Our parents aren't out of money; They're out of time, but their brain hasn't noticed it
Last Update Date: 05-10-2026
Published by freefincal
Abhishek Kumar's role: Wrote this article
Abhishek Kumar wrote this guest post for freefincal, drawing on a review of a 75-year-old's finances to describe what he calls a switch failure, and how families can help parents spend on their own comfort.
What Abhishek Kumar said
What do you mean by a 'switch failure' in retired parents?
It is having the money but having lost the ability to spend it. Our parents grew up when money was scarce and time felt endless, so every instinct was tuned to protect rupees and spend years: wait for the scooter, repair rather than replace, save for a wedding decades away. Solve that equation for forty years and it becomes who they are. Then, in their sixties, the terms flip without warning — the corpus is large, the loan is cleared, the children are fine — but nobody tells the brain, so they keep hoarding what they have plenty of and burning what they are running out of.
How does this habit actually harm a comfortable retiree?
In ways that cost far more than money. I have seen parents live only on interest and treat the principal as untouchable while inflation erodes it anyway; put off a knee operation for a couple of years while shopping for a cheaper hospital, and lose that mobility in the bargain; take an overnight train at seventy because a flight felt indulgent. Sarees with the tags still attached and gold that never left the vault end up as a figure on an heir's screen, while the people it was meant for spent their last good decade living like ascetics.
How can I help my parents start spending on themselves?
Not by lecturing; telling a seventy-year-old they cannot take it with them attacks forty years of identity and produces defensiveness. I suggest three moves. Carve out a named 'joy fund', perhaps a tenth of their liquid wealth, with one rule: it can only be spent on comfort, never reinvested or left to anyone. Say out loud that you would rather inherit the memory of them happy than a bigger balance. And reframe comfort as a health expense — the air-conditioner in a heatwave, the cab, the good mattress are ways of staying out of hospital.
Were my parents wrong to save so hard all those years?
No. Money is stored human energy, and converting time, health and effort into rupees made sense when they had years in hand and little in the bank. Saving was always meant to be spent eventually, and for them eventually is now: this is the decade in which their knees can still manage the temple steps and they still have an appetite for a good meal. Stored energy that is never converted back is not wealth, only a figure that will one day sit on an heir's balance sheet, and every summer spent guarding it is one that does not come back.
In our words, from what he said in the piece. General information, not personal advice.
More of Abhishek's views on money management
This guest post looks at why many retired Indian parents with large savings still live very frugally. Using the story of a Japanese soldier who kept fighting for decades after the war ended, it argues that money has become plentiful for them while time has become scarce. It suggests a dedicated comfort fund, an honest talk about inheritance, and treating comfort as a health expense.
Publisher source
Our parents aren't out of money; They're out of time, but their brain hasn't noticed it