Finance
How to prevent burnout and financial stress when caring for an elderly parent or relative

An estimated 48 million Americans are caring for someone over the age of 18. Many of them are family members caring for an elderly parent or older relative — and the value of that unpaid care is estimated at about $600 billion dollars a year, according to a recent report by AARP.
Daphne Taylor, Debbie Taylor and Shelia Miller know the cost of caregiving firsthand. These sisters started caring for their 87-year-old mother after she had a stroke four years ago. Coincidently, the three had all retired around that same time. Miller and Debbie Taylor live in Alexandria, Virginia, while Daphne Taylor resides in Washington, D.C.
“We started out saying, ‘Okay, this is our life now,’ and we’ll do trial and error,” said Debbie Taylor, now 63, recalling how the sisters stepped in to provide around-the-clock care to keep their mother at home.
“It was all a learning process,” said Daphne Taylor, 65, a retired project manager. She took the lead in creating spreadsheets to coordinate care, track medications and note her mom’s progress. She says the ups and downs of her mother’s health and coordinating necessary services has been frustrating. “I was always able to get done what needed to be done in the working world,” Daphne said.
Sisters Shelia Miller, Debbie Taylor and Daphne Taylor of the Washington, D.C., area care for their mother, Ernestine Taylor.
Managing health-related and long-term care expenses is also a challenge. Trying to arrange care quickly and efficiently, the sisters have paid out-of-pocket for medical equipment, transportation and supplies that were not covered by Medicare or insurance, including a $5,000 hospital bed.
“We’re trying to take care of our mom 24/7,” Debbie said. “There’s just no way in the world that you have time to try and figure this all out.”
The alternatives to being the primary caregivers for their mom are also expensive. The median cost for a private room in a nursing home is more than $100,000 a year — and more than $60,000 a year for a home health aide, according to a Genworth survey.
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Meanwhile, family caregivers spend more than a quarter of their annual income on caregiving costs, according to a 2021 AARP report. Many of them have stopped saving money or taken on more debt to pay for those expenses.
Planning ahead for long-term care can reduce some of the financial strain, says certified financial planner and CNBC FA Council member Barry Glassman, but few families actually do it. “It’s tough because a person in their 80s doesn’t really know when they may need help, or what help they may need, if at all,” said Glassman, who is president of Glassman Wealth Services, with offices in Vienna, Virginia, and North Bethesda, Maryland.
Still experts say taking these five steps can help prevent burnout and financial stress for many family caregivers.
1. Seek help from the government, non-profits
Medicare and most health insurance plans generally don’t pay for long-term care. However, if an elderly individual is eligible for Medicaid or a U.S. veteran, there’s a good chance a family member can get paid for caring for them.
Family caregivers may be able to be paid by Medicaid, depending on their state of residence. The amount of funds can vary contingent on the elderly person’s needs and the average wage paid to home health aides in that state. Go to the American Council on Aging’s website at medicaidplanningassistance.org to find out if your loved one is eligible for a Medicaid long-term care program that pays family members.
In many states, former service members can manage their own long-term care, including choosing a caregiver, who may be a family member — and their military pension can also cover caregiving costs. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs’ Caregiver Support Program website can provide more information on how a caregiver of a military veteran can qualify for financial assistance.
Consider getting respite care for your loved one, too. Although options for family members to get paid for caregiving are limited, you may be able to get help by paying someone else to give you a bit of a break. Check out state and federal funding, as well as private sources that may be available to help you pay for respite care on the ARCH Respite Network and Resource Center website.
Research other government health and disability programs in your state, as well as disease-specific and non-profit organizations that may offer financial resources for caregivers, on the Family Caregiving Alliance website.
2. Take advantage of tax breaks
If your elderly parent or relative lives with you and qualifies as a dependent, you may be eligible to claim them as a dependent on your federal tax return.
You can deduct medical and health-related expenses for yourself, your spouse and your dependents that exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income on your federal income tax return. Qualifying expenses may also include including home modifications, equipment, and transportation.
You may also qualify for a dependent care tax credit for a percentage of up to $3,000 in qualified care expenses for one person or $6,000 for two people.
3. Ask about employer benefits that can help
You may be able to save even more money by taking advantage of health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts offered by your employer — and using that money to pay for qualified medical, dental and vision expenses for a dependent.
