The complexities faced by sandwich generation clients

The term “sandwich generation” sounds cute and benign, as if you are resting comfortably between parents who are sturdy on their own and kids who gently need you, with everyone joined together in a cohesive whole. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, with your kids self-sustaining and parents needing a little assistance.

Regardless: Families and their emotions are complex, and the situations that financial advisors observe when sandwich-generation clients need help are hardly simple.

Like the granddaughter who was taking care of her grandparents, particularly her grandmother, because her parents lived hundreds of miles away. Without access to her elders’ money, she was spending a lot of her own doing her grandmother’s shopping, and her parents had no idea. In fact,  she asked Colin Parkin, Dip FA, CeMap, to talk to her parents for her.

“They were horrified when I brought to their attention what their daughter had been doing, and that she didn’t feel like she could tell them,” said Parkin, a 40-year MDRT member from Lincoln, England, who then put a process in place to financially support the granddaughter’s expenses. “They thanked me for my help and said they never would have gotten this sorted out because they didn’t even know this was going on.”

Read more tips about working with sandwich generation clients in the July/August cover story of Round the Table.

Written by Matt Pais, MDRT Content Specialist