Seniors Housing & Healthcare Trends

MELBOURNE: The world is on the cusp of one of the largest intergenerational wealth transfers in history.

An estimated $3.5 trillion will pass from older generations to their children and grandchildren over the coming decades, and women are expected to inherit a significant share of this wealth.

But there’s a side to this story that often goes untold.

Before many women inherit wealth, they spend years helping ageing parents navigate the challenges of later life. They become advocates, organisers, co-ordinators and caregivers. They arrange medical appointments, manage medications and mental health, attend specialist consultations, co-ordinate aged care assessments, organise home maintenance, oversee finances and provide emotional support.

In many families, they become the unofficial CEO (chief emotional officer), a term I heard mentioned recently at an event.

While this role is rarely recognised, it often comes with a significant financial cost.

The invisible workload

For many women in their 40s, 50s and 60s, caring for ageing parents occurs at the same time as supporting children, maintaining careers and managing households. The so-called “sandwich generation” is frequently caught between competing responsibilities. While caregiving may be shared to some extent, daughters are often the family members who take responsibility for co-ordinating care and making sure nothing falls through the cracks.

This work is often unpaid, largely invisible and difficult to measure. Yet the time commitment is substantial.

A phone call to an aged care provider during work hours, filling out Aged Care Assistance Assessment forms (which can take hours), taking time off to attend hospital appointments, months spent clearing a parent’s home or helping them move into assisted living.

Individually these tasks seem manageable, but collectively they can be overwhelming.

What this looks like in practice

As a financial adviser, I often see the hidden workload that daughters quietly carry.

One client, we’ll called her Amanda, was trying to organise an ACAA for her elderly mother while also working as a relief teacher. Like many families, she found the aged care system complex, time-consuming and difficult to navigate. Understanding eligibility requirements, gathering documentation and submitting the necessary applications took several hours of administration and multiple phone calls.

By working with the family and assisting with the registration and application process, we were able to remove much of that burden.

For Amanda, this meant she didn’t have to take an additional day away from the classroom to navigate the paperwork. More importantly, it allowed her to focus on spending quality time with her mother rather than becoming consumed by administrative tasks.

It was a simple intervention, but it saved valuable time, reduced stress and helped preserve her income.

The financial penalty

The greatest cost is often not the direct expense of care itself, but the impact on a woman’s earning capacity.

Many women reduce their working hours, turn down promotions or step away from full-time employment altogether to provide support to family members.

While these decisions are often made out of love and necessity, they can have lasting consequences including reduced salary and career progression, lower bonuses and employment benefits, less capacity to build personal wealth, lower superannuation balances, and greater financial vulnerability later in life.

What might begin as a temporary adjustment can translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost lifetime earnings and retirement savings.
Paying twice

In some cases, women also absorb direct caregiving costs.

These can include travel to appointments, home modifications and maintenance, medical equipment and support services, and supplementary care costs not covered by government support.

As a result, many women find themselves financially contributing to their parents’ care while simultaneously sacrificing their own future earning potential.

So, in effect, they’re paying twice.

The value of practical support

Another client faced a different challenge when her mother needed to transition from an independent living arrangement into a higher level of care.

The sale of the family home was a necessary step, but co-ordinating property agents, legal professionals and settlement timelines quickly became a major undertaking.

Her eldest daughter owned and operated a small family business and was already juggling staff, customers and family responsibilities. Without support, the process would have required significant time away from her business during a period when every day counted.

Working alongside the family, we helped co-ordinate the sale process, liaised with the relevant professionals and ensured the proceeds aligned with the broader aged care funding strategy.

The result was that the daughter could remain focused on running her business and caring for her own family, while having confidence that her mother’s affairs were being managed appropriately.

For many families, advice extends well beyond investment management. It can mean having a trusted professional help navigate complex life transitions, reducing the administrative and emotional burden that often falls disproportionately on daughters.

The irony of inheritance

One of the great paradoxes of the intergenerational wealth transfer is that the women who shoulder the greatest caregiving responsibilities are often those who ultimately inherit family wealth.

The eldest daughter is frequently the person managing appointments, co-ordinating family discussions and supporting parents through health challenges and aged care decisions. Over time, parents naturally develop a deeper reliance on that child because she is most involved in their daily lives.

While inheritance outcomes vary significantly between families, it is not uncommon for the person providing the greatest support to also become the primary decision-maker and beneficiary.

However, inheritance received later in life does not necessarily compensate for decades of lower earnings, reduced superannuation contributions and missed career opportunities.

A larger inheritance may help restore financial security, but it often arrives after much of the economic and emotional sacrifice has already occurred.

With some planning, families can take practical steps to reduce the burden on the CEO.

Open conversations around ageing, care preferences and finances can help distribute responsibilities more evenly among siblings.

Parents can also put structures in place early, including enduring powers of attorney, clear estate planning arrangements, up-to-date wills, aged care funding strategies and family governance discussions regarding future care responsibilities.

Importantly, women who find themselves in caregiving roles should continue prioritising their own financial wellbeing, including maintaining superannuation contributions where possible and seeking advice before making major career or retirement decisions.

The bigger conversation

As Australia ages, and many people choose to stay at home with support, the role of the family caregiver will become increasingly important. But if we’re serious about gender equality and retirement security, we need to recognise that caregiving is not simply an act of love. It’s an economic contribution.

The women acting as their family’s CEO are helping hold families together through some of life’s most challenging transitions. And they’re doing it while keeping several other plates spinning.

These stories are not unusual. Behind many ageing parents is a daughter quietly managing appointments, paperwork, finances and difficult decisions while balancing work and family commitments of her own. The emotional labour is significant, but so too is the opportunity cost.

Having experienced professionals assist with aged care planning, estate administration and family coordination can help reduce some of the invisible load and allow families to focus on what matters most: supporting their loved ones.

The question is do we truly recognise the financial value of being the family’s CEO, or are we still overlooking the economic cost of that invisible labour?