As your parents grow older, you may worry about them for various reasons, including their health and finances. If you have an aging parent living alone, they can be vulnerable to many things, including financial exploitation, so consider these 3 Ways to Protect Senior Citizens from Financial Exploitation.
3 Ways to Protect Senior Citizens from Financial Exploitation
While senior citizens are easy targets for scammers, financial exploitation is usually perpetrated by people close to the victim. According to a recent study, millions of aging adults are subjected to financial exploitation yearly, resulting in significant losses worth billions of dollars.
Sadly, most of these cases go under the radar, unreported. It’s vital to be vigilant against such incidents. Are you wondering how to protect your aging loved one from financial exploitation? You can do so using the tips below.
Delegate financial power of attorney to someone you can trust.
It’s easy for a senior citizen incapacitated to delegate financial power of attorney to a caregiver to make it easy to pay bills, cover mediation costs, etc. While there’s nothing wrong with this, choosing someone trustworthy to oversee your finances is important.
Of course, everyone can make mistakes when judging character, so consider putting some control measures in place. For example, you can invest a power of attorney in two people. This way, they’ll hold each other accountable.
You can also speak with a trust litigation attorney specializing in the power of attorney abuses and embezzlements should the worst happen. Suppose you or your aging loved one resides in and around Los Angeles and you suspect any form of financial exploitation. In that case, you could find a trust litigation attorney in Los Angeles if you suspect financial exploitation.
Find a service that allows you to track credit card usage, bank accounts, and investments.
You can find various tech tools designed to help you track and detect any suspicious activity on your credit card, bank account, investments, etc., which can notify you immediately.
Such tech tools can monitor spending or withdrawal patterns and missing deposit changes. They can also track recipients of unauthorized transfers and help you recover your losses.
You or your aging loved one can also consider speaking with your bank or credit card company to seek phone confirmations before processing transactions beyond a certain amount.
Remind your aging loved one not to share personal details.
Aging loved ones can forget things quickly, so you need to remind them not to share personal information with anyone. Due to forgetfulness, some senior citizens may prefer to write down personal info like bank details, social security information, etc., in places they can find easily.
Some may even choose to save such information on their phones. However, this information can easily fall into the wrong hands.
Also, it would help if you reminded them not to give their Medicare, credit card, bank account, social security, or PINs to anyone over the phone, regardless of where the person is calling from.
One of the simplest tricks fraud callers use is to pretend they are calling from a reputable company and ask to take their victims through a series of self-help processes requiring them to disclose personal financial details.
Also, staying in constant touch with your aging loved one is best. This way, social isolation will not push them to seek companionships with strangers online.
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