DM is so frustrating with insurance renewals. HELP!!

Oh you are wrong. Many years of being my mother’s pa. Sorted her house move for her , sorted all my dad’s funeral , she’s coming round in 30 mins for me to do admin. I recognise therefore the annoyance.

Really I’m sure you do! I’m not having a go, I’ve been there. It’s hard.

I dont believe Torro has ANY idea about working with elderly parents. The vast majority of parents this age are not tech savvy and expect their children (often daughters!) to do all of the leg work. They might not have a PC or just dont understand what is required. They then take it out on the person who has done all the donkey work or pretend they understand what is going on when they dont.

I didnt put up with this sort of behaviour from either parent when they were alive. If they thought they could do a better job then they were most welcome to sort it out themselves.

They arent doing all the running around, getting quotes, speaking to companies etc.

Where would this lady be with the OP doing all the leg work??

Also, a few hundred for car insurance seems very very low for her age. Insurance has shot up recently. Have you had a recent quote?

A friend of mine had a Father who wouldnt use DD. He wanted his daughter to pay the bill - car insurance (until it got too expensive), gas bills etc and then he would give her a cheque! And not before he went through the bills with a microscope. On one ocassion he has an issue with his gas usage so demanded that she call British Gas before he would refund her.

For me its a question of boundaries. I will of course help and assist. Technology is tricky now but we are not slaves to our elderly parents. In the end my parents just left the whole thing to me. They didnt question anything and they knew I was looking after them and their interests. Yes, we did have the house insurance issue where they were paying stupid amounts because they stayed with the company for over 30 years. I showed them how I got it down to 20% of what they were paying and that seemed to be a turning point in them saying that they would just leave to me.

Now now, don't be an angry martyr. I think if you'd said at the beginning of your posts you have to do it all then that would have been different. If it was me and she had lots of spare savings and the ability but can't be arsed (I have one of those and it's very irritating) then I'd just say can't get it cheaper mum, let it auto renew and the direct debit will just keep coming out so no work for EasterRose - result!

If you feel you can't do that then you need to work on 1) not getting worked up when she wants a direct debit even though she is getting fleeced and 2) not reacting when she moans about cost of living crisis. Imagine she is an old woman at a bus stop moaning at you, you wouldn't care as you aren't emotionally invested, need to get into that state with your mum. Or, when she inevitably says col crisis, let it wash over you, don't counter with well if you weren't paying an extra x for direct debits etc etc. She may just like moaning because that is what everyone else is doing.

None of it easy but you are obviously very resentful you are doing it so either stop - she will find a way i can assure you or do the minimum or work on not reacting - as the slightly trite line goes - only person's behaviour/reactions you can control are your own.

What you owe for fuel is calculated on what you have used, if you’re not on DD you are billed at the end of the quarter on the basis of what you have used. So there’s an advantage to the company in moving people to DD. Whereas the default for the insurance company is to have the whole year up front.

I was talking about the annual/quarterly situation, you were talking about the monthly situation.

If at 87 she can get car insurance for a few hundred pounds she's doing g very well! It's not your money, and it's not a vast amount so you have to let it go.

My elderly DM spends her money 💰 n ways I certainly wouldn't, and is ridiculously frugale in other ways, but it doesn't affect me so I try to ignore it. You need to let it go.

I get frustrated too, OP. I hate having to such a lot, but not being allowed to do it the best way.

2 savings accounts
One for savings
And one called "yearly bills"

My DM is 94 and I have the opposite problem, she prefers to pay the yearly sum for insurance etc. Won’t have any monthly standing orders or direct debits coming out of her bank account “in case the money shouldn’t be there to cover it”. It would, she has sufficient but has a fear of being overdrawn at the bank. So she pays a higher rate for gas and electric as she is on a pay quarterly on receipt of bill tariff and it really annoys me that she won’t switch and save some money. I’ve decided that the most I can do now though is just to ask each time the bill comes is “ are you sure that you’d rather stick to paying this way when there’s a cheaper tariff?”. It’s frustrating to see extra money being handed out to these institutions but I feel that in old age, you do lose some of your autonomy as you become more dependent on people to help you. Almost like they need to dig their heels in when they can - just to show that they are still our parents and in charge!

Was she used to the really old way of paying for insurance where you paid weekly (or monthly?) and someone even came to the door for it?! If she grew up with that then it's difficult to get past the idea of that's how you pay for it and an annual sum must seem huge!

Would she go for an online account like Starling or Monzo where you can have lots of little savings pots for different expenses? You could then have one for 'insurance, one for 'car repairs', one for 'holidays' etc etc so she can see that she has the money set aside specifically for that thing.

