Goss: Aging Americans need to have to have 'the talk'

Every day, 10,000 Americans turn age 65 and this trend will continue for the next 17 years. Persons over 65 currently make up 14 percent of our population, and growing. Do you have aging relatives? Are you concerned about their health, their finances or other facets of their lives? Have you talked with them about your concerns?

I have clients who are not retired, and clients who are retired, so I get to talk to people on both sides of this conversation. And what I have learned is that neither party wants to bring up these concerns. The adult children are afraid of offending their parents, and the parents are afraid of upsetting the adult children. And what about a conversation about final expense planning? Nobody wants to go there.

The problem is, we are all getting older, every day. Many of us will need care at some point in our lives, and all of us will die. It is the truth, and we need to face it. So, I hope you use this article and the resources below as an excuse to bring up these subjects. To help you, I have written a basic estate-planning guide and it is available free on our website. I don't care if you email it to people, print it out and make copies for relatives, etc. I want people to use it. Visit our website, www.retirerelax.com, and click on "My Life Book." This guide will walk you through the basic estate-planning steps that all of us must work through. I encourage you to place the pages in a binder so that statements and other documents can be easily added.

The book has the following sections: personal, legal, financial, property, long-term care and burial/cremation. For example, the legal section explains Wills, Powers of Attorney and Advance Directives. An Advance Directive is the document where you name a health care proxy, or someone to speak to medical providers on your behalf if you are no longer able. It also includes the Living Will, where you make decisions about end-of-life care. You can print the Georgia Advance Directive free of charge at www.caringinfo.org.

There is also a legacy section where I encourage people to write down important stories from their lives that they want to pass along to future generations. So, maybe you begin the conversation this holiday season by asking some of the legacy questions, which can be written down or recorded and shared. Or maybe you begin the conversation because you have real concerns about their health. There are many ways to get started and the time is now.

Sherri Goss is vice president of Rosenberg Financial Group Inc. with offices in Macon and Warner Robins. You can reach her by calling 922-8100, or via e-mail at sherri@rfmoney.com.

This story was originally published December 8, 2015 at 10:40 PM with the headline "Goss: Aging Americans need to have to have 'the talk' ."