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Old steel filing cabinet with no lock. Mom likes cash in her purse and doesn’t seem very concerned about this issue. Suggestions?

Is your mother's keeping cash in her home your only concern?
If so, how much cash?
Is she able to keep track of her hiding places; at a certain point my brother was NOT.
What reason does your mother express for wanting this cash to hand?
How safe is your mother's home and does she live alone or with others?
How safe is her neighborhood and does she have caregivers or others coming and going?

There are many factors here.
Dependent on the AMOUNT then you simply do need to understand that that amount is at risk. My concern would be is MOTHER at risk. For instance is she paying for groceries, cleaners, caregivers in cash from a stash of cash that they witness. That's asking for trouble.

I think a lot of factors to weigh here.
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Reply to AlvaDeer
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As soon as my elders started showing signs of forgetfulness, confusion, paranoia I took pics of all their important documents with my phone. Then I renamed those files so I could find them easily eg: (SSN, or Life Ins Pol 2024) etc.

I bought my Mom a small fireproof safe (they come with 2 sets of keys) and she keeps it locked in her bedroom closet on a small rolling stool (they are heavy safes). This is to replace the steel filing cabinet.

You can put a credit freeze on her accounts (to prevent fraud and abuse). She doesn't need a credit score at her age anyway.

If she takes any opioids those need to be locked up when strangers come into the house.

You can let your Mom have a bunch of singles and a few $5s that you can replenish every week. But she should no longer have access to her debit card or her credit card. You can instead give her a pre-paid, refillable cc in lieu of cash. Make sure she only has the minimum amount of cash in her checking account. Most needs to be in a less accessible savings account or a different bank savings account altogether.

FYI while transitioning my Mom out of driving (at 95) and attempting to sell her car as her PoA she became angry and paranoid and hid the keys so well that it toook us months to find them. She also took her car title with her when she recently travelled out of state (or so she told me when I asked its whereabouts).., and I never found it again, along with her birth certificate.

You don't have to tell her you're taking those items to secure them. YOu can photo copy them and leave those with her while you hold the originals.

Also, I found a good passwork keeper is invaluable if it also allows you to store pdfs, jpgs, and other information as it is more easily searchable.
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Reply to Geaton777
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Fleur123, once my Dad''s caregiver noticed that when my Dad use to go out to get the mail, he would toss items into the recycling bill. Oops, that meant current bills but he would bring into the house the financial statements, open them up, and then just leave them about.


Since I was Dad's financial Power of Attorney, I slowly started to forward all the bills and financial statements to my address. Eventually Dad didn't even notice none of those things were coming to his house. Since he had 3-shifts of caregivers, all of whom were great, it was just a matter of privacy having those things forwarded to my house.


Oh, Dad kept his wallet with $20 and his credit card (which I had the bank set to a low max limit) in his desk. I was ok with that as I was checking on-line his credit card usage.
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Reply to freqflyer
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