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- [00:01]
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Beth Pinsker
Yep.
- [00:09]
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- [01:18]
Farnoosh Tarabi
So Money Episode 1874 Caring for Aging parents and their money.
- [01:24]
Beth Pinsker
You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Kharabi.
- [01:29]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Each day get a 30 minute dose.
- [01:31]
Beth Pinsker
Of financial inspiration from the world's top business models, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh herself.
- [01:38]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons.
- [01:42]
Beth Pinsker
Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to so Money. I was in my mom's apartment one night, home from the hospital late. All I wanted to do was watch television and eat junk food and her cable wouldn't work. And so I called the cable company. You know how they have to reboot the box? Yeah, I wanted them to just reboot the box so that I could watch TV and relax for 10 minutes and they wouldn't reboot the box because I wasn't her and I wasn't an authorized user on the account. And they're like, you're going to have to call back in the morning and send those power of attorney forms.
- [02:20]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Welcome to Sew Money everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi and I'm really excited to welcome back my friend and fellow financial journalist to the show. Beth Pinsker. My Beth has a new book coming out in early November called My Mother's A Guide to Financial Caregiving. I've already pre ordered several copies for myself and for many people I know because this book is going to be essential reading. It should be essential reading. And lucky for us, we now have a sneak preview. In this conversation, Beth takes us inside her personal journey of stepping into manage her mother's finances during a health crisis and the maze she had to navigate around powers of attorney, medical proxies, estate planning, the endless roadblocks from banks, utilities, and as you heard, even cable companies. She also shares practical steps we can all take right now to avoid costly mistakes and legal headaches later, from keeping documents up to date, understanding long term care options, and knowing how to advocate when institutions push back. We also talk about the emotional weight of financial caregiving, why even the most organized families can stumble, and how to prepare without losing your sanity. Let's get into it. Beth Pinsker, my friend, welcome back to Sew Money. It's great to have you and on the road to your book launch, My Mother's A Guide to Financial Caregiving. I've been looking forward to this for a while.
- [03:49]
Beth Pinsker
Thank you. Thank you for having me on.
- [03:52]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah, I know this has been a long journey for you personally, professionally, and we the audience were in for a lot of important information you have in your your book. Again, it's called My Mother's A Guide to Financial Caregiving. We talk about this a lot on the podcast. This complexity of as someone who might be in midlife or even younger. Right. Working with your parents, trying to work with your parents, your loved ones around their finances as inevitably it does fall on the children. And wouldn't it be nice to get ahead of things? Tell us about why this book was so personal to you and the impetus for writing this book personally.
- [04:37]
Beth Pinsker
What happened for me was I got that call that everybody gets at some point that we all dread. My mom calls me up and says, I'm having a big surgery, can you come and help me? And life stops. Some people that somebody had a heart attack or somebody fell or you never know what it's going to be, but you can't schedule it and you can't plan for it. And my mom had been taking care of her own life. She was only 76, so she didn't need any help and we'd go visit and talk all the time, but she didn't need me for anything. And then all of a sudden she did and she needed me in a big way. She was incapacitated for some time and I had to step in. And most of the time I had to step in. I couldn't even ask her any questions. She just wasn't up for it. And so it was like becoming a forensic accountant or a detective all of a sudden to my mother's life while she was sitting 10ft away from me. But I couldn't ask her anything. And that's just. It's just no matter what, where you are, where you are in your life, that's really hard because you can do everything right for yourself. And if somebody else in your life hasn't planned properly or my mom planned great. I just didn't know. I didn't know where she kept her stuff. I didn't know any of her passwords. I didn't know any of the things I needed to know. Even though she had done a really good job of organizing things. You still stepping in blind to fully take over somebody's adult financial existence. And it's just really complicated and people need help with it because the more time that goes on in the US financial system, the harder it all gets. Like, it used to be easier. I think when my mother had to deal with my grandmother, it was easier. She could walk simpler. Yeah, she could walk into any bank and take care of what she needed to do just by saying she was her daughter. Not everything was online. My grandmother's life wasn't really complicated. My mom was a full fledged adult with an adult life. She had lots of accounts and things going on. And there are rules now. You can't just go in and tamper with somebody's bank account, even if you mean well. So did she have a will or.
- [06:58]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Anything that said Beth has permission? Like, I think there's so many steps, there's so many things you need in that moment. Which comes first for the person listening? What do I do first? Do I first just figure out what my parents have? Do I just ask them to include me in those documents or give me passwords? Let's start with where to begin.
