Do People With Dementia Get Help Managing Their Money?

One of the first signs that a person has dementia is difficulty with financial tasks. At first, it may just take longer to balance a checkbook or pay bills on time. Eventually, though, dementia erodes the capacity to carry out everyday transactions. So people with dementia need someone to help them manage their money – at first to avoid mistakes and later on to make sure their resources are not misused or abused. Since 5.5 million Americans ages 65 and over have dementia today, it is important to know whether they receive the assistance they need. An earlier brief provided some positive news: most people with dementia potentially have access to financial help, often from family.2 But due to data limitations, the study could not examine whether these informal caregivers actually did assist with financial management, and if so, whether it made a difference in financial well-being. After all, it is not clear whether the help offered by caregivers, who may lack full knowledge about their charges’ finances, would necessarily prove effective and, in rare cases, caregivers could turn out to be financial abusers. In these instances, people receiving “help” could end up worse off. This brief explores how many dementia sufferers have help and whether it improves their situation. The discussion is organized as follows. The first section briefly introduces the challenge that dementia poses for handling finances. The second section addresses whether those with dementia have help managing their finances. The third section presents results on whether the assistance appears to improve financial well-being. The final section concludes that the vast majority of individuals with dementia have help managing their money, mostly from family, and that the assistance appears to reduce financial hardship. However, social service organizations should keep their eyes out for the minority who do not have help in order to prevent their financial situation from deteriorating. This vigilance will be especially important in the future, as lower fertility rates and higher divorce rates may leave more individuals without family to provide help.