Posts under ‘family’

Our local newspaper added a ton of heat to the controversy that rages this time of year about which college a high school senior should attend. The headline read: Forget the Ivy League: Most Valley CEOs Went Public.
Right now, high school seniors everywhere are polishing essays to impress those soon-to-be bleary eyed college admissions staff, many of whom will read [...]

 The mood was relaxed and happy on the five hour flight from California to New Jersey. It was Thanksgiving Day. The sun was just beginning to set on what must have been an unseasonably warm day on the East Coast. I smiled to myself. The plane had arrived ahead of schedule. I would be at my father’s home in [...]

What’s all the fuss about the Medicare Prescription Drug Program?
Open enrollment started on November 15th and runs to December 31st. This is the time when anyone can change from one plan to another without paying a premium penalty. If your parent is already enrolled in a program, you may be wondering why you need to worry about this.
Medicare [...]

It wasn’t until Dad mailed me the collection notice that I realized he was losing his ability to track and pay his medical bills. He had complained during our phone chats on several occasions that the hospital had messed up his billing. They kept phoning him to get him to pay his bill.
He insisted that he [...]

The court reporter was readying her equipment while waiting for the next case to begin. The bailiff brought in the defendant. The court reporter glanced up to see the next man on trial. Imagine the her shock to see that the defendant being brought into criminal court was her mother’s court appointed guardian!
This man was accused of embezzling from [...]

It was during a phone call five years ago with my Dad’s primary care doctor that the “D” word first came up. Dad was in the hospital, again.
He had gastro-intestinal bleeding which the specialists had finally stopped — but not before a series of delirious outbursts about certain marital secrets that had his second wife shouting that she [...]

We stood for a long moment at the entrance to airport security. At eight thirty five p.m., the usual bustle of this busy airport had slowed to a trickle of passengers and flight crews tired and happy to be home.  There were also a few travelers preparing to take a “red eye”, one of those late evening flights of last [...]

Is your family like most others? Have your parents (or you) done some estate planning (see below for resources) and then filed the documents away to gather dust and cobwebs until they are needed?
Why do I ask? Because if an illness or accident suddenly happened, you just might discover that those documents are out of date [...]

How much money does a 83 year old need to have in savings to avoid running out of money in retirement?
In a previous post (Is Your Parent Afraid of Running Out of Money in Retirement -Part 1), I described how my 83 year old father was living in abject terror of having his money run out before he died.  While [...]

One of the Yahoo Groups I regularly read has had an ongoing discussion about health care in the USA. One of the posts talked about the need for a medical power of attorney or Living Will as it’s sometimes called.
K lives in New England. She told us what happened when her mother, who did not [...]