I'm an only child and live about 4 hours away from my dad who needs help with his finances. How do I get his invoices sent to my house?

You can setup almost 100% of banking and bills online. Setup one email account for just this purpose so that you don’t miss anything. Don’t us it for anything else to try to keep out spam. I use autopay for all recurring type of bills with predictable balances. I use my credit card to pay everything I can as I don’t like having my bank account info out there and to get the cash back perks. Try to use as few accounts as possible to help you keep up with the accounting side. If you use quicken or similar product you can download your statements so you don’t have to type it all in. Reconcile your bank account every month. People usually get in trouble when they skip a few months and then can’t find the difference. Keep your receipts and your done.

With Alzheimer's/dementia at play and progressing, and you as POA and only child, you're going to have a lot on your hands to deal with coming up. The finances are the first thing he'll need help with, and the list will begin growing very large from there as he loses more of his faculties.

Please pick up a copy of the book, Understanding the Dementia Experience by Jennifer Ghent Fuller. She'll explain in detail and plain English what dad is going thru and what the future looks like. She's got great tips to help you deal with his deficits, too.

Then make an appointment with a Certified Elder Care attorney to help you get all your legal ducks in a row. Get info about selling the farm when he needs care and how to go about paying for that care, in home or in Memory Care Assisted Living if need be. Be prepared.

You can also hire an Occupational therapist to evaluate dad's home environment and recommend safety measures to institute for his protection. It's never too soon to do that once dementia is underway.

Wishing you the best of luck.

I didn't think about having them send it to my email address. He had Cataracts surgery this year and they send that information to our joint email address.
My Mom would have probably set up the credit cards long ago. They don't have anything online. I'll check into this.

Your Dad can make you POA for finances. Watch what you wish for. This is difficult and you are accountable legally for every penny in and every penny out of his finances when you do this. It is like taking on another YOU but more difficult as you will need files and accounting and if Dad also wants his own spending account of some amount that complicates it. My advice do this now while he is able go to an attorney and then you are stuck with going to every entity one at a time and presenting you papers. This includes his insurance and supplemental, all his bills coming to your house, and I personally was on the phone an entire day with Spectrum Phone Company when they mistakenly turned off my bro's phone instead of the phone of the woman in another unit. You will be going to each bank, you will need to learn the correct way to sign all checks with your Dad's name, followed by yours with the words as POA. Again, be certain this is what you want and that after ALL THAT WORK (it will take a solid year to set everything up, more difficult in that you aren't in same town) your Dad won't, if he is competent, say he wants it all back around the other way. I would never do this again for anyone, but felt beholden to do it for my bro when he recevied a dx of early Lewy's dementia. He wanted to be safe. He was agreeable and he was well organized and everything was already well organized. I never could have done it otherwise. You might be more wise to send Dad to a Licensed Fiduciary. An attorney can help you find one in your area as they are assigned by courts all the time for folks without families.

I’m a big fan all accounts billed to the same credit card and the credit card paid on autopay once a month. Our credit card gives a certain percentage back, so that’s a nice perk because we’re not paying full price for things.

Marcia22, I had to do that with my Dad when I found out he was tossing bills into the recycling and not paying them.

It was so easy to change the address. I would just go into the various billing accounts, set up on-line viewing and changed over to my address as the "billing address" which would be different from "service address" for utilities.

I would pay by using Dad's checks, we had it set up with the bank where I could be a signature on his checking account. It would be easier to do you set up a time to visit your Dad, and the both of you go to the bank. If you are Dad's Power of Attorney, that would be even better, as the bank will scan the POA into their files.

When a bill came in, I would write a check and make a copy of the check to attach it to the invoice. Have to keep good records in case in the future your Dad need to apply for Medicaid [which is different from Medicare].

Or you can set up auto-pay where payments are placed on one of Dad's credit cards, and then all those auto-pay are paid via one check or payment could be pulled from Dad's checking or savings account. It all depends on what you are comfortable with doing.

It's not unusual to run into snags trying to set up on-line banking. I've been trying for months to set up a checking account that I have had for decades, but the software kept trying to give me a brand new checking account which I didn't want. Even going to the bank face to face with a bank rep didn't help.... [sigh].

If you are talking about his bills like utilities, credit card, insurance, mortgage, etc. the easiest thing to do is have everything on bank autopay.

Then if necessary, you can have all his mail go to your home by going online and having his forwarded to your home. Or, set up a PO box at your local Post Office and have it sent there. You can't really officially change the addresses on certain bills without a problem (like utilities) so I don't see any other way of doing this. Many will offer paperless billing so won't need to be mailed at all. I hardly get any paper bills anymore. Just make sure you have a solid password keeping app.

Then, if I were you I'd remove all blank checks and checkbooks from his home. When we first discovered that my MIL was having memory issues, we found boxes and boxes and boxes of checkbooks she had ordered because she didn't remember where she'd put them. She didn't have anything written in any of the multiple check registers she had started so she had over $900 of overdraft charges.

Consider removing his existing credit cards. You can give him a pre-paid, reloadable cc so he can do some shoppinig of his own, but no debit card unless the connected account has very little money in it. Scammers and phishers are a big concern with the elderly -- even for our LOs who would "never" fall for such things in prior years.

To prevent future problems you should legally be his FPoA. Do this before he is beyond being cognitively or physically capable. You will need it for any investments he has.

If he has not set up on line accounts you can do so and set them up yourself. You will need to know the security questions and answers. (but you can answer almost any question with something you would know.)
You will have to have access to his bank account(s)
You can have all the bills sent to your email address.
You should have POA for his finances to do this properly.
Almost all bills can be done "auto pay" if you want where it is direct debited or you can have a credit card that all bills are paid that way automatically and then you pay the credit card. You can monitor the accounts both from the card and from the on line statements. (some companies are charging a fee for the credit card charge though so ask about that)