Study re Alzheimers and money management

[haapai]

I don't know if we had a thread on this subject a few years ago or not.  The upshot is that a few years ago the NYT published a mostly anecdotal piece regarding how Alzheimers tends to destroy a person's money management ability long before diagnosis.  This article is much less anecdotal and absolutely devastating. 

www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/economy/alzheimers-disease-personal-finance.html

Long before people develop dementia, they often begin falling behind on mortgage payments, credit card bills and other financial obligations, new research shows.

A team of economists and medical experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Georgetown University combined Medicare records with data from Equifax, the credit bureau, to study how people’s borrowing behavior changed in the years before and after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or a similar disorder.

What they found was striking: Credit scores among people who later develop dementia begin falling sharply long before their disease is formally identified. A year before diagnosis, these people were 17.2 percent more likely to be delinquent on their mortgage payments than before the onset of the disease, and 34.3 percent more likely to be delinquent on their credit card bills. The issues start even earlier: The study finds evidence of people falling behind on their debts five years before diagnosis.

I bolded that last bit myself.  It was not part of the original NYT article.  Getting someone formally diagnosed can take a long time, but the changes in a person's ability to handle money may be showing up long before anyone around them notices any changes beyond the usual aging. 

“There’s not just getting forgetful, but our risk tolerance changes,” said Lauren Hersch Nicholas, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who has studied dementia’s impact on people’s finances. “It might seem suddenly like a good move to move a diversified financial portfolio into some stock that someone recommended.”

People in the early stages of the disease are also vulnerable to scams and fraud, added Dr. Nicholas, who was not involved in the New York Fed research. In a paper published last year, she and several co-authors found that people likely to develop dementia saw their household wealth decline in the decade before diagnosis.

I really wish that this article was not paywalled.  It is shareable though.  I might be able to e-mail a copy to anyone who DMs me.  Everyone should read it. 

 

Can someone who does not have a NYT subscription check out the link and see if it is truly paywalled?  If anyone else finds this article reprinted on a site that does not have a paywall, or a permeable paywall,  please add a link to this thread. 

[Opti]

That sucks. Mom had those issues and handed over balancing her checkbook to her executor I think before she was diagnosed. 

[haapai]

When you're pulling from retirement accounts instead of relying mostly on pensions and social security, handing over the checkbook keeps the bills paid but it doesn't keep you from doing disastrous things with your nest egg.

[busymom]

Mom put me in charge of paying her utility bills before her doctor suggested she could have the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer's.  She had set up her accounts earlier so that I could sign off on payments for her if she ever needed me to "take over".

Other signs that she had begun to slip was piles of unopened mail.  She was unable to prioritize which mail was important (bills) and what was junk mail.  


When she was unable to do simple addition & subtraction in her check register, I knew she was in trouble.  I kept track of her accounts, and from time to time when she'd ask if she had enough money, I'd just reassure her that all is well, and she was satisfied with that simple answer.  I'm still thankful she didn't run out of money while in a nursing home.  

[bean29]

I tried to open the article.  You need to create an account, which I never do.

I would like to read the article if you can pm me a link.

Thanks

[haapai]

I've never tried sharing one of these sharable article before.  I'll start poking at it a bit but I kinda suspect that it will ask me for an e-mail addy. 

[haapai]

Let's see if this works

www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/economy/alzheimers-disease-personal-finance.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xU0.TC8l.4ZsdaYuhq_Nv&smid=url-share

[haapai]

Okay, the spinner seems to have stopped and something has posted.  I can't test it to see if it works for someone who does not have a NYT subscription.  I'll need a volunteer who does not have a subscription to try it and report back. 

[msventoux]

Jun 5, 2024 18:12:11 GMT -5 haapai said:

Okay, the spinner seems to have stopped and something has posted.  I can't test it to see if it works for someone who does not have a NYT subscription.  I'll need a volunteer who does not have a subscription to try it and report back. 

