Melissa P. Spickler, a wealth management advisor with the Spickler Wealth Management Group in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., was thrust into a position of becoming a caregiver for her aging mother with little warning.

Spickler and her sister, both of whom work full time, had been in denial about their mother, who not only was losing her cognitive skills but also doing irrational things like using postage stamps for tape or saying the housekeeper stole her address book when she did not have a housekeeper. At that point, the problem could no longer be ignored, and Spickler had to act.

At around the same time, her husband’s father began to decline, and he began thinking his son was a Civil War soldier. “At first, we were in denial. We refused to believe that there was anything wrong.” Eventually, the search began for competent help, logistics had to be dealt with and someone had to take over the finances.

Unfortunately, Spickler’s situation is no longer rare. The number of adults in their 50s and 60s with living parents is not just growing, it is exploding.

The number of adults in the United States in their 60s who have at least one parent alive has more than doubled since 1998, according to research by the Urban Institute. Part of this is due to the increase in population of people in their 50s and 60s. This is creating a growing number of issues for the senior population, for the advisors who are trying to help them and for society.

In 1998, 20% of the population that was then age 60 through 69 had at least one living parent, which translated into 3.9 million people who had to confront issues with an aging parent. By 2016, nearly 28% of the 60- to 69-year-old population, or just shy of 10 million people in this age range, had a living parent.

In a slightly older report, the Pew Institute found in 2014 that 52% of U.S. residents in their 60s, or 17.4 million people, were financially supporting either a parent or adult child, up from 45% in 2005. “Compared to just 10 years ago, I am seeing three times as many clients who are dealing with helping older parents,” says James Sullivan, vice president and financial advisor at Essex Financial in Essex, Conn. “Clients are asking me, what do you get a 100-year-old for his or her birthday? That question used to never come up. Now it comes up every once in a while.”

Becoming a caregiver for a parent can alter the retirement plans of the adult child. It can stop the child from traveling or volunteering. “It is tremendously challenging and can put immense emotional stress on a person” to cope with those changes, Sullivan says. People dealing with these situations should consult an eldercare attorney, because there can be unintended consequences to many actions.

“For instance, what if the parent moves in with one of the children? How does that affect the inheritances of the siblings? What if one sibling provides more of the care or even moves in with the parent? How should the deed to the house reflect this?” Sullivan asks. “These things can change the retirement that the child envisioned and can create problems within family.”

Having gone through the situation, Spickler says she now often spots problems with clients’ parents before the clients do. “These situations are much more prevalent now than they were even five years ago,” she says. “I confront my clients when I see a problem with their parents and then they can no longer deny it.”

When the problem has been acknowledged—or ideally long before that point—families need to sit down and have a heart-to-heart conversation. Who is going to take care of what responsibilities? Who is going to take over the finances? Where are the valuables and what are the bank passwords?

Spickler says an elderly mother of one of her clients taped a valuable ring to a sink pipe so she wouldn’t lose it and then forgot about it. Luckily, the children found it when they cleaned out the house, but it easily could have been lost. All valuables should be inventoried while the parent still remembers where everything is, she says.

The caregiving landscape is going to continue to evolve with more baby boomers not only taking care of older parents but also taking care of their adult children who have moved back home or who have student debts to pay off. Merrill Lynch did an extensive study of this sandwich generation and the unique burdens many members face. The results were released in November in a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and Age Wave caregiver study that included 2,010 caregivers.

“As we look to the future, we see four forces—longevity, demography, sociology and technology—converging to dramatically transform the caregiving landscape,” Merrill Lynch says. “Caregiving is not without sacrifice. Many caregivers report significant costs in terms of their finances, their health, their time and leisure, their work and their other relationships.”

However, caregiving is not all negative. “Caregivers often feel fulfilled by caregiving. Ninety-one percent say they feel grateful for the opportunity to help someone they care about. Seventy-seven percent of caregivers say they would gladly do it again,” the study says.

