Review: How Not to Pull Your Life Apart Caregiving by Carroll Golden

“ You only have two choices when it comes to caregiving: plan or panic…The lack of a plan can tear a caregiver’s life apart…This book will help families overcome objections that relegate extended care planning to stressful crisis planning.” – p.3

As a leading expert and evangelist on the topic of Caregiving in the U.S. and the potentially devastating ramifications on a family’s finances and emotional cohesiveness, Carroll Golden’s latest book, How Not To Pull Your Life Apart Caregiving: overcome challenges and objections to planning conversations is an essential resource for every family to plan for an inevitable part of life.

Carroll Golden speaker , best-selling author , and Executive Director, NAIFA Centers of Excellence, including the Limited & Extended Care Planning Center , reveals in her book how it is painfully clear that many families and their financial advisors are unfamiliar with the evolving needs or personal dynamics involved in extended or long-term care until it is too late. Few participants involved in this highly charged process have the knowledge or experience to create an organized approach.

Within its pages, Golden intricately combines first-person narratives, family stories, her personal journey, and thorough investigative research to provide invaluable suggestions for surmounting the obstacles and objections often veiled by silence and resistance when planning for extended care.

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Golden Egg: Practical but flexible approaches to overcoming planning challenges and objections

“This book includes suggested responses to various challenges and objections that you may encounter. The suggestions constitute simple, practical responses that will help you to craft critical conversations so that you and someone you love are prepared instead of confused and panicked when extended care is needed.” - p.4

Golden explains how extended or long-term care is often a taboo subject that is rarely proactively broached early enough to prepare adequately. To a large degree that can be because she has seen the family strife and misplaced anger that can result in bringing up the topic. “Those brave enough to bring forward the need to plan are often met with abrupt or offensive refusals to share information.”

Written for caregivers - who will inevitably be many of us at some time in our lives - her book provides concrete solutions to the ever-troubling family dynamic surrounding caregiving. While a difficult conversation, it is the most important one that emotionally and financially affects every member of a family.

To help develop these vital discussions, the book provides examples, case studies, and tools for the conversations needed to gain a sense of control and direction. It guides you in how to start and maintain those necessary conversations.

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Gem #1 – The Three Step Roadmap

“Using a system or roadmap to guide the process is an effective approach to move the conversation from a discussion to an action plan. I want to share my three-step approach with you. It is flexible enough to be personalized, but well-organized to ensure an extended care plan emerges.” – p.3-4

Planning for future care is a complex challenge with many facets and competing priorities to consider. Golden’s three step roadmap offers an easy-to-follow strategy that gradually builds towards creating a personalized and stable long-term care plan.

Step one is the development of a Care Guide where the caregiver securely compiles important past and present information and documents on the loved one needing care.

Step two is assembling a Care Squad to expand the pool of support for the care recipient and caregiver.

Step three is designating the Care Planning Team that creates an inclusive education team to investigate the many options and resources that can fit different budgets, care needs, and living arrangements. The Appendix of the book is full of links, resources, and pertinent information to move these steps forward.

Through her three-step roadmap, Carroll provides insightful reasoning and measured steps that guide caregivers in navigating through critical conversations and options available for a loved one’s long-term care needs.

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Gem #2 – The Shadow Caregiving System and Economy

“In the U.S., caregivers account for more than ninety-five percent of informal care. I refer to it as the shadow caregiving system since it is not formerly organized or a government supported system. However, it is a very important and essential system.” – p.4

Most family members that are thrust into the role of caregiver have no real training or knowledge about the vast body of available support, services, options, and programs both private and public to help a loved one plan in advance, support them during, or deal with the crisis stage in their caregiving journey.

?Golden discusses and strategically compiles lists, resource links, funding sources, and planning options that are readily available.

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Final thoughts – Golden’s book is a thorough step-by-step guide for caregivers that literally gets to the heart of the matter - how to engage family members with effective and productive conversations essential to developing a long-term care plan. The book’s greatest value is in demonstrating how to craft and maintain those critical conversations needed.

Golden’s book is also an excellent resource for financial advisors and other trusted professionals in learning how to guide their clients through more comprehensive, holistic financial planning and financial wellness outcomes.

The book’s immeasurable value comes from Carroll Golden’s expertise on the topic of caregiving and her work at NAIFA that allows her to keep up-to-date on important legislation, proposals, studies, task forces, and initiatives that impact individual and family extended care planning. As she states, planning for extended care is not something you can just Google.

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