- [07:21]
Beth Pinsker
If you. Yeah, so that is exactly how I walk through the book, is just step by step. This is what happened. I got the phone call. And then step one, step two, step three. This is all the things I had to do. Don't worry about this other stuff right now because that's going to come up later. The very first thing you need is power of attorney. It is absolutely, absolutely the most important thing that you need, and you need it now for everybody in your family. And the good news is for the most part, you can get it for free and download it from the Internet. It's probably best if you go to a lawyer and get a whole set of documents all at once. But you can take care of a power of attorney with a download. Fill it out, get it notarized, and you're good to go. But you need to do it for everybody over 18. My son turned 18, and I marched him down to the notary with a stack of papers. And that's just how we roll in my house, because we know about all of this. But those things need to also be kept up to date. So if your parents did their paperwork 15 years ago and then moved like my parents did, from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Florida, the Pennsylvania power of attorney is not good in Florida, and it's not good after five years. So you have to keep up on these things with everybody. You think you have an aunt in Chicago who's gonna one day need you to do something for her? You need to make sure she has a power of attorney. Because the options are you download it for free from the Internet or pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $90 to get, like, a customized one, or you pay $18,000 to $20,000 to go to court. Yeah. So those are your options. Think about it that way. I could do this for free right now and have peace of mind, or if something bad happens, I have to go to court for months and get guardianship or conservatorship, whichever your state calls it, because it changes. But you have to go to court, and it's hard. And then the number one mistake people make is they take that power of attorney if they get it, and they put it in the safe deposit box. And the safe deposit box doesn't always have somebody else's name on it. And so even to get the power of attorney that would authorize you to be in the safe deposit box, you have to get in the safe deposit box first. And so you have to go to court in order to get power of attorney, to get into the safe deposit box to get the power of attorney. So don't keep that.
- [09:53]
Farnoosh Tarabi
It's not just like stated in your. It's not just stated in your estate plan.
- [09:58]
Beth Pinsker
And no power of attorney. And the power of attorney and the health care proxy are for before somebody dies. Those. Oh, right, right. Things are a living will.
- [10:11]
Farnoosh Tarabi
That's what that is.
- [10:12]
Beth Pinsker
A living will is a statement of your wishes. But the healthcare proxy is what actually allows you to make decisions for another human being. And then you also need this form called a HIPAA waiver, which allows somebody else to have access to your medical records. And those are things you need before somebody dies. And then those things, like the minute somebody dies, those things go out of force. Power of attorney does not work for a person who is deceased. That's when you need the will or the trust. My mom had all of these things, but that didn't make it any easier for me. So power of attorney is this document that says, I, Beth Pinsker, say that my son can have my permission to take care of my banking needs, go in my safe deposit box, buy and sell property for me, whatever it is that I allow him to have the permission to do. And then you have to get the. Or when you want to use that power of attorney. The person who, like my son, would have to go down to the bank or call the bank and say, I need to enforce this power of attorney. When I went to do that for my mom, I took the forms, I went to the window, I said, my mom's in the hospital. I need to use her power of attorney. I need to be able to write checks to pay the caregivers. And they said, no, no, you can't do that. They're like, you have to go to court. I'm like, but no, I have this power of attorney. They're like, no, you can't. No. And we went this whole back and forth for this, what seemed like to me an interminable amount of time. But I was like, I know these are good. I'm a professional. I do this for a living. I had my mother go to a proper attorney. They were drawn up in the last five years. I know these. I know this is good. They can't. It took me two, two hour visits on subsequent days. I had to make appointments for to get enforced. They wouldn't take them.
- [12:11]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Why were they just.
- [12:13]
Beth Pinsker
This is what banks do.
- [12:14]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Incompetent. It was just incompetence.
- [12:16]
Beth Pinsker
It was just 90% of people face this when they go to the bank. I talked to one attorney for my book. I don't know if you've had her on the show, but she's an estate attorney in Illinois. Indiana. I'm sorry, Jenny Roselle. And she had to sue a bank to accept her client's power of attorney. Because they said, no, this is. We can't accept this document. They are so super careful about allowing anybody access who's not the account holder. The banks today just make it impossible for you to execute that power of attorney. And so if you don't know that. First of all, if you don't know that you need it, you got to go to court. If you do know that you need it and you have it, you have to stamp your feet and cause a ruckus in order to get them to let you use it. And then you have to do it over and over again. Because it's not just the bank. It's the brokerage account, it's the cable company, it's the power and light company, it's the gas company, it's anybody who interacts financially with your loved one, you have to show them that power of attorney and get them to accept it. So you have to just over and over again.
