Your Parent's Money, and the Institutions

Harry Margolis practiced elder law in Massachusetts for decades and now writes a Substack and podcast about what he saw. He covers Medicaid, long-term care, the cost of it all, and the family fights, without the marketing gloss that law-firm blogs carry. It is the most useful independent voice we found on this subject. Read it before you sit down with an attorney; you will ask better questions.

Jonathan Clements wrote the personal-finance column at The Wall Street Journal for years and built HumbleDollar as the site he wished existed. He died in 2025, and the site carries on: readers write the essays, and many of them are about a parent's estate, a widow's first year, or Social Security timing. The newsletter is free. It treats money as a family matter, which is what it is.

A weekly blog from the retirement research center at Boston College, written for people rather than economists. The posts translate the center's research on Social Security, long-term care and retirement behavior into a page you can finish. It is where to check a claim you have heard about benefits before repeating it to a sibling. Free by email.

A national nonprofit with a free helpline and two newsletters: Medicare Watch for policy, Dear Marci for the questions people actually ask. If a parent's claim was denied or an enrollment window is closing, this is the clearest explanation of what to do that does not come from a company selling a plan. Sign up for Dear Marci and read the archive first.

Scam alerts, a helpline staffed by trained volunteers, and a podcast that walks through real cases one at a time. The podcast is the useful part for a family: hearing how a scam unfolded makes it easier to talk to a parent who does not want to believe it happened to them. No membership needed. Call the helpline before you call the bank; they will tell you what to say.

NCOA runs the BenefitsCheckUp tool and a plain guide to the scams that target older adults, from Medicare impostors to grandparent calls. It is worth one visit to see what benefits a parent may be missing, and one more when a suspicious call comes in. Institutional, but current.