You generally have to be enrolled in a high-deductible health insurance plan to contribute to a HSA — which allows for up to $7,750 in contributions for a family in 2023. If you’re 55 and older, you can contribute an extra $1,000. Contributions are tax-free, earnings are tax-free and you can withdraw the money tax-free for qualified medical expenses, too. You can make contributions to an HSA for 2023 until the tax deadline next April.
It’s tough because a person in their 80s doesn’t really know when they may need help, or what help they may need, if at all.
Barry Glassman
president of Glassman Wealth Services
You may be able to contribute your pre-tax income to a health flexible spending account, as well as a dependent care flexible spending account. A health FSA covers qualified health-care expenses. The contribution limit is $3,050 in 2023. A dependent care FSA allows you to put away pre-tax money to cover in-home or daycare expenses for a dependent of any age while you are at work, up to $5,000 per household in 2023.
Consult a tax professional to find out if those accounts, as well as other tax breaks ,will provide some financial relief to your caregiving situation.
Find out if your employer offers other caregiving benefits, such as paid time off for caregiving, mental health and counseling services, remote work and flexible schedules.
4. Find support from a group or care specialist
Emotional stress and burnout can add to the financial strain of caregiving. Connecting with other caregivers in a support group may alleviate or help you better manage the multi-faceted aspects of caregiving. Search online for caregiver support groups that meet in your area or virtually.
A care manager may be another avenue of support you can engage even before a crisis. “We can be their ‘black umbrella,’ being there in the corner for them when it starts to rain,” said Anne Sansevero of the Aging Life Care Association. “But they have it in their closet, and they’ve got everything organized.”
Care managers are often social workers or nurses who can help with creating, evaluating and monitoring a plan to help you care for your loved one. They can make referrals and provide you with a list of resources in your area for in-home care, adult day programs and other services. The fee can range from $125 to $350 an hour, Sansevero said.
5. Plan ahead for costs and decision making
Designer491 | Istock | Getty Images
Finally, a key strategy to saving money and reducing the emotional stress of care is planning early.
If your older parent or relative is reasonably healthy and under the age of 70, consider helping them buy long-term care insurance if they can’t afford the premiums on their own, recommends CFP Ivory Johnson, founder of Washington, D.C.-based Delancey Wealth Management and a CNBC FA Council member.
Cash flow, family dynamics and personal preference are all factors to consider when looking at a long term insurance. And be sure to understand the fine print. “You can absorb all the risk, you can transfer all the risk, or you can do a little of both,” said Susan Hirshman, director of wealth management at Schwab Wealth Advisory and the Schwab Center for Financial Research. “There’s not one general rule.”
And discuss with older parents their wishes for who will make health and financial decisions if they are unable to do so. Know where they keep the legal documents that spell out these wishes — health-care proxy or power of attorney, living will or advanced medical directive, and durable power of attorney for their finances.
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Finance
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Finance
Wendy Alexander 'was asked to leave' Dundee uni role claim over finance questions


Former MSP Wendy Alexander claims she was asked to leave her senior post at Dundee University after asking “uncomfortable” questions about the institution’s finances, MSPs have been told.
Alexander was the university’s vice principal international for almost a decade but retired last year rather than accept what she said was the offer of a “package and trips.”
She said “cakeism, profligacy and hubris at the very top” led to “a failure to reign in expenditure” and that she “chose not to be bought off”.
She said former principal Prof Iain Gillespie, who was heavily criticised in a recent damning report into the university’s finances, “made clear” he wanted her to leave last October.

Alexander’s comments were made in a statement submitted to Holyrood’s education committee.
Gillespie resigned with immediate effect in December after telling staff the previous month that job losses were “inevitable”.
He is expected to give evidence in person at the committee on Thursday.
The university currently faces a £35m deficit and has said it must cut 300 jobs through a voluntary redundancy scheme.
The independent report, published last week, said university bosses and its governing body failed multiple times to identify the worsening crisis and continued to overspend instead of taking action.
In her statement, former Labour MSP Alexander said: “I personally, was progressively frozen out of meetings, my objectives changed, data withheld and when I challenged the absence/adequacy of financial information in Sept (20)24, I was then asked to leave.
“I declined the offer of overseas trips at the university’s expense to be followed by a generous settlement payment.
“Quite simply, it seemed unethical and morally wrong.”
Alexander, who now sits as a baroness at the House of Lords, said she felt “punished for speaking out” and that the university “failed to fix the roof when the sun shone”.
She said international fee income had quadrupled over eight years to 2023, but the university was “barely breaking even”.