- [13:32]
Farnoosh Tarabi
So what was the breakthrough for you? Was there a script you used? Was there a threat you made? Because this is basically the bank is interfering with the law. It sounds.
- [13:44]
Beth Pinsker
And yes, I said, I am not leaving here until you accept this document. I know this document is good. And you have. You just basically have to accept it. I offered to have my mom get on the phone with them. I offered to have an E Notary verify her signature. I offered all of these things, and they said no. And I said, then you're just going to have to accept my documents. And they spent two hours on the phone with the corporate headquarters, and they faxed documents and they scanned things and they went back and forth. And she was on hold. And literally, like, I'm sitting on the opposite side of her desk for two hours, just holding my temperature. Because in those circumstances so much you want to blow up and yell. People yell at customer service workers all the time, right? It doesn't do any good for anybody. It just makes the situation worse. The thing I learned throughout this entire adventure with my mother, from when she was sick to after she passed away and I had to deal with then all the estate stuff, is that you just have to be relentlessly tenacious, and you have to just be okay with that. And that's hard for some people. I had a friend who had to do this recently with an insurance problem, and she is the sweetest, nicest person in the world, and she hates confrontation, and she had to just relentlessly get on the phone with people and just badger them. Just over and over, the same phone call, the same customer service number. And you want to. It drives you crazy, but you need these things, and they're important, and. And so you really just have to learn to steel yourself and stick with.
- [15:24]
Farnoosh Tarabi
I'm almost thinking if your parents are healthy right now, you might ask them if Obviously, this is like not every. This may not work for every family, but can I be on your account?
- [15:35]
Beth Pinsker
See that there are complications with that? I have a whole chapter on this in the book. Okay. Being a joint signer on somebody's account has complications. The so for one thing, if you are a joint signer on a parent's account, it counts as a joint asset. So if you are applying, say for instance, I have teenagers or in the college financial aid process, whatever money my mother would have had in those accounts, I would have had to claim on the financial aid form. And I can't control what she has or doesn't have in her account. The second thing is, if you're divorced, those count as assets. They could be counted as joint assets. So all of a sudden those funds could get tied up in a divorce. Also, creditors. There are also complications with siblings. What if you put one sibling on the account and then your parent dies? The sibling who's on the account gets the money. It doesn't matter what's in the will and they don't have to share it. They could share it out of goodwill. You would want to do whatever your parent had intended. But there's no controls on somebody taking money out of that account when you're joint on it. So if you have siblings that you don't trust, that's a problem. And then the last complication is Medicaid. If you have a joint account and you want your parent to eventually get on Medicaid, having money go in and out of the account can cause complications. If, for instance, I had to cover my mom for a check and put money into her account, then it counts as a gift. And then that could mess up her Medicaid eligibility because they look back five years and if in that five year period I had to transfer money to her to cover bills or anything of that sort, then that counts as assets towards her. So it goes both ways. It's bad for the person who is trying to help and it's bad for the person who's being helped. So that's complicated. But yeah. So what I suggest in the book is doing a little mix of the two, which is what we did. We had this one account that my mom had never taken my father's name off of. And in order to add somebody to the account, we had to first take him off. My father died back in 2018, and Covid happened in the middle of all of that. And by the time Covid was over, she wasn't feeling well. And we just never took care of it. So she had this one account where nobody else was on it, and then we had a joint checking account that was connected to the account. So once I was power of attorney, I could move money all sorts of ways and take care of things, but I could. I never was able to get onto her main checking account any other way. And people cobble together. Some people just wing it and just log in and pretend they're the person. I will say that like, you always hit a wall with that. I hit that wall.
- [18:35]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah. So don't. It's not enough to just get username passwords. You want to be power attorney? Power of attorney, Yeah.
- [18:41]
Beth Pinsker
I was in my mom's apartment one night, home from the hospital late. All I wanted to do was watch television and eat junk food, and her cable wouldn't work. And so I called the cable company. You know how they have to reboot the box? Yeah. I wanted them to just reboot the box so that I could watch TV and relax for 10 minutes and they wouldn't reboot the box because I wasn't her and I wasn't an authorized user on the account. And they're like, you're gonna have to call back in the morning and send those power of attorney forms.
