Lisa Green, a financial-services coordinator, saw her professional experience come in handy when her mother, Delores Green, needed assistance following hospitalization for a knee injury and subsequent infection. After Lisa and her four sisters took turns for several months providing care in Green's home in Delray Beach, Fla., they all decided it was time to sell the house. Delores made plans to move into a continuing-care community.
Preparing the house for sale after 40 years was hard enough, but the timing couldn't have been worse. It was September 2008, during the darkest days of the Great Recession. Delores's portfolio shrank, and home values in Florida hit the skids at exactly the time Delores needed a lump sum to buy into the retirement community.
Lisa's financial-planning expertise helped the family manage this worst-case scenario. She figured out where to find the lump sum for the retirement community and created a spreadsheet dividing her mother's expenses into three categories: the carrying costs on her house, the monthly expenses for the retirement community and her personal expenses. "Then we could see how long the assets could last," Lisa says. "We knew that she had staying power for 18 to 24 months. But if we didn't sell the house by then, we'd all have to start kicking in cash." Lisa told her sisters that they should be prepared to contribute $500 per month each to their mom's expenses if the house didn't sell after two years.
Fortunately, they found a renter the following year who covered the house's carrying costs, and they were able to sell it before the sisters had to contribute any money. Meanwhile, Delores's portfolio turned around, too. But Lisa continues to monitor her mother's investments and expenses so that she and her siblings will have plenty of notice if they need to help in the future.
Source: http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?subjectid=526&articleid=20111106_51_E3_Itshar763065
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