The Parent Care Conversation is wealth advisory firm owner, Dan Taylor’s practical, how-to guide that can help readers help their parents think, communicate, and take action before they are no longer able to be responsible for themselves.

Dan Tayor, Penguin Group, 2006

Taylor urges Boomers to ease into a series of discussions by talking with parents in abstract terms about the big picture of eldercare – as if the time to get down to brass tacks and actually start making plans to confront the issue were years away.

To guide these conversations, he developed the CARE “hear and now” listening system to help address the emotionally loaded and financially critical challenges of talking with aging parents about the future. Using Taylor’s CARE model, a big picture conversation might unfold something like this:

• Challenges – Mom and Dad, let’s look down the road. If a time comes when you need some help, what are some of the biggest challenges you think you might face?
• Alternatives – Mom and Dad, let’s discuss some of the options that you think might be available to you in handling the challenges you’ve talked about.
• Resources – Mom and Dad, let’s think of some resources that you are already familiar with that we could use to help take advantage of the options you’ve talked about and minimize the challenges you’ve talked about.
• Experience – Mom and Dad, imagine the long-term care experience you would ideally like to create for yourselves. Tell me what that experience would look like.

The book goes on to describe how you can us the CARE model to help parents plan for how they wish to handle money, personal property, the family home, professional care, and their legacy.