As some families learn the hard way dementia can take a toll on financial health

I used to work for a computer repair company in the Sacramento area that had a dementia patient who'd call in every two weeks or so to have his computer reformatted. The company never intervened. They charged $200 a service. The technician who was sent out quickly realized what was happening and morally objected to it. The manager told him "its not his place to question operations" and they continued to do it indefinitely as far as I understood.

The company had serious issues. They offered financial incentives for reviews. The CEO asked people to clock out and continue to work. CEO also brought a roulette of scantily clad suspiciously young age girls into the office.

My mom, who currently has dementia, knew that she had a family history of Alzheimer's Disease, so she was able to plan her future. She took out long term care insurance twenty years ago, invested her money wisely while she was still in full control, and did a good job of estate planning and documenting most of her affairs. She did probably 90% of everything right.

The long term care insurance especially has been a godsend, since her memory care facility costs almost $8,000 a month. Even if she exhausts that benefit before she passes, we will have benefitted from several years of coverage for those payments.

Still, I face this Mother's Day in the U.S. with a mom who is mostly no longer there.

The number of scam or scam-adjacent calls my mother gets on her cellphone is unbelievable. Multiple a day, every day.