One of the greatest rewards after a life well lived is when you can finally retire and enjoy the golden years. Helping your parents live their best lives during retirement means doing things like helping them stay connected to friends and family, and helping them manage their finances. Here are five of the best ways to help your aging parents:
1. Help Them Stay Connected to Friends and Family
Helping your parents stay connected to family and friends is one of the most important things you can do to help them adjust to retirement. Retiring can be lonely and it can leave your parents feeling helpless. With COVID-19 still on the rise in some areas, it can be hard for them to stay connected to family and friends even if they aren’t retired. But just because they can’t physically go out and visit family and friends doesn’t mean they can’t stay connected in other ways. For example, helping them set up a video chat using Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime a few times a week can provide amazing benefits for their emotional and mental well being. Even a simple phone call can make a difference.
2. Help Them Learn About Medicare and Social Security
Once your parents reach age 65, they’ll likeyl be eligible for Medicare and Social Security benefits, which means it’s time to start helping them learn more about both. Getting Medicare at 65+ can help them save on healthcare costs, and applying for Social Security can give them an additional source of income. Anthem Health is a valuable resource for helping aging parents transition into retirement because it offers comprehensive information about enrolling in Original Medicare.
3. Talk to Them About Passive Income
Living on a fixed income can be hard, which is why you should talk to your parents about creating passive income streams to add to their retirement income. Passive income refers to income from business interests or investments that don’t require much effort. You can help your parents create passive income by sitting down and talking about what kind of passive income stream they’d like to create. Options include:
- Interest from dividend stocks, bonds, retirement income mutual funds, annuity income, or high-yield investments
- Real estate
- Starting a business
Once you and your parents come up with something that suits them, start doing some research into the passive income stream you decided on and help them get started.
4. Help Them Manage Their Finances
In addition to helping them create a passive income stream, help your parents manage their finances so that they can live comfortably throughout retirement. That might mean helping them set up a budget or helping them curb their spending. There are tons of tools that can help your senior parents manage their finances better. Just some of them include the following:
- Mint.com
- Budget Simple
- Economic Checkup
- Personal Capital
- Prism
5. Help Them Discover New Beginnings
One of the toughest things retirees often face is accepting that one part of their lives is over, while a new part is beginning. If you want to make the transition easier for your parents, help them find new beginnings. Find ways to help them focus on new interests, hobbies, or projects that can give them something to look forward to. Your parents can get involved in:
- Volunteer work
- Arts and crafts
- Crosswords, puzzles, and word searches
- Sensory kits and fiddle boxes (for those with dementia)
- Games (like Bingo, cards, chess, checkers, Scrabble, and Monopoly)
- Community clean up
- Sports
- Dancing
You could also encourage them to read books or write a book of their own. Spend some time with them and help them find new things they enjoy doing.
Helping Your Parents Adjust
Helping your senior parents adjust to retirement can be difficult for both of you, but following the tips above can help make it just a little bit easier. From helping them manage their finances to finding fun activities to pass their time, there are several ways you can help your aging parents transition from one stage of their lives to the next as painlessly as possible.