However, taking care of a loved one can create financial problems for the caregiver, Merrill Lynch says. Two-thirds of caregivers feel they could benefit from outside financial advice, yet only 20% have sought it out.

Fifty-seven percent of the study participants say they find navigating health insurance expenses to be the top challenge of financial caregiving, followed by 48% who say finding enough time to ensure finances are in order is a problem.

Caregiving is hard, and the details are often not part of an open conversation, Merrill Lynch says. There are 40 million family members and friends providing some kind of care for an elderly person in the United States, the Merrill Lynch/Age Wave study says, at an approximate cost of $190 billion per year.

“This is a really complicated issue,” says Maddy Dychtwald, co-founder of Age Wave, a think tank based in Emeryville, Calif., that concentrates on aging issues. “People are living longer, but that doesn’t mean they are healthy for that whole time. This brings up touchy and emotional issues.”

The problem is going to get worse. In 1994, 2% of people between age 65 and 74 had a living father, and 3% had a living mother, Dychtwald says. By 2013, the percentage with a living father had grown to only 4%, but the number with a living mother soared to 14%. The numbers were not broken down the same way this year, but in 2018, 16% of this age group had at least one living parent, she said.

Dychtwald, who is also an author, wants more public discussions of these issues. In addition to aging concerns, she also focuses on women’s issues. Her latest book is Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better.

“Let’s open up the gates,” she says. “We need to be talking about these things. Demography dictates the facts; it is our responsibility to then deal with them.

“People feel it is the right thing to do to help their aging parents and their adult children. They need to be there for them, but they have to consider what it means to their own retirement,” Dychtwald adds. “Taking care of aging parents has always been a problem, but now it has grown exponentially.”

Catherine Collinson, CEO and president of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and the Transamerica Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization, wants more light on the subject. “Millions of Americans are serving as family caregivers for relatives or friends who need help taking care of themselves,” she says. “With people living longer, the high cost of long-term care and the aging of the baby boomer generation, the number of family caregivers is likely to increase.

“It’s time to raise awareness of the challenges faced by caregivers so they can simultaneously care for their loved ones and protect their own long-term health and financial well-being,” Collinson says.  One of the things making caregiving so difficult is that it involves a wide range of duties and skills, according to “The Many Faces of Caregivers: A Close-Up Look at Caregiving and Its Impacts,” a study conducted by the Transamerica Institute, the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and the Transamerica Center for Health Studies, which included 3,074 caregivers.

Hector De La Torre, executive director of the Center for Health Studies, says, “Caregiving responsibilities involve commitments of time and energy to perform a wide variety of tasks, ranging from personal care to household management to administering medications and treatments. These responsibilities can be fulfilling, but also exhausting.”

“Seventy-four percent of caregivers have been providing care for one or more years, and 27% have been providing care for five or more years,” according to the study. “Caregiving is a full-time job for many—36% of caregivers spend 100 or more hours per month providing care, with a median of 50 hours spent per month.”

Although the number of aging parents who need care is growing and should be top of mind for advisors and clients, many adult children are not dealing with the issue early enough, says Andrew Crowell, vice chairman of wealth management at D.A. Davidson & Co., based in Great Falls, Mont. “Being prepared starts with a plan,” says Crowell. “The advisor has to ask probing questions about the family history and about future plans. What are the plans if a parent becomes ill? The advisor should say, ‘Let’s talk about your extended family. How are you going to provide for them if necessary?’

 “Often the advisor fails to have that extended conversation,” he adds. “The advisor focuses on the individual client or couple, but the clients do not live in a vacuum.”

“You have to have a road map of care for older parents, but you have to have it in place well in advance,” agrees Michael Hoeflich, wealth manager and Social Security claiming strategist with the Financial Guys in Williamsville, N.Y. “Create a support team for the parents and divide up the duties by the strengths of the family members. Having legal and financial help is critical.”