Three things people underestimate about being stuck in the sandwich generation

Caring for school-aged children and elderly parents simultaneously is a pressure cooker for many families, especially for the women.
Experts found three things that clients who are part of the so-called “sandwich generation” underestimate when they find themselves stuck in the middle.
Sarah Widmeyer, senior vice-president, wealth strategies at Richardson Wealth Ltd. in Toronto, says it’s common for adult kids to dip into their nest eggs to help support aging parents. She points to a study from U.S.-based retiree association AARP that found caregivers spend around US$7,200 a year on out-of-pocket expenses.
“Caregivers are picking up mortgage payments, rent, repair costs, groceries,” she notes.
Claire Webster, a certified dementia care consultant and founder of Caregiver Crosswalk Inc. in Montreal, says many families underestimate the cost of care for a loved one with dementia, especially as the person goes through progressive stages of the disease.
“At the beginning, they look fine cognitively,” she notes, “but the more the disease evolves, the higher the cost of care.”
Ms. Widmeyer and Ms. Webster spoke at a webcast hosted by The Globe and Mail in late September.
Ms. Webster estimates home-care costs to be around $36 to $38 an hour. As the disease progresses and care is needed for a minimum of eight hours a day, that home-care cost can escalate to $2,000 a month. Getting into a public long-term care facility will cost around $2,500 a month but waitlists are more than two years long, Ms. Webster says, and private care homes can cost double or triple the amount of a public facility.
According to a white paper from the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence, caregivers spend around 1,040 unpaid hours a year on caregiving for aging parents and children under the age of 15. That’s the equivalent of 130 eight-hour work days.
“There are no more additional hours in a day so those hours are coming at the cost of … work hours,” Ms. Widmeyer says.
And because women are more likely to take time off to care for children and aging parents, Ms. Widmeyer says they may suffer financially by reducing work hours or giving up work temporarily.
These decisions lead to less time to accumulate wealth for themselves, she says, and that money is needed as women live longer than men on average.
Ms. Webster says that when an aging parent is diagnosed with dementia or another critical illness, stress builds as families learn about the amount of care required. The family may be dependent on public health care but there are often long waitlists for social workers and nurses.
Then, there’s the dynamics within the family. Some may understand the care required and want to share the caregiving responsibilities and finances. Others don’t want to engage in those hard conversations until tragedy strikes. As Ms. Webster says, “It may take somebody being hospitalized or a crisis to happen. When you have to make those decisions suddenly, everybody goes into panic mode.”
As a former caregiver to her mother, Ms. Widmeyer acknowledges the enormous load women carry. But she always advises her female clients to “put on their oxygen mask first” by making their finances a priority. As she puts it, caregivers can’t care for others if they don’t take care of themselves.
“Financial wellness is self-care,” she says. “They need to think about these things not just because of the current moment they’re living through. They need to think about what happens to them when looking at their retirement and finances.”
Ms. Widmeyer knows that making these plans is definitely “one more thing” women need to manage by drafting and gathering important documentation, such as wills, powers of attorney, and topping up insurance and investments. But she says they’ll ideally find an advisor, someone they trust and who speaks their language, to help coach them through the process.
“That person is going to hold you accountable. They’re going to sit down and plan,” she says.
For those not fully entrenched in the sandwich yet, Ms. Widmeyer encourages having estate planning conversations with aging parents in advance.
“It’s difficult to initiate but the relief everyone will feel after [the talk] is massive,” she says. “Your parents likely want to have the conversation with you but they’re afraid because they don’t want to talk about the end of life.”
In terms of the stress load, Dr. Katy Kamkar, a clinical psychologist in Toronto, says female caregivers prioritizing the needs of others constantly can lead to emotional burnout.
“Financial well-being provides a sense of security and control, which is critical to our mental health,” says Dr. Kamkar, who also participated in the Globe webinar.
She works with women on resiliency strategies to help manage their multiple roles and responsibilities. Developing a network of other family members and friends can assist with practical support, as can having others in similar situations to connect with emotionally, she says.