Finances of Being Young with Older Parents
Hey everyone. I love this community and the diversity of thoughts here. I am in desperate need of feedback/thoughts/opinions, truly anything that can help give me insight on my situation. Longer post incoming
Background info: Essentially, my parents are older 57(f) and 69(m) respectively. I'm in my mid twenties. For most of my life my parents have never been good with money or had a lot of it. Unfortunately as they've aged they have only become poorer and poorer. They have gone from low middle class, to working class, to poverty. They have no house, no retirement, little savings, and currently survive off of my mom's low income job (I think she made 29k last year) and my dad's social security. He works as a commercial cleaner to make extra money but with his age, he can keep doing this for much longer. I have older siblings but to be fully transparent, my parents were not very involved in their lives when they were younger, so now the relationships between them are very different from traditional child/parent relationship. (Meaning financial help when my parents will need it the most is going to look very different than I think anyone is fully prepared for.)
Issue at hand: being in early to mid twenties and watching my parents struggle with their age, health, and financial situation has become an emotional burden that is becoming more immense as they age. I am not quite sure what there is for me to do here in terms of helping them. I have posted here before but long story short, I have EXTREME financial anxiety that I have been working on since I moved out at 18. I am now making decent salary, have fair savings, and a small amount of investments that I'm working on. I just do not have the emotional capacity to allocate money to help them out. I barely help myself out with my own money if I'm being fully honest. (Thank you intense scarcity mindset)
For those who can relate or have any advice for me, what would you do in the scenario. The harsh reality is that I know I'll never be in a position emotionally or financially to help them the ways that they truly need. There are other things I can do for them besides financial support, which I'm working on with them, but I'm here because I just don't see my scenario talked about much online, in media, or in research papers. Nada. What do those who have older parents in poverty truly do when they themselves are still only in the building phase?
Having poverty trauma while your parents are still in poverty has been the hardest thing I've experienced up until this point. Any words of wisdom or advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm planning to start therapy again soon because yikes. The guilt is immense.
Tl;dr: My parents live an impoverished lifestyle and will most likely stay that way for the rest of their lives, and I don't know what the best forward for myself is.