She said that international income plateaued in 2023/24 and fell the following year.
Alexander said there was a “misguided” shift away from a “laser-like focus on international student recruitment to a new globalisation strategy”.
She added that the university “deprioritised international student recruitment when it mattered most” and left the university “poorly equipped to deal with the downturn”.
The education committee is currently hearing evidence from the university’s former director of finance Peter Fotheringham, former chief operating officer Dr Jim McGeorge, and former chair of court Amanda Millar.
Alexander submitted her evidence rather than appearing in person due to a prior family event abroad.
It was announced on Tuesday that the university will receive an extra £40m from the Scottish government as the institution continues to tackle its financial crisis.
Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth said the decision would place specific conditions on the funding which will be paid over two academic years.
The university received £22m from the Scottish Funding Council in February as part of funding to support universities facing financial challenges.
Finance
Bonn bulletin: Developing nations ask x3 adaptation finance by 2030

Call to triple adaptation finance
At COP26 four years ago, governments agreed to “urge” developed countries to double finance for adapting to climate change up to around $40 billion a year by 2025.
That goal ends this year, although we will not know until 2027 if it has been met. But at a press conference in Bonn this afternoon, the Least Developed Countries group chair Evan Njewa called for a successor goal – tripling adaptation finance by 2030 on 2022 levels. “Adaptation is a lifeline,” he explained.
Other developing countries are likely to back this. Grupo Sur and the Like-Minded Developing countries have made the same call in different negotiating rooms and Njewa said he was sure that the small islands group AOSIS would back it too.
“We’re never going to say no to adaptation finance,” AOSIS finance negotiator Thibyan Ibrahim told Climate Home in Bonn. But he noted that even tripling “does little to close the adaptation finance gap”. The UN estimates that developing countries need $160-340 billion a year by 2030, whereas tripling on 2022 levels would bring in just under $100 billion.
Last year in Baku, developed governments would not agree to having a sub-goal on adaptation in the wider $300-billion-by-2035 finance goal and it’s not currently clear which negotiating track a new adaptation goal could be included in.
The doubling-by-2025 goal was in the COP26 cover decision – a stand-alone declaration all governments agree to – but the COP30 Presidency has said it does not want a cover decision.
It would fit in the Baku to Belem roadmap to $1.3 trillion or the Global Goal on Adaptation. But the roadmap is not an official negotiated UN agreement – so may not be followed up on – and developed-country governments have been resisting financial indicators in the Global Goal on Adaptation.
Meanwhile outside the world of UN climate talks, a recent CARE report showed that adaptation finance is likely to fall by 10% in 2026. France, Germany, the Netherlands and particularly the UK are set to make big cuts between 2025 and 2026.
The US is giving nothing in either 2025 or 2026. Commenting on US climate finance cuts generally, Njewa said he expects “someone somewhere to rise up and fill in the gap that that party has left”.
From Bonn to Nairobi?
Denouncing the visa problems faced by some developing country delegates heading to Bonn, more than 200 climate campaign groups made a joint call yesterday for governments to consider whether Germany should remain the default host for the mid-year climate talks.
Chanting “no borders, no nations, no visa applications”, a dozen campaigners gathered outside the conference centre on Tuesday morning, holding up a banner calling to move the annual talks to “visa-friendly countries”.
With many of those affected by the perennial issue unable to protest themselves, the demonstrators played a voice note from Roaa Alobeid, a young Sudanese climate activist who spoke movingly at COP28 about the war in her country.
She said she had gone to great lengths to get a visa for the Schengen area, which includes Germany, making an appointment, submitting 15 documents – including five letters of support and a bank statement – but was still rejected.
“I’m not there. I will never be there”, she said. “Why? I’m not worth it?” “We shouldn’t be left behind when we are the ones impacted.”
Cameroonian activist Zoneziwoh Mbondgulo-Wondieh did make it, but told the protest her one-year-old daughter had been refused a visa for being too young. She asked why Germany would implicitly tell a nursing mother they must stay at home and not work abroad.
When Climate Home questioned the German foreign office on this issue last year, a spokesperson said it was important to the government that all delegates could attend but there are legal requirements for getting a visa for the EU’s Schengen zone of free movement.
Rachitaa Gupta, head of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice, said it would be better to hold the annual mid-year talks somewhere like Nairobi or Bangkok – where UN facilities already exist and visas are easier to obtain. Holding the meetings in the Global South would also be cheaper, Gupta added.

