Is Caregiving Impacting You Financially?

The costs of caregiving can effect our career goals, our paychecks, our retirement, our health, our stress, our emotions, when we choose to care for elderly parents.

Is caregiving disapprotionately impacting women? While the emotional and physical burdens of taking care of an aging parent or relative is known, the longterm cost financially of informal caregiving is less frequently discussed. Caregivers may feel guilty complaining about what society has said should be a labor of love. And this is the tough one... the guilt we feel when we've had enough. Overloaded with our own lives and jobs, elder care is a huge undertaking. Just trying to care for an aging parent takes on a life of its own, much less trying to juggle my own household, family, and work.

The problem is pervasive and disproportionately affects women, creating a public policy challenge. Females generally have less money and live longer and are more likely than men to be the caregiver-and to need one.

Amy Friedrich-Karnik, a spokesperson for Family Caregiver Alliance says, "women tend to suffer financially in their later years because of the financial impact caregiving has had on them." I personally have first hand experience with that one. Scaling down my job from full-time to part-time to help mom with her CHF disease made a big dent in my income and retirement savings. No doubt about that. But I can also say, I've seen many men carry the load of caregiving for their aging families. But typically, it's women who normally step up. My brother didn't. And there are many families with that scenario. But not all men/women are the same. Thank goodness.

Between 59 percent and 75 percent of the caregivers are female. While more men are carrying the load, women, on average, give 50 percent more time than the average male caregiver, according to the Family Caregiver Alliance.

Nationally, one-third of caregivers who are employed take a leave of absence or give up work temporarily or permanently.

I personally lost thousands of dollars working part-time and my sister suffered a great deal of stress eventually developing high cholesterol and getting a bad case of shingles.... ugh!
If the goal is keeping loved ones out of institutionalized settings, informal caregiving provides a means to accomplish that and also save our families a lot of money, not to mention the government. Only 7 percent of older adults who have a long-term care need and a family caregiver are in institutional settings, compared to half of those who have no family available, according to the Family Caregiver Alliance.

There are several solutions that can help caregivers like me to stay at work full-time rather than lessen work hours. Providing caregiving resources to families through employee assistance programs or other employment benefits and having work cultures that support caregivers through flexible work hours also is part of the solution, experts say. A Met Life study found that caregiving costs businesses more than $33 billion annually in lost productivity.
There are some state and federal lawmakers proposing to have paid family leave for caregivers. Only California has such a measure. One measure that has failed to pass Congress is aimed specifically at women; it would give Social Security credits to people who leave the workforce to care for someone.

Other options are tax benefits - but is a caregiver who quits their job more to help an aging relative more deserving of a tax break over a caregiver who continues to work full-time while giving care? That's the big debate.

If you're interested in learning more visit these websites: The U.S. Department of Human Services' Administration on Aging has a 12-page booklet, "Financial Steps for Caregivers." Go to: www.aoa.gov/prof/aoaprog/caregiver/caregiver.asp.

Also visit: Family Caregiver Alliance, http://www.caregiver.org/, giving facts, perspective on caregiver issues, including state-by-state and federal updates on public policy measures.

Thank you for visiting. Carol @ WorkingCaregiver.com