while a parent is fully engaged is often shorter than it looks.

Madison: The families who do this well tend to frame it as a shared experience rather than a monitoring exercise. You are building a document together. You are both learning what is there. And you are creating something that protects the whole family, not just the parent.

Elder Financial Exploitation

Madison: There is a risk we want to spend some time on, because it’s one of the fastest-growing financial crimes in the country and one of the least talked about. Elder financial exploitation. We are not talking about strangers calling with scams, though that is real too. According to the most recent AARP research, approximately 72% of all elder financial exploitation losses come from known perpetrators. Family members, caregivers, people with trusted access.

Mike: That’s sad, really, when you think about it. Right? It’s not like somebody else scamming people. It’s people that they know and trust and often love. And the total is staggering. $28.3 billion in losses annually. And that’s what gets reported. And most cases never are because it’s embarrassing or you feel frustrated. Higher-asset families are more attractive targets precisely because there’s more to take. Right? It’s Willie Sutton Rule of robbing banks, that’s where the money is. The warning signs are not always obvious. Unusual withdrawals. New names added to financial accounts. Sudden changes to a will or beneficiary designations. Unpaid bills despite adequate resources. A parent who seems reluctant to talk about finances in front of a particular person.

Madison: The protective factor is structure, not surveillance. When a parent has a clear estate plan, when adult children have some visibility into the financial picture, and when everyone knows who the professional contacts are, the opportunities for exploitation narrow significantly.

Mike: It’s not about distrust. It’s about making sure no single person has unchecked access and no single decision gets made in isolation. And this is one of the reasons we encourage clients to introduce their aging parents to us directly. When we have a relationship with the parent, we notice things. A request that doesn’t sound like them. A change in behavior. A new person making calls on their behalf. We are not investigators, but we are often the first line of awareness.

What Medicare Covers and Why It Matters

Madison: All right, let us talk about care costs, because this is where we see the biggest surprises for families.

Mike: Yes, it’s hard to believe this, but still so many people assume Medicare covers long-term care. It does not. Medicare covers short-term skilled nursing facility care after a qualifying hospital stay. Fully for the first 20 days. With a daily copay of $217 for days 21 through 100. And nothing after that. It does not cover assisted living. It does not cover ongoing home care. And here’s the number that puts it in perspective: 70% of Americans over 65 will need some form of extended care. The average duration is three years. So for most families, this is not a hypothetical. It’s a planning gap they may not realize they have. Medicaid does cover extended care costs. But it’s means-tested. Qualifying requires spending down assets to a level that most financially comfortable families would never expect to reach. And the planning around Medicaid eligibility is complicated and time sensitive. By the time family realizes they might need it, they often don’t have the runway to do the planning properly. So the two realistic strategies are self-funding, which means treating a potential multi-year care needed as a portfolio liability and planning for it deliberately, and risk transfer, which means using financial products designed to shift the risk to an institution. But both are legitimate approaches. Which one fits depends on the family specific picture, their assets, their health history, and how much flexibility they need.

Final Thoughts

Madison: And what does not work is ignoring it. A family that has done the estate planning, has the documents in place, and has thought through long-term care is in a completely different position than one that has not. The earlier you model this into the plan, the more options you have. So if you’re listening to this and you have parents who are aging, or you have clients who do, here is what we want you to take away. The families who handle this transition well are not the ones who had the easiest conversations. They are the ones who started them earlier, got the right documents in place, and built the financial picture before something forced the issue.

Mike: The good news is none of this is complicated once you know what to look for. A durable power of attorney. Healthcare proxy and advance directive. A financial inventory. Some visibility into what the care cost picture actually looks like. These are all achievable things. They just require someone to start the conversation. And if you’re not sure where to start, that exactly the kind of thing we can help with. We can facilitate the conversation, connect families with the right estate professionals, model care cost scenarios against a specific financial picture, and make sure the plan actually reflects what the family wants. Reach out anytime. We are happy to help.

Closing & Contact Information

Madison: Thanks for listening.

Mike: Thanks, everybody.

Madison: For more information on Yardley Wealth Management or Yardley Estate Planning, you can visit our websites at yardleywealth.net and yardleyestate.net. You can also follow us on socials at Yardley Wealth Management. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. This podcast has been produced by Madison Demora and Mike Garry with technical and artistic help from Poe Productions.