Talking elder care to clients: Suggestions, please

I just had a delightful conversation with a financial planner in Phoenix. He noted how the world of financial and investment advice has changed over the past few decades that he has been in business.

“From 1982 to 2000, you could throw a dart at the stock tables and make money for clients,” says Jeff Young of First Financial Equity Corp. “Now, our skill set has changed. It’s all about distributing assets and protecting principal.” He tries to get his clients to stop thinking about their savings as a reservoir of cash and instead imagine it as a river that flows from one generation to the next.

Jeff says he welcomes the opportunity to swap ideas with other advisers on sensitive subjects such as how to guide adult children in their caregiving responsibilities for an elderly parent. How should siblings divvy up their responsibilities of providing and paying for care for mom or dad, particularly when there is a disparity in income among the adult children? Jeff notes that few planners have formal training in such crucial elder care issues and thinks a dialogue about this other important generational issues would be helpful. “We need each other,” he says.

So if you have any words of wisdom to share with Jeff, or if you have other topics that you would like to kick around, please weigh in.