I’m able to read the article. Thanks for sharing!

[bean29]

I was able to read the article. Thanks for the link.

[NastyWoman]

So was I. Since it mentioned that I could see it thanks to someone I know there may be limited number of people who can see it.


Thank you for sharing. This was a very interesting article

[svwashout]

Jun 5, 2024 16:27:28 GMT -5 haapai said:

I really wish that this article was not paywalled.  It is shareable though.  I might be able to e-mail a copy to anyone who DMs me.  Everyone should read it. 

 

Can someone who does not have a NYT subscription check out the link and see if it is truly paywalled?  If anyone else finds this article reprinted on a site that does not have a paywall, or a permeable paywall,  please add a link to this thread. 

No paywall at archive.today

If you clip the OP's link as text and paste this into the dark blue box at the bottom and hit "search", an archived copy link should appear -- archive.is/8zGgy

Very interesting article IMO. The cognitive decline part of AD was not surprising, but the risk-seeking part I wasn't aware of. Definitely something to keep in mind for those of us who trade stocks (know when to walk away, know when to run).

[TheOtherMe]

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

My mom never had any kind of dementia.  When they moved here, the credit union put all of the various accounts on one monthly bank statement and she could not understand the statement, as many times as I tried to explain it to her.  Apparently, their previous bank sent a separate statement for each individual account.  

She asked if I would take over the check register.  Of course I said yes.  They got the duplicate checks and I still have the box of paid bills and duplicate checks.  She wasn't overspending.  She no longer felt well and didn't want to learn a new way of doing things.  She also made me promise that I would balance each account "to the penny".  I then took the balanced account reconcilation and went over them with her.

Dad, on the other hand, knew there was plenty of cash in the account.  He never became a spendthrift.  He paid a bill as soon as he got back to the apartment after it came in the mail.  I knew he was paying the bills, right up until about the last 3 months.

However, he started tossing the bank statement itself.  When they opened their accounts here, they had added my sister and I as signature authority and co-owners.  So I took him in and he signed a statement and we went to online banking.  I set that up so every time money came in or out of his account, I received an email.  

Nothing bad happened.  He was too cheap to sign up for anything new.  He didn't want to see anything to do with the bank statement.  He just paid his bills as they came in.  

I think we did dodge a bullet with money.  

[haapai]

Jun 6, 2024 10:12:48 GMT -5 svwashout said:

No paywall at archive.today

If you clip the OP's link as text and paste this into the dark blue box at the bottom and hit "search", an archived copy link should appear -- archive.is/8zGgy

Very interesting article IMO. The cognitive decline part of AD was not surprising, but the risk-seeking part I wasn't aware of. Definitely something to keep in mind for those of us who trade stocks (know when to walk away, know when to run).

Yes, the risk-seeking behavior is probably the more frightening part.  There's a link in the article to another NYT piece from 2010 that has a lot of anecdotes about very smart high-earning professionals who lost or were swindled out of everything.  A lot of them were doctors and lawyers who worked under their own shingle.  It's quite likely that a lot of them faced limits on how much they could contribute to IRAs and 401(k) plans and had to invest in after-tax investments.  It's possible that the active role that they took in managing their own money earlier in their lives put them at more risk of losing it later. 

I'll get cracking on getting a shareable link set up.  Meanwhile, here is a bit of text from that article that can be used to search for that article. 

Renee Packel used to have a typical suburban life. Her husband, Arthur, was a lawyer and also sold insurance. They lived in a town house just outside Philadelphia, and Mrs. Packel took care of their home and family.

One day, it all came crashing down. The homeowners’ association called asking for their fees. To Mrs. Packel’s surprise, her husband had simply stopped paying them. Then she learned he had stopped writing checks to his creditors, too.

It turned out that Mr. Packel was developing Alzheimer’s disease and had forgotten how to handle money. When she tried to pay their bills, Mrs. Packel, who enlisted the help of a forensic accountant, could not find most of the couple’s money.

