Breaking the Sandwich Generation Cycle
If you find yourself raising school-aged children or financially supporting grown children while also caring for aging parents, you are part of the sandwich generation. It is natural to feel pressure to care for aging parents, and as a parent, to feel the obligation to tend to your own family. Understandably, the sandwich generation experiences extreme levels of stress and feels financially squeezed from both ends. To provide care-giving services to multiple generations of their family, these people frequently set aside their own physical needs, mental health, and financial goals. This sacrifice presents a conundrum – If we don’t take care of our own needs while we are in the sandwich generation, our children will inherit the burden of caring for us. So, how can we make it through the sandwich generation years without losing our mind, and without perpetuating a cycle?
Take stock of your responsibilities. Responsibilities slowly add up over time. As kids grow up, tee-ball teams turn into travel teams with five practices a week. Likewise, as your parents age, checking in a few evenings a week turns into thrice weekly physical therapy sessions. Before you know it, you are everyone’s taxi, and every hour of your day is accounted for with no room for flexibility to take care of yourself. It’s important to realize when your lifestyle is unsustainable. If you’re overwhelmed, write down daily and monthly routines to see which you must keep, which can be shifted, and which can be cut. Lean on other transportation services like school bus routes, carpools, and local senior transportation services – surprisingly affordable and often available in rural communities. While using these services may not be glamourous, neither is a mental breakdown. Balance, boundaries, and compromise are essential for you to prevail in this challenging role.
Meet needs, not fairness. Living your daily life trying to keep everyone happy is a quick way to fill your schedule and empty your savings and emotional battery. To stay in this role for the long-haul, you need to pay attention to needs. Young children will need dinner prepared, cut-up and dishes cleaned, while your parents may only need company. Adult children may need a couch to crash on during summer break, but your parents may need a bed in your home while recovering from an injury. Give yourself grace in meeting the needs of others and let go of the pressure to make yourself available for everyone all the time. One thing to avoid putting on the back burner while you are in the sandwich generation is your own financial needs. You need to save for retirement and plan for long-term care, so your own kids don’t have to spend their time and savings to care for you. Further, if you do not want your children to remain financially dependent on you well into their twenties and thirties, you need to save for their education so they can enter young adulthood capable of paying for rent or a mortgage without the burden of hefty student loan payments.
Ask for help. There may be a point when you will realize you can no longer meet everyone’s needs on your own. It’s okay to ask for help! If your aging parent is beginning to experience diminished mental capacity, enlisting the help of an attorney is paramount. An attorney can help you draw up key estate planning documents, like a durable power of attorney, so you can continue helping your parents while also being able to draw on their assets to support their care rather than draining yours. The financial squeeze can be addressed by enlisting the help of a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional who can help you juggle the financial needs during this phase of life, and establish a long-term financial plan for your future that accounts for care in your own old age.
The best way to avoid or prepare for the sandwich generation is with multi-generational financial planning. A CFP® professional can serve as a facilitator for conversations across three generations, to make sure that your limitations and abilities are considered in your parent’s long-term care plans, and that your financial plan is robust and disciplined enough to not rely on your own children. With proper multi-generational financial planning, you can break the sandwich generation cycle. If you haven’t created a financial plan yet, start today so many years down the road, spending time with your children is not a stress-inducing obligation for them, but rather a privilege to be enjoyed.
Published in the Victoria Advocate.
Hannah Gohmert is a CFP® professional and the Chief Compliance Officer of Keller Wealth Advisors.
