What can I do if my parents refuse to take ownership of their finances?

Most of the comments seems to be in the same shoe. Looks like this really is an Asian culture as I am too in the same shoe.

Finance topics is taboo. Talking about money seems to be cutting off ties. I approached this topic by highlighting to my parents that in their generation they
1) Have an average shorter lifespan
2) Have more siblings to spread the load around. Aka their eggs are not all in one basket. Whereas with LKY's stop at two policy, most people have lesser children as compared to their parents. Hence, higher concentration risk of getting into trouble.

Not a nice topic to talk to as it tends to bounce around to and fro a bit.

I do not want to profess that I have solved this dilemma, I don't think I have, but I do understand the problem.

What I find useful is topping up their CPF, as it helps to fund Medisave and indirectly their Medishield. Whatever it is, make sure they have hospitalization plans.

They may be reluctant to get life and illness plans due to taboo or general stigma towards the insurance industry.

Pay for the hospital plans if needed since a portion of it can be deducted from Medisave. At their age, they should have some top ups from government into Medisave.

Those top ups saved me a six figure sum through Medishield.

I guess, as children, we are expected to provide them some living expenses, I do that with my sister. But I enticed my parents to top up to Basic Retirement Sum due to the 6% interest from CPF, I kept comparing 6% to the FD rate.

Since they can start withdrawing at 65 years old, although reluctant, it worked to a certain extent as my parents were willing to part with some cash to top up CPF, these payouts at Basic Retirement Sum are not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but money is still money.

Many people can do much more foolish things than putting in CPF which is the basic safety net.

I also felt that HDB's lease buyback scheme is suitable for them, helps to top up their CPF and increase the payout. If not you have to go down the typical downgrade-by-selling-HDB-then-top-up-CPF route.

Certain elders do not like topping up CPF and rather hold cash, but as mentioned there are a lot of things that people can do that are worst off than putting into CPF. The lease buyback scheme is a good one. FYI, the value of the house is determined via market price, you probably will get a quote from HDB that is slightly below market price, but, with housing prices rather high now, why not?

Think of it as paying for a house but then you get both the house and retirement income.

Just don't financially over-stretch yourself because of them. We are all adults already.

Going to continue following this thread. Big societal and family question with no easy solution.

Hi, I'm in a similar sitiuations. My parents are much older, they are not well educated, do not have CPF & insurance, and they are staying in a country without good policies to taking care of elderly. They have even retired when I was still in Uni. Luckily I had the help of scholarships on tuition fee, still I was so busy with part time jobs on top of the hectic student life (which I kind of regretted because I missed a lot of fun in uni).

As soon as I got my first salary payout, I started to give them allowance monthly. Seeing how they saved up to bring up me, I'm trying to give them the life they had not had in the past years.

And thanks to the opinions above, I'm thinking to even setting a saving account/ fund to help them grow their money.

Let's work on this together! All the best!​​​