Remember when adulthood seemed like it would eventually get easier?

You’d finish school, build a career, raise your kids, save for retirement, and someday enjoy the fruits of your labor. It sounded so organized. Instead, many people in their 40s, 50s, and early 60s find themselves living a very different reality.

One child needs help paying for college. Another just moved back home. Dad can’t remember whether he took his medication. Mom’s doctor wants to discuss assisted living. Work still expects you to answer emails. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, you’re supposed to remember your own annual physical.

Welcome to the Sandwich Generation.

It’s not exactly a club anyone signs up for.

Caring for Everyone Except Yourself

The Sandwich Generation is made up of adults who are simultaneously supporting aging parents and raising, or continuing to support, their own children.

But it doesn’t happen overnight. It starts with driving Mom to an appointment because she doesn’t like highway traffic anymore. Then you’re helping Dad sort through insurance paperwork.

Before long, you’re paying bills online for one parent, attending parent-teacher conferences for your own child, coordinating medical care, answering calls from siblings, and wondering how your weekends somehow became everyone else’s workdays.

It’s exhausting. And because it happens gradually, many caregivers don’t realize how much responsibility they’ve taken on until they’re already overwhelmed.

The Math Doesn’t Always Work

Time and energy are finite. Money is definitely finite. Yet the demands seem endless.

Many caregivers are trying to save for retirement while helping adult children launch their own lives and simultaneously paying for care, transportation, home modifications, or other expenses for aging parents.

Something usually gives. Too often, it’s the caregiver’s own financial future.

I’ve seen people postpone retirement, neglect their own health, or put off important legal planning because they were too busy taking care of everyone else. The irony is hard to ignore!

The people holding the family together are often the ones with the least amount of time to prepare for their own future.

You Don’t Have to Do Everything Alone

Some families assume caregiving is an all-or-nothing proposition. However, there are often resources available that families don’t realize exist.

Home health services, adult day programs, respite care, transportation assistance, support groups, and community organizations can all help lighten the load.

In some situations, a carefully drafted caregiver agreement (sometimes called a personal services contract) may even allow a family caregiver to be compensated for providing care. These agreements can be particularly important when Medicaid planning is part of the picture, but they need to be structured properly before money changes hands.

Asking for help isn’t giving up. It’s creating a plan that’s sustainable.

Estate Planning Isn’t Just for Your Parents

Here’s another irony: Many members of the Sandwich Generation spend months helping their parents update wills, trusts, and powers of attorney…

…while their own documents are ten or fifteen years out of date. Or they don’t have them at all. Life changes quickly during these years; between children becoming adults, marriages evolving, retirement accounts growing, homes bought and sold, parents passing away, and grandchildren arriving, you can see how your plan might deserve an update.

The estate plan you created when your youngest child was in kindergarten may not reflect your life today. And if you’re the person everyone else depends on, your family needs a plan for you just as much as you need one for your parents.

Give Yourself Permission to Plan

Here’s something I’ve learned after working with hundreds of families. The caregivers are usually the last people to ask for help.They’re so focused on solving everyone else’s problems that they convince themselves their own planning can wait until things “settle down.”

But life has a funny way of never settling down. There will always be another doctor’s appointment, another school event, another crisis to solve, another phone call to return. Planning isn’t one more item on your already impossible to-do list; it’s one of the few things that can actually make the rest of that list a little more manageable.