- [19:10]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, wow.
- [19:14]
Beth Pinsker
Oh, wow. Oh. There's a reason this is. It's just too hard for people.
- [19:18]
Farnoosh Tarabi
It should have been like the whole book, honestly. Like, how did you summarize this all in just one chapter? The first chapter. This power of attorney stuff. You know those nights when your mind just won't quiet down? Your to do list keeps running, you're thinking about tomorrow's early alarm or juggling the endless schedules. That's when the right sheets really matter. With Bolen Branch, you can finally unwind. Their signature sheets have a softness so extraordinary that your whole body relaxes into sleep. Bowl and branch's signature sheets are made from the finest 100% organic cotton. And they feel buttery soft from the start, only getting softer with every wash. Plus, they come with a 30 night worry free guarantee and are ethically crafted by artisans who earn fair wages. I can tell you from experience, the quality is unmatched. The first night I slipped into my bowl and branch bed, I could feel the difference immediately. These sheets actually change the way you sleep and the breathability makes such a difference. Especially when the weather warms up. I genuinely sleep deeper and wake up feeling more rested. Feel the difference an extraordinary night's sleep can make. With bowl and Branch get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets@bowlandbranch.com that's Boland Branch B O L L A N D branch.com Sewmoney to save 15% and unlock free shipping exclusions apply. Fall is in full swing and it's the perfect time to refresh your wardrobe with pieces that feel as good as they look. Luckily, Quince makes it easy to look polished, stay warm and save big without compromising on quality. Quince has all the elevated essentials for fall 100% Mongolian cashmere starting at just $50, washable silk tops and skirts and perfectly tailored denim all at prices that honestly feel too good to be true. I've been especially eyeing their wool coats. They look very designer but cost just a fraction of the price and the quality just as good, if not better. What I love most is that Quince has really become a one stop shop for me. Their cashmere sweaters and silk tops have turned into true staples in my fall wardrobe and every time I put them on I get that mix of comfort and polish that just works whether I'm at home running errands or heading to a meeting. By partnering directly with ethical top tier factories and cutting out the middleman, Quint delivers luxury quality pieces at half the price of similar brands. Keep it classic and cozy this fall with long lasting staples from quint. Go to quince.com sewoney for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C ce.com somoney to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com somoney.
- [21:50]
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- [22:05]
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- [22:36]
Farnoosh Tarabi
One thing that comes up a lot on our program is preventative steps that we can take. If you are worried about in some cases being financially burdened by your parents, finances by your parents, medical needs, that the topic of long term health care comes up because it feels like a really wise thing to invest in. But it's got a window and you want to get it while you can. And talk a little bit about that because I think that's like for a lot of our audience that might be in their 30s, 40s, they have parents who are in their 60s, 70s, like this could actually be a huge solve in the future for everybody.
- [23:19]
Beth Pinsker
It could, theoretically. But long term care insurance has some pricing issues with it, which means that the price that, that the company charges for long term share insurance doesn't pay off enough to make it worthwhile for you. Like the price tag is too high for what, for what you get out of it. And so what happened in the past is that insurance companies sold these policies and too many people claimed them and the like. The house is always supposed to win with insurance, right? The insurance company is doing this to make money and when you get out of it more than you put in, the insurance company doesn't win and they don't like that. So my mom had a policy, an old fashioned long term care policy. And I do the math in the book, like down to the dollar of what she put in and what she got out and she got out more than she put in. You know what happened to that company? They went bankrupt. So it's very hard to get. If your parent doesn't already have a policy, it's going to be very hard for you to get somebody over the age of 60 or 65 a policy that's affordable that will then pay out an amount that would be worth it. So I have several solutions for this in the book and they're all very complicated math equations. You have to figure out your need and then figure out the future dollars of the need and then put aside that money or invest it in an insurance product that will pay off that amount of money in the future. For people in their 40s and 50s, the math works out a little bit better. But it's also hard to prioritize that above retirement savings for kids, college, buying houses, paying mortgages, all that sort of stuff. It's a very expensive insurance. And the way that it works now is that most people make it a combination of