Advisors need to get ready to take on the role of family therapist as more and more clients need help with the issues of aging.

“People are older and healthier than we’ve ever dealt with, and they’ll experience a longer and longer decline,” said author and speaker Nick Murray Thursday at Financial Advisor magazine’s seventh annual Inside Retirement conference in Dallas.

“The financial aspects, as critically important as they are, become almost footnotes” to the real issues of retirement, Murray said—helping clients deal with problems of aging, both their own challenges and dealing with parents.

“I see an ever-darkening future for you; as people get older, they don’t die but begin to break down physically and mentally,” Murray said.

The breakdowns will still come “on schedule” when people are in their 80s, they just won’t die, he said. As a result, advisors will spend a greater proportion of their time dealing with the emotional issues of aging.

“You go out to dinner with people of my age [of 72], and by the time the main course comes, somebody’s talking about all the problems they’re having with their mother, who’s losing her mind. … Does this strike no one but me as something we have never experienced?” he asked, with 70-somethings having to worry about their parents?

“All through history, no one knew what Alzheimer’s was; it was always there, but nobody lived long enough to get it,” Murray said.

Now half of Americans at age 85 get the disease, Murray said. “I think this is just one aspect of the profound changes in life that the people we counsel will have to be dealing with.”

Clients will turn to advisors for help with stressful decisions, like how to take the car keys away from an elderly parent. “You’re going to get that call,” Murray said.

“I’m not sure we see the emotional demands that will be put on us,” he said. “We’re not going up that learning curve anywhere fast enough.”

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