“It just disappeared,” she said.

What happened to the Packels is all too common, Alzheimer’s experts say. New research shows that one of the first signs of impending dementia is an inability to understand money and credit, contracts and agreements.

[nidena]

My dad is currently very possessive of any mail with his name on it.  My stepmom has to put everything facedown on her desk so he doesn't catch a glance of his name in the window.  She's set up everything in web billpay and made sure he doesn't have access.  For awhile, he was paying some bills twice.  The first time, because he got the paper statement and the second payment, because they were sending statements to his email, too.  It's not a terrible thing when it's just the water bill but definitely a challenge when it the CC they use every month and pay off at the end of each month.

[haapai]

Money Woes Can Be Early Clue to Alzheimer’s

An early sign of dementia is an inability to understand money, leaving financial advisers and lawyers in a bind.

www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/health/healthspecial/31finances.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xk0.HewN.UdV3LLwbVPqq&smid=em-share

2010 article

[tractor]

Thanks for posting. I'm dealing with this issue with my mother. I will read it later. Heading down to Florida next week to try a get things sorted out...wish me luck!

[Tennesseer]

Not an article about Alzheimer's disease and money.  But an article about Alzheimer's disease and family.  It is a New York Times article so it is behind a paywall.  I can post part of it here.  And if anyone is interested in reading the rest, let me know.  I will 'somehow' be able to get the rest of the article to you in a message here.  


OPINION
GUEST ESSAY

My Mom Had Alzheimer’s. Now I Do Too. But I Learned From Her Not to Despair.

My mother spent the last three decades of her life afflicted by the loss of memory and control that comes with Alzheimer’s. I remember her panicking in the night, waking my father at 3 a.m. to search for her long-dead mother. He would often give in and drive her through the deserted streets of Los Angeles to lull her back to sleep.

When I was diagnosed with the same disease last fall, I would wake up early each morning and replay this disturbing scene. I visualized a pathetic decline that would make me and my family miserable.

But that is far from the full story. There are other lessons to learn from my mother’s experience. I know because I chronicled those lessons in this very newspaper 25 years ago, after my mother died. I know firsthand that a diagnosis of the disease doesn’t have to freeze our lives and herald the end of our stories — it can instead invite us to a new stage of life.

In August, 1999, I wrote about how my mother was blessed by several graces among the losses. Her lifelong depression gradually faded in her last years as she began to live in Zen-like moments. She could be delighted afresh by the repeated appearance of the same white carnation. Her presence still delighted others. After my father died, when she had few words left, she could still hobble around her assisted living home tugging the apron strings of a favorite caretaker, who would lead her to a seat where she could “work” by folding napkins. She blew kisses to everyone who smiled at her. She was happy.

Through watching my mother, and through volunteer work I’ve done writing minibiographies for people who are losing their memories, I’ve learned that many of the more than six million Americans with Alzheimer’s have a relatively tolerable experience. They shouldn’t be referred to as “victims,” “sufferers” or even necessarily as “patients.” They’re still individuals in pursuit of happiness.

Those numbers will skyrocket as my baby boom generation ages. But we don’t have to be scared into denial, as I’ve learned. With early detection, it’s possible to improve symptoms right now, become connected to fresh medical discoveries and help one’s family prepare for an uncertain future.

At age 74 and with my family history, I always knew that I had an elevated risk of Alzheimer’s, but over the course of 2023 I was plagued by a constellation of seemingly unrelated difficulties. I was unsteady on my feet, limped, strained to hear, hunched over, choked on food, made wrong turns, forgot more and more things, and was infuriated by my computer. Above all, my own lifelong depression deepened. Friends asked my wife what was wrong with me.

Rest of article here: My Mom Had Alzheimer’s. Now I Do Too. But I Learned From Her Not to Despair.  