life insurance and long term care insurance so that at least if you don't have a long term care event then your heirs get a death benefit. And so it's a combination of those two products because a lot of people got annoyed by the Return on investment on long term care insurance. You put all this money in and it's not really clear that you're going to use it. Which when you buy home insurance or car insurance, you're happy when you don't have to use it. If your house doesn't burn down and you never use your house home insurance, you're really not too upset about that, or your car never crashes and all that car insurance money you pay each month, nobody says, oh, that was all for. People look at long term care insurance as this major expense in their budget and are they going to need it? Is there a return on that investment? And comparing it with life insurance means that there is eventually going to be some payback of that money. You will get back in a death benefit or somebody will get back what you put in. And so that makes it a little bit more palatable for people. And you know how risk pools work. Like the more people who buy into an insurance, the less it costs. So long term care insurance is really expensive right now because only about 3% of people in this country have it. And they're the sick people. Oh, they're the people whose parents had Alzheimer's or cancer or they know they had a bad experience in their family and they know that they're probably going to end up needing it. And the way that we all live today, Most of us, 70% of us, are going to have some sort of long term care experience in the future. And so the chances of using your long term care insurance are pretty good. And my mom used her policy three times and she had a policy that you could use it for a short term and then it would recoup itself. She had this really great policy and I saw her use that and I said, there's Alzheimer's or there's dementia in my family. And this is another thing you have to consider what's in your family. There was dementia in our family and my mom thought and cancer and that's a risk factor. And you want to get insurance young so that you can still qualify for it. And so as soon as I was offered a long term care and policy through work, I jumped on it. My mother got it because her father had dementia, although we aren't sure if it's now the inheritable kind or. My grandfather took a lot of blows to the head. He was a professional wrestler and a college football player before there were helmets. And he might have had CTE rather than Alzheimer's. No, there's no way of knowing now. But that is my mom had that all going through her head. And right at the time that she got her policy, her brother got cancer. And so my mom was like 52, I think, or 53 when she got this policy because she was scared. She was like, this is gonna happen to me and I don't know how we're gonna pay for it.
- [28:30]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah, you're right about the earlier you get it, sometimes the better. I had a financial advisor who was about 45 at the time tell me she was getting it. She was buying long term care insurance because her mother had Alzheimer's. She was taking care of her and she's. We're gonna have to sell our house to pay for her care. And then her mom ended up passing away, which she's. So we didn't have to sell our house, but my goodness, it was a wake up call for us to get some preventative care, some sort of like insurance to help us. Because it could easily happen to us. Even if you have everything correct. Did you even find anybody in your book reporting that we did everything right?
- [29:16]
Beth Pinsker
No, nobody does everything right.
- [29:17]
Farnoosh Tarabi
That's never the case.
- [29:19]
Beth Pinsker
And I swear every single person I interviewed had some. Not just a hard time with things, but had a literal breakdown over something. Everybody ended up crying.
- [29:33]
Farnoosh Tarabi
It's emotional. Forget the finances of it all. Like your loved one is ill or is dying. That in and of itself is hard. The caregiving piece of this is hard. Adding to it, the financial piece is like just, it's impossible.
- [29:49]
Beth Pinsker
I talked to one financial advisor, he runs the wealth management at one of the big wealth management firms. And he had to help his mother with her Medicare choices after her father died. After his father died and he had to ask his clients for help. He said, I've never dealt, I'm, I've never dealt with Medicare before. What am I supposed to do to help my mother?
- [30:11]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah, I wonder how AI might change some of this. Have you looked into that? Like, even something as complicated as like I'm trying to maybe. I thought I was going to have to shop for new health insurance in New Jersey on the marketplace and I was dreading it. So I went to ChatGPT and I was like, I live in this state. Here's what our family situation is. We want the best plan. What's going to be the damage? And it gave me, I don't know how accurate it is, but it gave me breakdown because this information is out there. And I wonder with like this also this scenario with Medicare, Medicaid that can the, can AI help us distill that. Because otherwise it's like hours and hours of our time. We're hiring consultants. We still aren't getting it right.
