She Was Told ‘This Is Your Job.’ The Invisible Caregiving Crisis Draining Savings.

Kimberly Zimmerman Rand turned into a caregiver despite having no training in caregiving and not having a home suitable to accommodate a convalescing patient. Here is she at home in Boston. (Photograph by Simon Simard)

People in their 50s who end up leaving work to care for their parents often have a hard time saving enough for retirement.

Key Points

Caring for aging parents is disrupting the retirement savings plans of many people in their 50s, which is traditionally a peak earning decade.
An August Pew Research Center survey showed 45% of respondents in their 50s were caring for a living parent over age 65, up from 36% in 2021.
A 2025 Allianz Life survey showed 60% of Millennial and Gen X respondents caring for older parents did not expect or plan to support them.

Helping out mom and dad in their twilight years is a financial struggle for people in their 40s. It is even worse for people in their 50s.

Lory Frenkel, 50, of New Brunswick, N.J., knows full well. She began taking care of her mom a decade ago when she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. When mom died in 2021, her dad, Larry Frenkel, now 82, began having his own health issues, including having back surgery, and breaking bones three times. He now has dementia.

As her father’s health has worsened, Frenkel has had to do more and more to take care of him. “My dad’s needs at this point require a lot of flexibility on my part, which is not really compatible with full-time work,” she says.

Frenkel pieces together freelance editing jobs, working when her father is sleeping or during the two days when he is in adult daycare. She also uses his time in daycare to fit in errands and other tasks since he can’t be left unsupervised. In 2025, Lory Frenkel was laid off from her full-time job as an editor and estimates she now makes about 25% of that six-figure salary.

Between her dad’s pension and her slim earnings, the family just makes ends meet to cover basic expenses and the home mortgage, including the $100 a day for Larry Frenkel’s daycare. There’s no money left over for savings and Frenkel can’t focus on her own future.

Old 401(k) accounts are sitting at previous employers that she should consolidate. Even worse, she isn’t earning enough for her to contribute additional money to her retirement accounts. “It suddenly occurred to me I really should be paying more attention to that now,” she says. ”But I’m so consumed with not just managing all my dad’s health problems, but managing all of his finances.”

Many people view their 50s as their best chance to ramp up savings for retirement since traditionally the big-ticket expenses of kids’ education or house purchases are often easing, freeing up money. It is often when people hit their peak earnings as well.

Ending up as a caregiver can waylay their plans to turbocharge their savings. A 2025 Allianz Life Annual Retirement Survey of Millennial and Gen X respondents showed 60% of people surveyed who are caring for older parents didn’t expect or planned to support their parents by the time they reached their 50s. An August survey by the Pew Research Center showed 45% of those in their 50s surveyed were caring for a living parent over age 65 versus 36% in 2021, the last time Pew conducted this research.

The financial hit can be serious even if caregiving is only short lived. Kimberly Zimmerman Rand, a Boston-based financial planner, says she took off about three months from work this year after her mom, Carol Zimmerman, 82, fell twice in early 2026 at her home in Rhode Island.

At first Rand traveled between suburban Boston and Rhode Island nearly daily when her mom was in a rehabilitation center after fracturing her back. When her mother broke her hip during a second fall, Rand transferred her mom to Boston, which included another round of hospitalization and multiple rehab facilities.

Missing three months of work likely cost Rand about $25,000 in lost business. “As a self-employed person, you’re thinking about seeking out projects, cultivating new customers. I think I’m going to feel this into next year,” she says.

Rand with the binder she and her sister used to keep track of everything pertaining to their mother. (Photograph by Simon Simard)

Medicare covered most of her mom’s urgent medical needs, but Rand was forced to pay for rehab that was recommended but deemed not medically required. For two rehab centers in Rhode Island where her mom had physical and occupational therapy, Rand paid $400 a day out of pocket for a total of about four weeks. In suburban Boston, she paid more than $600 a day for three days of extra rehab while Rand and her husband scrambled to figure out a suitable place for Carol when the center was ready to send her into Rand’s care after Medicare stopped paying.

Twice Rand appealed to Medicare for additional care when she thought her mother was too fragile to be discharged from rehab, but both were denied.

Rand and her husband moved her mom from the last rehab center directly to an independent-living retirement community in Rhode Island, even though they weren’t sure her mom was fully ready. Her mom has mostly recovered from her injuries, and the community has assisted living and memory care if she needs it.

Rand calls herself “a little naive” in what she expected the healthcare system to do when it came to her mom’s care and how much medical professionals expected adult children to taken on these roles. Rand, who also has two college-aged teenagers, says she was shocked at the expectation she would pause her work and family responsibility to fill in caregiving gaps.

“(There was) the assumption that the adult daughter was going to stop everything and do whatever healthcare wasn’t going to take care of…From the beginning to the end of that three-month period, most people would say, ‘No, no, no, this is actually your job,’” she says. That was despite having no training in caregiving and not having a home suitable to accommodate a convalescing patient.

As a financial planner, Rand coaches clients to talk to their parents in advance about what happens when their health declines. But Rand found her own mother refused to have that conversation with her.

“In the back of my mind, I knew a crisis was going to precipitate all of these changes, and it did,” she says.

She still recommends having the conversations, but also acknowledging that your parents won’t want to do it. “Plan B (is) start figuring out how you’re going to do this without the plan,” she says.

Write to editors@barrons.com

参与讨论