As a financial life planning firm to professional women, we find an increasing number of our clients becoming members of the “sandwich generation.” They are taking care of aging parents and adult children, while also trying to balance a career and personal life.  Their personal balance, relationships, and finances are being adversely affected.  So, we set out to learn more about this so we could provide solutions.

Let’s start with some interesting statistics from the Pew Research Center:

Did you know that 1 in 3 adults aged 25-34 yrs are now living with their parents? (up from 1 in 10 in 1980) And roughly one third of adults with a parent over 65 years old is providing financial support to that parent, support that tends to be ongoing.

The challenges to women who are sandwiched between adult children and aging parents has both financial and emotional costs to them. According to AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, financially, women stand to lose $324,044 in lifetime earnings and social security benefits by caring for both children and aging relatives. This is a result of lost earning power from taking time off work as a caregiver, pressure on financial resources to cover costs for others. Being a financial and emotional caregiver leads to less earning power, less retirement contributions, and lower social security payments in retirement. Women also tend to spend more money on others to the detriment of their own retirement.

But the costs are not just financial. In fact, the extreme stress of being a family caregiver can take as much as 20 years off a caregiver’s life. Notably, women tend to be the caregivers more often than men. Even though the challenge of helping both aging children and aging parents belongs to both men and women, women tend to have a larger financial and emotional hit.

What does this all mean to women of the sandwich generation?

It means that as a result of the pressure on them both financially and emotionally their quality of life is in jeopardy. But, with advanced planning and guidelines for both sides of the dilemma and the right support team, quality of life can be maintained.

Planning is critical during this sandwiched phase of life for quality of life. Here are four key steps to protecting your own future:

• Determine your own personal, professional, and financial goals and have a plan created for those
• Given your own goals, know what is available financially for support of others and create a plan for those
• Put together a great team of advisors who will collaborate with each other: wealth planner, estate planner, accountant, geriatric care manager
• Establish guidelines for both adult children and aging parents. Have them be part of the solution.

We found some excellent resources we’d recommend for helping you with managing adult children and aging parents. The Family Wealth Advisors Council put out a study called Women of Wealth. Caught in the Middle: How does the sandwich generation woman not get squeezed? By Sharen Allen, CFP® and Dennis Stearns, CFP® . This paper provides some excellent planning checklists on how to manage a household with both aging parents and adult children, and very important tips on how to take care of yourself as the provider and caregiver of others.  Some additional tips can be found in the article 4 Financial Tips for the Sandwich Generation.

A national study by Family Wealth Advisor’s Council on women’s financial needs says the single most significant transition challenge women will face in the coming years is having to take care of children and aging parents. Having a good, dynamic plan and strong support team can help you maintain, or regain, the quality of life you have worked so hard to create.

If you’d like referrals to any of our outstanding resources for executive women dealing with aging parents and adult children, please contact us.