- [30:58]
Beth Pinsker
Yeah. So I'm not a big believer in AI for these kind of decisions. These are what we call in the industry fiduciary decisions. There's. But your best interest is complicated in these circumstances, and I go into this in the book a lot, because what is the most economical decision in a caregiving situation is not the cheapest. So if you ask AI, AI has to in some objective way. Right? So if they look at two prices, they'll tell you which one's cheaper. But the choices are not that. When you're dealing with a caretaking situation, putting your mother in a Medicaid nursing home versus a more expensive assisted living is not a choice that AI can make. AI can only tell you which one is cheaper, but it can't tell you which one is better for your parent at that particular moment. I bring it all down to this one decision I had to make. My mom, in one of the interludes when she was ill, was coming home from the hospital, and I had to be there at her apartment to receive the shipment of her equipment that was covered by Medicare. So they come in and they're like, do you want the standard mattress that comes with the hospital bed, or do you want to pay extra for the air mattress that's more comfortable? How's AI going to handle that decision? You know, I don't want to go shopping. I don't want to go shopping for mattresses. I'm a frugal person. I have been careful with money my whole life, and my mother was careful with money her whole life. And it's her credit card, and I'm in charge of it, and I don't want to do stupid stuff with her credit card. But. But I'm, like, there, and I have to make a decision. Am I spending $700 on this extra mattress? It was $700. That seems like a lot of money. But then you're saying, okay, but what if she's uncomfortable? So that's not. These are not decisions. Am I gonna short the hours of the caregivers because they're expensive? But she needs that.
- [33:08]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Of course, that wasn't. I would never use AI for those things. But I think just for the process of trying to at least get a good first rough draft, of which Medicare plan do I. Do I go for? To some extent, it won't make the decision for you, but it can at least give you some more tangible things. To work with as opposed to what often is you feel like you're just. It's like a fire hose of information.
- [33:31]
Beth Pinsker
I think there are better sources for, I mean, for that particular question, for which Medicare plan should my parent choose? There are better sources of legitimate researched engines that they have widgets that are designed to walk you through that choice. They will. You put in your list of drugs and they will tell you which plans cover those drugs and which plans don't. They're very sophisticated inputs for that particular question and for which long term care policy is best. It's really something you need a fiduciary professional to look at because the policies are too complicated for AI to suss out the important details. They can only really look at fees and costs. When you can compare apples to apples. And the insurance companies make it purposefully hard to compare apples to apples. They all call their fees something different. They all put them in different places. You can't just have a chart that compares things straight across lines. Yeah.
- [34:39]
Farnoosh Tarabi
We could spend hours, but I want people to buy your book before we go, though. Yeah. I'm really glad you wrote this, and I know it was many years in the making. What is before we go, Beth, what is one thing your mom taught you about money that has stayed with you? I know that you said I'm frugal. She was frugal. But was there a philosophy that she had or even just like a funny story that has stayed with you that has been meaningful?
- [35:08]
Beth Pinsker
Yeah. I will tell you that when I was growing up, we got audited three times because my father was a college professor and a writer and he had a lot of supplemental income. And every couple of years we would take a sabbatical and go somewhere. So we went all over. We went to Belgium and they went to Spain and California and New Mexico and all sorts of places. And every time we got back, they would audit my parents. And my mother was. What's the word? Not self righteous. But she was adamant that nobody was going to ever get one over on her. And that went for the IRS too. And so she would get these notices and she would get so mad. And every year at tax time, she would take over the entire dining room table and sort through every receipt and every piece of paper and every book that my father bought and piece of paper that he bought and mail stamp that she had everything recorded. And every time she went to one of those audits, they ended up owing us.
- [36:11]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Oh, my gosh.
- [36:13]
Beth Pinsker
And so my father was an English professor. He's probably responsible for me wanting to become a writer. But my mom is why I am like meticulous about finances. And she wanted everything that was due to her and wanted to keep everything that she could keep just because she was a careful and thoughtful person. And like that's how I approach finances too. If it's yours, nobody should take it away from you. And if you could do better with it, you should. And so that's the spirit I go into this with is I was her, I was her sword for a while while I was taking care of her. And I wanted to do right by that spirit. So that's what she taught me is to don't let anybody get one over on you is my mother's message.
- [37:02]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Was she an immigrant by chance? No, just a hard working American. I love it because I feel like my parents felt the same way but maybe for different reasons as immigrants that we all work. Everybody works so hard, especially that generation. And I think it's, it's a great legacy that she's left with you and now we all get to benefit from it as well through your book, My Mother's Money. Beth Pinsker, thank you so much.
- [37:26]
Beth Pinsker
Thank you.
- [37:29]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Thanks to Beth Pinsker for joining us. Her book is out in early November. It's called My Mother's A Guide to Financial Caregiving. You can pre order using the link in our show notes. I'll see you back here on Friday for AskFarnouche. Did you know September is five to nine month college savings month. And for this we have a whole episode dedicated to college financial planning with a very special guest. Stay tuned. I hope your day is so money.
- [38:07]
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