Angela Reynolds knew her mother\u2019s memory was slipping, but she didn\u2019t realize how bad things had gotten until she started to untangle her mom\u2019s finances: unpaid bills, unusual cash withdrawals, and the discovery that, oddly, the mortgage on the family home had been refinanced at a higher interest rate.<\/p>\n

Looking back, Reynolds realizes her mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer\u2019s disease: \u201cBy the time we caught on, it was too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reynolds and her mother are among a large group of Americans grappling with the financial consequences of cognitive decline.<\/p>\n

A growing body<\/a> of research<\/a> shows money problems<\/a> are a possible warning sign \u2014 rather than only a product \u2014 of certain neurological disorders. This includes a 2020 study from Johns Hopkins University<\/a> of more than 81,000 Medicare beneficiaries that found people with Alzheimer\u2019s and related dementias became more likely to miss bill payments up to six years before a formal diagnosis.<\/p>\n

The reach of these conditions is enormous. One recent study<\/a> found nearly 10% of people over age 65 have dementia; more than twice as many are living with mild cognitive impairment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Missing the Signs of Declining Cognition<\/strong><\/p>\n

One weekday in the spring of 2018, Reynolds sat next to her 77-year-old mother, Jonnie Lewis-Thorpe, in a courtroom in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. She listened in discomfort as strangers revealed intimate details of their own finances in a room full of people waiting their turn to come before the judge.<\/p>\n

Then it hit her: \u201cWait a second. We\u2019re going to have to go up there, and someone\u2019s going to be listening to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the family home was in foreclosure. The daughter hoped if she explained to the judge that her mother had Alzheimer\u2019s disease, which had caused a series of financial missteps, she could stop the seizure of the property.<\/p>\n

Reynolds can\u2019t pinpoint when Alzheimer\u2019s crept into her mother\u2019s life. A widow, Lewis-Thorpe had lived alone for several years and had made arrangements for her aging, including naming Reynolds her power-of-attorney agent. But Reynolds lived a 450-mile drive away from New Haven, in Pittsburgh, and wasn\u2019t there to see her mom\u2019s incremental decline.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until Reynolds began reviewing her mother\u2019s bank statements that she realized Lewis-Thorpe \u2014 once a hospital administrator \u2014 had long been in the grip of the disease.<\/p>\n

Financial problems are a common reason family members bring their loved ones to the office of Robin Hilsabeck<\/a>, a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School who specializes in cognitive issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe brain is really a network, and there are certain parts of the brain that are more involved with certain functions,\u201d said Hilsabeck. \u201cYou can have a failure in something like financial abilities for lots of reasons caused by different parts of the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the reasons are due to normal aging, as Reynolds had assumed about her mother. But when a person\u2019s cognition begins to decline, the problems can grow exponentially.<\/p>\n