[svwashout]

I've always been puzzled how victims can fall for these social media financial scams, for example en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_butchering_scam

I notice that in recent news reports about such cases, the victims skew towards being older, which seems counter-intuitive since naive inexperience typically associates with youth. I wonder how much the cognitive dysfunction in early stage dementia or Alzheimer's disease may be a factor in vulnerability? These are common issues now and are increasing in prevalence, so risks have to be rising, especially during times when employment rates drop due to recession (more scammers without other options and more scammees with free time).

Those of us with older friends and relatives who use computers or smartphones should probably keep an eye on all of their online activity, much as we would supervise pre-teen children. This may be an uncomfortable discussion and arrangement, but just like the will and power of attorney, it's better to think ahead. Maybe firewall software vendors can include a social media monitoring extension?

[debthaven]

One of my best friends lost 10K to a popular scam here. 

As English-speakers in France, a lot of us order gifts from the UK, especially around Christmas. We are constantly getting emails or texts that the gift we ordered was held up at customs, so we need to click on the link and pay customs in order to get it delivered. But with Brexit, sometimes that does really happen!!!

A works full-time, got careless, and clicked on the link. Then a (fake) banker called to verify the transaction. TO BE HONEST THIS SEEMS A BIT CRAZY TO ME ... apparently the scammers spoofed the real number of our bank?! I don't know how that works, but I looked it up, and apparently it does happen. (I use the same credit union.)

Six months later, A is still fighting to get her 10K back. She's 65, so not exactly elderly, not senile, not demented ... she just let her guard down that day since it was before Christmas and she WAS expecting deliveries from the UK.

This story COMPLETELY freaked me out!!! I called my CU and asked to speak to the manager. I know her voice, I've known her for 30 years, since she was 6 and at school with my DS2 LOL. 

I asked her, what can we do to ensure this doesn't happen to us?!

She said, don't keep 10K sitting in your checking account. (My friend was waiting for a contractor to cash a check.)

Since then, I have encouraged my family and friends NOT to keep more than they need in their checking accounts. 

The bank manager explained that when someone gets scammed, the scammer doesn't have access to any savings accounts, only the current account. 

[TheOtherMe]

This week I have received text messages from the postal service about a package they can't deliver.  That is a known scam.

I received a voice mail about paying off back taxes before they go to collection.  I don't owe any back taxes and deleted the voice mail and marked the number as spam.

I received yet another invoice for the purchase of bitcoin.  

It doesn't stop.  

I transferred a large sum of money from savings to checking on the day the Contractor was going to be paid.  I knew the amount and it was in a savings account.  I knew the amount I was to pay each time, so I transferred it just before I wrote the check.  I also knew as soon as I handed him the check, he was going to deposit it at the ATM in the town 4 miles away and it would be gone from my checking account.

[debthaven]

The other really popular scam here is, mom/dad, I'm stuck somewhere, can you send me money? OR mom/dad I lost my phone, I'm getting a new one but I'm in the store, can you please send me money so I can pay for it?!

DH gets those ALL THE TIME ... except they're always in French, and our kids don't call us "papa" or "maman", and they don't speak to us in French. They certainly never call DH "maman" LOL.

TheOtherMe you were smart to transfer the money as you needed it. I wish A had done the same. 

ETA: One of the professors I teach got the "you need to pay customs" texts/emails too. She deleted them. A few days later the mailman showed up and said, I have your package, but I'm not allowed to give it to you because you owe XX in customs (it was a small amount). H was shocked, because in her case, it was true, it wasn't a scam!

[busymom]

I just LOVE it when I get the telephone calls offering to help pay off my student loan debt.  Mine have been paid off for years.  

[TheOtherMe]

Jun 20, 2024 14:47:06 GMT -5 busymom said:

I just LOVE it when I get the telephone calls offering to help pay off my student loan debt.  Mine have been paid off for years.  

I get emails and text messages about those.  Mine were 5 year loans and were paid off in the 1980's.  

