DM is so frustrating with insurance renewals. HELP!!

[EasterRose24]

My DM is 87 and lives alone. She still drives, and is generally in good health. She's also not in bad shape financially. She has a decent amount of savings. And her pensions easily cover her monthly outgoings. I set her up with a regular savings account from her current account, and each month money is paid into this account (over and above her lumpsum savings) for the purpose of paying larger bills.

Every May she get renewal notices for her car and home insurances. They are a few hundred pounds each. .

Every year at renewal time she tells me she wants to pay by direct debit because the insurance premium will leave her short for her regular monthly expenses from her current account.
I've explained over and over that paying this way is more expensive. By as much as £80 for both policies. Every year she gets all stroppy on me and says she doesn't care, she's rather pay by installments, because she doesn't want to be short in her current account.
I've explained she has a regular savings account for this purpose, and lump sum savings as well. She says she doesn't want to use her savings for insurance!!!

I've suggested she use the money saved and give it instead to a charity rather than to an insurance company. She just won't have it.

I know it's her money her choice, but my god I hate insurance renewals now with a vengeance!!!

How can I persuade her that insurance companies do not need her hard earned cash?

Bill £400
Pay from savings.
£80 saved - straight back ti savings.
Direct debt payment of £35 saved each month paid back into savings.
10 month later back to square one.
If she can't understand that she won't notice if you set it up for her.

And you save her money.

@TammyJones hat is so easily said and not so easily done, when you are doing admin for somebody who wants to be capable of doing these things, and who is dead set on being involved. I mean it's the obvious thing, right?

I think for @EasterRose24 and others this board is a place for expressing some frustrations and gathering a few ideas, but in the main we just want a little vent where it won't harm the people who we are helping.

And help them we do, with kindness and love, but many of us need somewhere to go (ie here) for a little rant from time to time.

I think when my DH is in the age group talked about and I'm only a few years younger, it's time for me to try to keep out of these conversations, and try to stick to purely factual stuff.

Unfortunately I think you need to let this one go.
We have actually taken over all insurance renewals from our elderly parent, mainly as she doesn't have an email address but the whole concept of insurance price checking etc. was just proving too much.
All the best.

@MereDintofPandiculation I think you have raised some good points. Have you read the books by Wendy Mitchell? She has recently passed away but was a campaigner for dementia awareness. Her book 'What I Wish People Knew About Dementia' covers a lot about her desire to remain as independent as possible, despite the risks.
Her books and another by Nicci Gerrard 'What Dementia Teaches Us About Love' have informed the way I try to treat my mother, despite the niggles and frustrations I feel at times 💐

I think some of the comments on this thread are so sad. So many people seem to be completely lacking in any sort of empathy or understanding for their parents when they get older. I know that some people don't keep in contact with their parents for various reasons, but surely if you DO have a good relationship with your parents, you try to understand the difficulties of ageing and put yourself out to help them without being so critical of them not using technology, not wanting to change insurance providers, and how they spend their money?

My mum died when she was 95 and needed quite a lot of support in her later years, especially as dementia took hold, but I would never have dreamt of criticising her for not wanting to change the way she paid for her bills, or complaining when she gave me a list of little things that needed doing when I went to see her. People do need extra help as they get older, and empathy as well, and I always told her to leave things for me to sort when I visited. It's not nice to have to accept that you are ageing and can't do the things you used to do,, and my Mum found it so hard when she had trouble doing simple things like changing a lightbulb. It broke her heart when she had to give up driving at 91, and when she could no longer manage her garden, which had previously won awards. I did what I could to keep it under control, and found a lovely gardener for her, but she hated it because she felt that she had lost another major part of her life. My mum was never aware of much of the cleaning that I did when her eyesight declined and she couldn't see that her kitchen was filthy, and I could never have hurt her feelings by letting her realise how bad things were getting. I did find it frustrating that my Mum didn't spend enough of her money on herself, but it would never have occurred to me to try to organise how she used her money and I just kept a discrete eye on her bills and made sure everything was paid when it needed to be. At the end of the day, she was my Mum, and had devoted a large proportion of her life looking after me, and she deserved my support, empathy, and above all kindness in her declining years.

@Growlybear83 I don't think it's as simple as that for a lot of us though. It's not just a case of working our way willingly through a list of small jobs. A lot of those jobs have escalated (because they've ignored our advice), could be done by someone else (but they don't want to "put someone out" or pay for it) or could be done a different way that is easier, more efficient etc (but they won't hear of it). And we realistically can't manage all of it because of our other time commitments like work and children.

I'm not close to mine (literally in distance terms and in terms of relationship!) but she has entirely unrealistic expectations of what I can do for her versus what is available and could be done by other people!

One example is that she wanted to clear out some household china type items and wanted to sell them on eBay rather than donate to a charity shop. She doesn't use eBay herself and isn't a confident computer user. She asked a local company that would sell on eBay for a fee but refused to go ahead as she thought they were over-charging. She had no idea of the amount of time that would go into taking photos, writing descriptions, eBay seller fees, packaging of breakables and taking to the Post Office. Then she was annoyed when I refused to do it. But I really didn't have time! So it's all still sat in her house.

@EmotionalBlackmail Yes I understand that, and like many people, I was working full time, had a family when my mum was older, and whilst I didn't live a very long way away, it was still an hour's drive each way most of the time. My Mum could be as frustrating as anyone else's, and didn't understand any sort of technology in her later years. I expect that she would have felt the same as your mum with the eBay example. Although my Mum did use a laptop for a couple of years, she repeatedly got herself into trouble signing up for different offers and scams, which took many many hours for me to sort out. I was very relieved when her laptop broke! But my main point in my previous post was my sadness at the huge lack of empathy, understanding, compassion, and respect for older people that has been shown by so many people on this thread. It's not easy to accept that you're getting older and declining in so many ways, and it can be quite demeaning and intimidating for an elderly parent to have their children trying to push them into doing things they don't want or may not fully understand.

She asked a local company that would sell on eBay for a fee Oh, thanks! I didnt know such things existed!