The following is a guest post by reader Dave Scott who shares his experience of taking care of his 97 year old grandmother. I’m thoroughly impressed with Dave’s sense of duty and attitude throughout this entire article. You can tell he feels it’s an honor to take care of his grandmother and he’s looking for more insights on how to be a better caregiver. I’d like to have an open discussion during the holidays addressing the issues of cost, environment, emotions, responsibility and estate planning.
It can be a great honor and a huge sense of responsibility to manage all the aspects of a aging family member’s affairs when they are in need of your help. For approximately 20 years, I have been managing my grandmother’s investment portfolio. All other aspects of her life were managed by her with a little bit of help from my father.
In late 2010, all that changed. At the age of 97, my grandmother needed to move into assisted living and was no longer capable of fully taking care of herself. During the same time period, her relationship with my father, her only living child, began to become strained and my father was battling his own health issues. As a result, I made the decision to move my grandmother from her current independent living home in Arizona to reside near me in Texas.
The responsibility dynamic changed, almost overnight, whereby I had just agreed to manage 98% of all of my grandmother’s affairs. I was definitely up for the challenge and thought I was the best suited to take it on. However, it doesn’t diminish the fact that this is not a trivial undertaking.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is a potentially great way to help lower income individuals afford health care. I’m a supporter of ACA despite the trappings of ever bigger government running our lives because disease and accidents do not discriminate between rich or poor. In a nation as rich as ours, nobody should die or get stuck in a permanent loop of poverty just because they can’t afford medical treatment.
Ever since writing 
We appreciate our health the most when we are sick. I certainly appreciate my health now because I’ve currently got a sore throat from probably too much sailing in the Bay this past weekend. The wind regularly picks up to 25 mph and makes the temperature on the water feel like 50 degrees instead of 70-80 degrees.
It’s hard to stay in shape as we get older. We move around less, our family demands more of our time, and our jobs stress us out to the point where we eat too much comfort food.