Credit card useage

Oh, I am sorry. It is a hard journey to be sure.

If you are looking for relevant posts, the search term “finances” will be of interest. One discussion from 2025 called “Stepping in on finances” has useful info., I remember.

Taking away the credit card or lowering the limit are common tactics. Yes, your DW will likely get angry. And trying to reason with someone who is losing the ability to reason is not likely to work. You have the responsibility to keep you both safe and to preserve your/her assets. Some people here have had the experience of their LO losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. (My stepparent blew through at least $200k by responding to scams.)

I feel compelled to mention driving. If your wife has a diagnosis, it is possible that your insurance might not cover it if she has an accident—not to mention the danger to herself and others. You will want to check on your policy terms and also consider alternatives to her driving.

I am sorry for the situation you find yourself in. It is hard at every stage and in many ways. You can find support here.

I can imagine how hard that situation is with your wife, who is still very active. I also have that situation with my sister, who is 73, with what her neurologist said was "mild" AD (I disagree, but that's another discussion.) Caregivers have to make some very tough calls for their LOs. Protecting your wife from herself is so hard. She will not agree with changes to her lifestyle due to anosognosia, an inability to see that she needs safeguards in place to protect your financial future. My sister had received a new credit card and ran up $5000 in debt on it because she thought it was her debit card. She saw that huge Bill Gates scam advertisement and wanted to order the pills. She also fell victim to phone scams and lost over $1000. So yes, limits are necessary. I would evaluate her spending and give her an amount she can spend each month either on a gift card or a low limit credit card. You can always adjust it if needed for larger expenses. We want our loved ones to enjoy their life while they can, but you must protect both your assets for the expenses to come with AD.

@Cclemri1

Hi and welcome. I am sorry for the reason you're here but glad you found this.

You could try putting a limit on or giving her a reloadable gift Visa to use but at the end of the day you are going to have to take steps to keep her (and the community) safe and prudently manage finances. If you are her DPOA, you have a fiduciary responsibility to protect her from poor financial decisions.

For the record, you're not doing robbing her of what independence she has, this damned disease is.

And yes, she be very angry. She likely has some degree of anosognosia and is unable to recognize how impaired her cognition and judgment are, so she'll be resentful and ascribe all manner of nefarious plots for which you are responsible. Medication can help with paranoia, anger and depression these changes commonly bring.

Ideally, a PWD should not be in possession of a smart phone or have access to the internet without supervision. Full stop. I would lock down your credit with all 3 of the major bureaus and change the passwords for WiFi and any banking, shopping and investment sites.

Not driving is a unity horse here. If you're worried about her ability to recognize a well-documented scam, you should be just as worried about her driving. Driving is a complex task that requires many of the skills impacted in the earlier stages of dementia— empathy (reading other drivers), executive function, critical thinking, processing speed, memory and spatial reasoning.

Since many policies are voided the second an Alzheimer's diagnosis hits her chart, her driving puts everything you both own at risk. Were she to have an accident and she could be sued. You could also be held civilly liable if you are her POA.

We went through this with my dad before he was diagnosed. He not only managed to purchase a Ford Taurus at full MSRP while mom was in the hospital having TKR, but he also lost $360K playing the stock market before he finally forgot his passwords. Dad's been dead 8 years and just a few months ago I turned off a monthly auto pay for insurance on a Razr phone he bought in 2005. He was angry and accusatory, but we were able to protect both my parents from his lack of capacity. That $360K could have bought mom a lot of respite.

HB

FTW, the Bill Gates supplement scam has been broadly proven to be an AI generated scam.

In the early days of our journey, I plucked all the cards from my DWs wallet. All credit / debit cards and driver's license. I didn't do them all the same day but rather quickly. All the credit / debit cards must have been lost or stolen we will have to work on replacing them. Oh, and the driver's license is expired we will have to get that renewed. Drug it out long enough until it was no longer an issue. Took forever. I do not envy the place you are in right know. For us the early stages where DW was still kind of aware of things but not capable of making a good decision was a very rough time. Our granddaughter was the one that notified me that DW was blowing through stop signs and that put an end to DWs driving. This was all before an "OFFICIAL" diagnosis. The anger, accusing, and falling apart was horrible but I had to do what I had to do. This is not easy.