By Sarah Boden, WESA,
KFF Health News
Angela Reynolds knew her mother’s memory was slipping, but she didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until she started to untangle her Mom’s finances: unpaid bills, unusual cash withdrawals and the discovery that, oddly, the mortgage on the family home had been refinanced at a higher interest rate.
Looking back, Reynolds realizes her mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease: “By the time we caught on, it was too late.”
Reynolds and her mother are among a large group of Americans grappling with the financial consequences of cognitive decline.
A growing body of research shows money problems are a possible warning sign — rather than only a product — of certain neurological disorders. This includes a 2020 study from Johns Hopkins University of more than 81,000 Medicare beneficiaries that found people with Alzheimer’s and related dementias became more likely to miss bill payments up to six years before a formal diagnosis.
The reach of these conditions is enormous. One recent study found nearly 10% of people over age 65 have dementia; more than twice as many are living with mild cognitive impairment.
Missing the signs of declining cognition
One weekday in the spring of 2018, Reynolds sat next to her 77-year-old mother, Jonnie Lewis-Thorpe, in a courtroom in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. She listened in discomfort as strangers revealed intimate details of their own finances in a room full of people waiting their turn to come before the judge.
Then it hit her: “Wait a second. We’re going to have to go up there, and someone’s going to be listening to us.”
That’s because the family home was in foreclosure.
The daughter hoped if she explained to the judge that her mother had Alzheimer’s disease, which had caused a series of financial missteps, she could stop the seizure of the property.
Reynolds can’t pinpoint when Alzheimer’s crept into her mother’s life. A widow,…
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