Climate finance on the rise – mostly for the rich
New figures out today paint a fairly positive picture of global climate finance, showing it climbed to a record $1.9 trillion in 2023, more than tripling over six years.
Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), which compiles the data, said that at the current rate of growth, the world could deliver $6 trillion in annual climate investment – the most conservative estimate of needs – by 2028.
Private-sector funding rose above $1 trillion for the first time in 2023, driven by household spending on electric vehicles, solar and energy-efficient housing – with clean energy in advanced economies and China receiving the bulk of the money.
While this suggests the long-touted need to “shift the trillions” towards green investment is underway, the headline numbers mask the fact that many of the poorest countries are still failing to receive anything like the amounts they need.
The CPI report shows that overall public climate finance fell by about 8% from 2022 to 2023, as government budgets were tight after the COVID-19 pandemic. It also warned that recently announced cuts to official development assistance, in countries such as the US and the UK, raise concern that money from this source could decline further.
International climate finance for emerging markets and developing countries reached $196 billion in 2023, with 78% of that from public sources. Yet while both climate-related development finance and private investment rose, CPI said the least-developed countries still face barriers to accessing affordable capital, and need more financial innovation and support.
In a separate report released on Monday, however, Oil Change International and 17 other NGOs warned that a widely used approach of using government money to lower investment risk and bring in more commercial cash – known as “blended finance” – is falling short of expectations.
The report found that every public dollar of concessional lending is bringing in 4-7 times less private investment than anticipated, leaving the Global South with massive shortfalls of cash for its energy transition. Most money, it said, is going to Global North countries and China, with the remaining 69% of the world’s population receiving just 15% of finance in 2023-2024.
“A just energy transition is dramatically more affordable than continued fossil fuel dependence. But unfortunately affordable doesn’t mean ‘attractive to banks and hedge funds’,” said Bronwen Tucker, global public finance lead at Oil Change. “It is clear from the data that private investors are not fit to lead the way to the fossil free future we need, and that governments must step in.”
Mineral justice for Africa
Efforts to revive the Lobito Corridor trade route in central Africa must prioritise local economic development over raw material exports, researchers at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) said, as campaigners in Bonn call for justice for resource-rich countries and an end to the extractive injustices of the fossil fuel era.
The US and the European Union are providing financial support to Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to upgrade their infrastructure to aid transport of critical energy transition minerals like cobalt and copper through a rail system which terminates at the port of Lobito on Angola’s Atlantic coast.
In a policy brief issued this week, highlighting the Corridor’s opportunities and challenges for a just transition, the researchers questioned how the project’s development will benefit the wider economies of the countries involved, while protecting social benefits and human rights including being fair to the people whose land it might encroach upon and the artisanal miners who dig up many of the raw materials.
They said the involvement of the EU and the US has raised concerns in participating countries such as Zambia, where a parliamentary committee has said the Lobito Corridor project appears to focus on “mopping up critical raw materials” to respond to the energy security concerns of wealthy nations without adding value to the countries.

Lorenzo Cotula, IIED principal researcher, said if the EU and other prospective funders are interested in a genuine, long-term partnership with Angola, Congo and Zambia, they should support their efforts to promote economic development and improve the lives of their citizens.
“This project shouldn’t just be a means to export more raw materials more quickly to wealthier countries, or another chess piece in the great power game,” Cotula said.
“Millions of people in mineral-rich, lower-income countries are being sidelined in a global rush for materials to power electric cars, computers and even military technologies in richer nations,” he added.
Sharing similar concern, campaigners from Power Shift Africa and the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) convened a press conference at the ongoing talks in Bonn calling for the need for just minerals in the just transition, because one cannot exist without the other.
Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at Climate Action Network International (CAN-I), said the transition that is happening is not one that is needed for a climate-compatible world because the needs of resource-rich countries are being ignored.
Rosemberg said there is need for international cooperation to overturn the current competition over resources, adding that “we know that investment and trade deals are being arranged to secure the supply of these minerals, and in the end, we are reproducing all the mistakes that have been done in the past with the fossil-based economy”.
Samira Ally, project officer at Power Shift Africa, said Africa’s mineral wealth can accelerate a global shift to net zero when governed by justice and stability with necessary guardrails in place.
To do this, she asked governments to integrate language from the G20 and the UN panel on critical minerals into the climate talks and national climate plans so that they “reference sustainable supply chains and the right to development and industrialisation in the Global South”.
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