The scam here about the kid is in jail and needs money is a popular one.  We were always happy that dad was too deaf to hear on the phone and had no way to get some place to wire money without calling us.

[jerseygirl]

I’m on board of a charity, very small and for deaf and deaf blind people. We got an email saying person giving donation and check should arrive in three days. Please let him know when check arrives. So check for $10000 arrives. We were thrilled cause a lot of $ for our small charity. I go to bank and deposit, no problem. Person requested we send him confirmation from bank that it was deposited. When I was certain, according to bank, that deposit cleared.
We started to get nervous , check was from a generic Plumbers Union, in Florida. Looked it up no real information and emailed the person. Why did you send to us? Do you know deaf people?
We didn’t send confirmation about deposit since it would have charity bank account number. After about 3 weeks the $10000 ‘disappeared’ from our account. Our bank was helpful and compt any fees.
Another NJ charity for deaf people got the same emails checks etc We just had a hunch something wasn’t right. I know some scams send money then ask for a portion back, this didn’t happen. They just wanted our bank account numbers
I reported the scam to the USPO. Nasty people scamming charities for Deaf people

[busymom]

That just makes me sad, jerseygirl.  It's not like your organization is rolling in money, and you're trying to do good in your community.


Just imagine what these criminals could accomplish if they put all of that time & effort into doing something good.

[debthaven]

That's just horrible jerseygirl

[Tiny]

Jun 20, 2024 14:06:31 GMT -5 svwashout said:

I've always been puzzled how victims can fall for these social media financial scams, for example en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_butchering_scam

I notice that in recent news reports about such cases, the victims skew towards being older, which seems counter-intuitive since naive inexperience typically associates with youth. I wonder how much the cognitive dysfunction in early stage dementia or Alzheimer's disease may be a factor in vulnerability? These are common issues now and are increasing in prevalence, so risks have to be rising, especially during times when employment rates drop due to recession (more scammers without other options and more scammees with free time).

Those of us with older friends and relatives who use computers or smartphones should probably keep an eye on all of their online activity, much as we would supervise pre-teen children. This may be an uncomfortable discussion and arrangement, but just like the will and power of attorney, it's better to think ahead. Maybe firewall software vendors can include a social media monitoring extension?

It's not always older people (men or women).  It takes a lot to come forward and admit/tell about how you were scammed out of money - maybe a lot of money 100K or more.   

The Pig Butchering scam is usually a long game.   The "relationship"  - friendship or romantic  starts out slowly and progresses over time until the ask for money OR to join in a money making sure thing is made.    The scam relies on human nature AND social behaviors.  It's about the trust built between the scammer and the victim.  And at some point the victim doesn't know how to get out of it.   

The scammers scam men and women and they might be in their 40's or 50's when it happens.  I think the scammers prey on loneliness or someone looking for love.  It isn't always cognitive dysfunction - sometimes it's just the way we are taught to respond to other humans taken to an extreme.   (Think about reciprocity if someone gives you something you may feel obligated to give them a gift in return.  Or how it's easier for someone you trust to talk you into a taking a risk.  Or how sometimes the "in for penny in for a pound" way of thinking keeps you interacting with someone you'd rather not interact with.)   

 

[nidena]

To help avoid scams, I've learned to not say "Yes" to any questions unknown persons ask me over the phone.  Example: Yesterday, I received a call from someone who started talking about my driving record (weird but I'm guessing it was a cold call for an insurance company) and they asked a question then stated "Is that correct?"  "That is correct." was my answer.  When I realized it was a sales call, I gave them the no thank you but I mention this because oftentimes, they will ask "Is this so-and-so?" and I reply "This is she" rather than "Yes, it is."

My dad, a few years before Covid, got one of those "grandparent calls" that they talk about in AARP, where it's someone posing as a grandchild but they don't say the grandchild's name.  Thankfully, Dad was less effected by alzheimers then but he did still nearly fall for it in that he started saying "J, is that you?" because he really thought it was my nephew.