When a parent moves in: here's how to reduce the financial strain.

Publication: Consumer Reports

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Consumers Union of the United States, Inc.

Noel Johnson says she did the right thing when she asked her 91-year-old mother, Lorna, to move in with her three years ago. She knew her mother would eventually need help, and the time seemed right.

Johnson says that for now, her mother's Social Security benefits cover the day-today expenses. Yet she concedes that any special care her mother might need would put a strain on her budget. "Paying for things like in-home nursing care will be difficult," says Johnson, 69, of Cambridge, Mass.

She should know. During the five years Johnson cared for her father, from the time he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1988 until he died of cancer in 1993, the nursing care she needed to arrange so she could keep her job as Boston's director of cultural planning cost more than $30,000 a year. The expense was covered by income from a rental property her father owned. But caregiving issues created a rift between Johnson and her siblings that they are just beginning to mend, she says.

At least 22 percent of U.S. adults perform caregiving duties in their own home or elsewhere for a senior family member. That's up from just 8 percent in 1987, according to Donna Wagner, director of the gerontology program at Towson University, in Towson, Md., and one of nation's leading researchers on caregiving.

Wagner says the increase...

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