It seems that at least once a week I hear of some elderly person who is attacked and robbed in their own home with the thieves reportedly stealing their life savings.
Do elderly people really keep all their money under the matress or in some other insecure place? Why don’t they keep their money in the bank like most other people, leaving only a small amount in their homes to pay the milkman/window cleaner and other miscellaneous costs?
There will almost certainly be an ATM machine at or near the places they go shopping so as far as I can see there is no need to keep your life savings in cash at home.
So what’s the SD, why don’t elderly people use bank accounts like the rest of us?
P.S. I know it is a generalisation to say that all elderly people do this so i’m not looking for anecdotal evidence about what your grand parents do
I’m not sure there’s a GQ answer to this question, since every case is different.
My mother was born in 1926, and is nearly 80 years old. She still remembers her experiences as a very young child in the Great Depression, when banks failed. People that had calmly put their money in banks, as you advise in the OP, lost their money when the bank collapsed.
I suspect that if someone went through such an experience, they might be less inclined to trust that banks are the safe way to go.
I believe that they do keep their savings in the bank. But elderly people seem to be susceptable to scamsters who either get the elderly people to give them money, or fraudulently obtain access to the bank account.
The thought had occured that it may be something to do with banks being less than reliable and stable in the past but I thought that the intervening period was long enough to allay any fears of it happening again (unless you live in Argentina).
I understand your point about scam artists Johnny L.A. but the cases i’m talking about involve masked men breaking into the home, (or forcing the door open when it is put on the chain), assaulting the elderly person who can put up no resistance and then leaving shortly after with the life savings. The only way they could do this is if all the money was being stored somewhere in the home.
I think we should keep in mind that probably in a lot of these cases, the robbers have gone to that house precisely because they heard that the victims kept all their money at home – that is, the news reports aren’t giving a representative sample of the elderly population.
Of course this is possible, stories of the elderly being robbed and a smaller amount of money being taken are unlikely to make the news compared to the sob-story of someone having their life savings taken. However, I have never heard of a younger person being robbed of their life savings so can only assume it is a practice exclusive to the elderly.
Your point further confuses the question of the safety of the money. If indeed the reason for storing the money in cash at home is one of mistrust of the banks and the feeling that the money is safer at home, then how many more of these cases must there be before those who do it to realise, “hey wait, what if keeping my money at home is actually attracting burglars and putting my money at incredibly high risk”.
My parents are also elderly. Until very recently they were afraid to use an ATM. My sister finally got them to start using them. They don’t use computers either. Advanced tech scares them. However they do keep their money in a bank nonetheless.
So fear of tech may be a somewhat universal obstacle to ATM’s for the elderly.
Well, if you’re basing your fear on an event like the Great Depression, then you probably view banks as much riskier - if a bank fails it affects every single one of its customers. The chances of it being them that is the victim of a random burglary probably seem much lower to them.
My mom likes to keep significant stashes of cash onhand. It makes her feel financially secure, sort of like Scrooge McDuck swimming through his vault. Also, she trusts banks just fine, she just doesn’t like ATMs very much. Why? Well, I don’t see her riding around on inline skates listening to an ipod, either. She’s just not much for the fads that these kids are into nowadays.
Here’s another agreement with the Great Depression holdover theory.
In addition, it might be useful to look at where the robberies are taking place. My grandparents (who did this) lived out in the middle of the woods in Michigan. The nearest bank was 20+ miles away. So not only did they have memories of banks as unsafe institutions, they also had no easy access to ATMs or banks.
Yeah, but that still doesn’t explain keeping one’s life savings in a mayonnaise jar under the bed. If there’s no bank nearby, there probably isn’t much of anything nearby. It’s not like they need thousands of dollars on hand to do the weekly grocery shopping.
Yeah, unless you did live during the Great Depression, as I did, itis impossible to understand the mark it left on you. It went from 1929 until just before WWII started (when the Defense industry started making jobs), a very long time to be hungry and scared.
As one comedian said, “I don’t care how successful and wealthy you become, if you grow up poor, you still go through the house turning off the lights.”
As someone with four living grandparents, all in their eighties, all of whom use banks (and even email!), I have to ask about this mistrust of banks on the part of the elderly. Everyone here has pointed out the depression. But immediately afterward, laws were passed that federally insured all the banks. Every major bank in the country today is FDIC insured, up to $100,000. So, are many old people unaware of this change in the law? Distrustful that the law will really work? Unable to change their behavior despite changed circumstances? Is this something peculiar to the generation, or will I be doing this in 50 years?
I realize this this hedging into GD/ IMHO territory, but I’m genuinely curious. As I said, none of the older people with whom I’m most familiar behave this way. And, as a general rule, people are able to process new information and changed situations and modify their behavior accordingly. When I lived in a high crime area, I religiously put the Club on my car every time I parked it, even if just for a minute. I no longer do this, because I no longer live in an area in which my car is likely to be stolen. It seems as though distrust of banks should similarly evaporate given changed circumstances, but in a significant number of people, it has not.
Any indication of whether the tendancy of old people to get ripped off in this manner is related to sex in addition to age? I ask because traditionally the men have run all of the household finances, and when they die off, you have an old woman that knows nothing and therefore just tends to do what she knows how to do – hide it in a mayonaise jar.
Some or most of those cases in this area (South San Francisco Bay Area) involve Vietnamese or other immigrant victims. That’s a different category than Americans who grew up during the Depression; they would have their own sources of lack of confidence.
And the victims may very well be targeted as being rumored to have money and to keep it in their homes.
So what would be the reason for people in the U.K. mistrusting banks? Has there ever been a time in the past when money in bank accounts was lost on a large scale?
From doing a bit more research it seems that those amongst the elderly who don’t use banks have always been on low-income and have never really had need of a bank account, as soon as they get the money they need to spend it and never had any left at the end of the month to save. So it just became a habit that they kept all their money in cash. Another reason offered up is that people feel banks and building societies wouldn’t let them open accounts with such small amounts of money and that bank accounts were only opened for people with lots of money, perhaps they would feel embarrassed and like they were wasting the banks time if they asked to open account with £20.
When we were moving house we stayed for a few days in a hotel while we sorted beds etc in the new place. The manager of the hotel chatted to us for the few nights were there from time to time and revealed something between a fear and hatred of banks, he was only in his 40s too.
It doesn’t necessarily take something like the Depression to induce distrust of certain institutions it would seem.
My grandmother lives on an old age pension and various disability benefits, as she is blind, a cancer sufferer and 90 years old.
She does not go out much any more, so her helper cashes her checks and gives her the cash to pay her cleaner, home help (she still lives alone and is fairly independent -adamant that she won’t go into a home!) and buy groceries once a week on the pensioner’s bus outing to a big supermarket in the area.
Apart from the home carers who of course charge the standard rate, she lives very frugally (depression survivor!) Every month she end up with a surplus, which if she banks may build up and trigger a reduction in her benefits. She is worried that if this happens and she suddenly needs a higher level of help, or has to go into a home, she will be unable to pay. So she keeps the excess in her house, and slowly but surely it builds up. A few years ago, she surprised her kids by calling them all to her house, and handing an envelope over, containing enough money to pay for her funeral! Luckily she hasn’t needed it yet, nor does she show any signs of doing so.
