Caregiving Getting Long-Overdue Attention
State and Employer benefits emerging to provide paid leave to caregivers
Ric Edelman: It's Wednesday, April 3rd. On today's show, are states and employers finally starting to recognize the challenge you are facing as a caregiver? Just think about this scenario. You're working. You're in your 40s, 50s, or 60s. That means your parents are in their 60s, 70s, or 80s. And they're suffering from chronic health issues.
They need assistance with all the daily activities of life, everything from grocery shopping, cooking meals, paying bills, cleaning the house, keeping up with the house's maintenance repairs, plus annual tax return preparation and whatnot, and that doesn't even mention their health. They need help getting to all their doctors, filling prescriptions, remembering to take them.
Getting physical therapy or rehab, dealing with all those insurance forms. This scenario might sound like a description of your life, doesn't it? The Family Medical Leave Act has been around for 30 years. It lets you take up to 12 weeks from work each year to care for a family member without fear of losing your job.
Great, you get three months off, but it's unpaid leave. So who can afford that? Um, so I bet you never took off those three months without pay. Instead, you used your own paid time off, two or three weeks of vacation and sick leave a year, to care for mom and dad. So much for your own vacation. And when you get sick, too bad. You've already used up your leave for them.
It would be so much easier if you weren't working. But you have to work. You need the money. And you also need to keep saving money for your own future retirement. So, you're effectively working two full time jobs. One for your boss to get your paycheck, and another full time job, working essentially unpaid, for your mom and dad. This is a destructive situation. No wonder stress levels are so high for so many people. No wonder so many people say they're worse off than they were four years ago. Four years ago, we had millions fewer old people than we have now. You might not have been caregiving for anybody back then, but you are today.
More than half of caregivers are over the age of 50. 60% percent of them are women. Finally, though, we're starting to see some help. 13 states, plus the District of Columbia, now offer paid caregiving leave, and a half a dozen other states have bills pending. These state programs vary. They pay anywhere from 60% to 100% of your pay for 6 to 12 weeks.
In most states, you can use all the leave all at once, or you can do it here and there based on what you need. If you're a financial advisor, you need to recognize that you have dozens of clients who are caregivers. And you need to get engaged with them to help them determine if they live in a state that has a paid leave program and to see if they qualify.
Big companies are also starting to offer these programs as part of their employer benefit packages, so be sure to talk to your clients about who they're working for. And if you're the caregiver, check with your state agency to see what might be available for you. If you've got a financial advisor, ask them to help you. This is the kind of service that you're paying them for.
Our aging population means we're going to have an explosion in the need for caregiving over the next two decades. If you're not currently a caregiver, you can probably expect to be one, one day. So get familiar with the rules now so you can minimize at least the financial disruption that caregiving will create.
On tomorrow's show, the latest in Agtech, innovation in food.
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