It does sound frustrating. I get irritated by my parents who are normally financially astute (but anxious about money) parents, who are paying an absolute fortune for TV and internet, won't downgrade their package because they refuse to watch BBC or ITV news and won't consider switching because of the hassle.

Other way round really. Most people on DD are in advance with payments, especially over Summer when most will be in considerable credit in anticipation of the high usage winter months. Insurance is paid in arrears - if not paid monthly, it's due on the start date, so if paid monthly, you (or the insurance firm) take on credit.

I can fully get where the OP is coming from. My mother in law has tens of thousands in the bank (probably close to or just over £100k) yet inflicts a miserable austere life on herself and it's so annoying, especially as her sole topic of conversation is how badly done to she is, how she can't last the week on her state pension without scrimping/saving, etc (conveniently ignoring her ex husband's occupational pensions which are paid into a different account which she just adds to her savings!). Then whinging that her income is to high for pension credits. It's maddening.

Her latest wheeze is to keep cancelling newspapers. She used to have the paper delivered every day, but over the past couple of years, she's been knocking a day off every time something has gone up as she's obsessed with keeping the weekly paper bill at the same figure and refuses to pay more - she's now down to just 3 days per week and spends the other 4 days whingeing that she's bored and has nothing to read!

Some old folk have really weird ideas about money and just seem incapable of looking at the bigger picture nor changing what they do and how they do things.

Such as she still uses the same insurance firm she's been using for decades - I can see she's grossly overpaying for it as comparison sites with her details come out at about a third of the price she's paying, but she can't be bothered to change and won't let me/won't trust me to do it for her. Her garden is a right state because she "can't afford" a gardener, her curtains are threadbare because she "can't afford" new, she's just wearing the same clothes as 20 years ago. I think she's just read and watched too much news about "poor pensioners", the cost of living crisis, etc., and it's somehow turned her brain into believing it, when in reality, her income far exceeds her costs and she's loads of savings to fall back on if anything big needed to be done, i.e. replace the roof, etc.

I really despair. My own mother was very similar, salting away cash in numerous bank accounts and also around the house - after she died, we kept finding rolls of bank notes in the strangest of places, but she always maintained she couldn't afford this, couldn't afford that, etc. But at the same time, she kept saying things like "you'll appreciate me more when I'm gone". Very strange! We'd have appreciated her more if she'd have helped us out when we had genuinely no money ourselves and were living on credit card debt when we had our first child and made redundant, but all we got back then was "you should live within your means" and other unhelpful stealth boasts making out it was our fault, despite her having constantly whinged for years about wanting grandchildren and how awful it was that me and my brother had left it late to have kids (mostly because we had no money!! Doh!!).

Could you adjust the SO so that in the months leading up to the insurance renewals, less would go into the savings account, so that there would be enough left in the current account to pay the premium? Or would she spend it on something else?

It seems daft that insurance is cheaper paid annually, whereas the biggest fuel saving you can make is when you first move to monthly DD. Though I guess that’s because insurance is paid in advance and fuel in arrears.

They may well have been saving it for your DH. I’m very upset at the prospect of not being able to leave money for my DC and DGC. Bonkers to be wasting money on insurances, paying more than you need for fuel, but not bonkers to be abstemious in your own life for the benefit of the younger generations.

This.

She has decided how she wants to pay for insurance. That's her choice.

Thats definitely unusual! my car insurance was nearly £80 more!

I get it's frustrating OP but you've tried, she won't listen so not a lot more you can do unfortunately.

For goodness sake. The woman is clearly capable, she just has different priorities from you.

It's more important to her to have a regular budget every month, without the stress of having large bills come in annually. That's a fair point and she's clearly more comfortable with managing her monthly spend that way. It's not your money. You've explained that it costs more, but to her it's worth it not to have a big bill arrive through the door.

Given that you're talking about insurance bills, they're likely to auto-renew. Of course Martin Lewis will tell you that you should never do this. But she's 87 and her priorities are different. She's going to prefer having financial stuff going on in the background without her having to do anything that she finds stressful. Which might include having to deal with you telling her what she should do every time these bills land.

Well, had to delete my first words, as they were a bit strong.

Saw your thread title, assumed it was going to be a difficulty with an elderly person not keeping up, or being difficult about renewing insurance.

Cause that's definitely a thing, as ageing DPs become a bit forgetful or confused.
If that's not a problem you have to contend with, thank your lucky stars!

If it makes your DM feel happier to have insurance paid on a DD, BUTT OUT. It's her money, her life, at least this way if she gets ill or forgetful or confused, it's definitely paid.

Yes she could save a bit of money paying in one go, but if she chooses not to, she's an adult who has the right to make her own choices.Have some respect for that.

Do you often tell her what to do?