What a peek into 150 Michigan bank accounts reveals about memory loss

• A Michigan-based aging expert has been interested in the intersection of independence and memory loss — and when caregivers should intervene
• Peter Lichtenberg has been called as a national expert in court cases of sexual assault among people with dementia and, in one case, of an elderly man carrying a suitcase of meth
• This time, he wanted to know if everyday budget decisions — grocery bills and gifts to grandchildren — could raise flags about early memory loss

A Michigan study may offer a new understanding of the earliest stages of memory loss — revealed by the most mundane of everyday spending decisions over things like groceries and grandkids’ gifts.

It’s the culmination of a lifetime of work by a nationally recognized gerontologist, Peter Lichtenberg, who doesn’t mind taking on topics that others avoid. His work has included a look at sex among nursing home residents, and his reputation more recently allowed him to peek into the checkbooks of 150 older Michiganders.

“I always went for the more taboo research,” Lichtenberg said, chuckling. “So let's talk about money — that’s a huge taboo.”

As a longtime researcher and director of Wayne State University’s Institute of Gerontology, Lichtenberg had wondered how mundane, routine spending — groceries, light bills, donations to charities, online shopping — might red-flag a person’s vulnerability to financial victimization or the kind of everyday spending that can imperceptibly chisel away at their financial well-being.

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As it turns out, 150 people ages 59 to 96 were willing to open their checkbooks for Lichtenberg’s WALLET study — standing for Wealth Accumulations & Later-life Losses in Early cognitive Transitions. 

About half of the participants self-identified or were identified through testing tools as having mild cognitive loss — that type of loss falls short of a full-blown dementia diagnosis and can creep without notice into the last decades of life.

Most participants were retired and generally were on a fixed income, so researchers were interested in “excess spending,” or expenditures that exceeded income and that would, over time, chip away at their accumulated wealth.

The Lichtenberg team pored through the checkbooks, bank statements, ATM withdrawals with an eye for late fees and overdraft fees and the extent to which the participants were giving money to others, and occurrences of outright exploitation. 

The link was clear: Those with early memory loss had more excess spending over 12 months than the group without memory loss, Lichtenberg said: “Some people had five or six insurance policies they were spending on. For some people, it was a home shopping network” that whittled their savings.

Those with early memory loss also were about three times more likely to fall for a scam.

“Mostly it was small scams,” Lichtenberg said. “Somebody fell for a sweepstakes scam and sent in a couple hundred dollars. Somebody else fell for a tech scam and then spent a couple hundred dollars for somebody to fix it. Somebody else bought a product from a company that didn't exist.”

Moreover, a person’s generosity to help loved ones — a granddaughter with her cell phone bill, a nephew with his rent — was the greatest red flag in predicting who might one day be most easily exploited.

But therein lies the next question, and one that’s more difficult to answer: If Grandfather helps a grandson with his mortgage, is that generosity or victimization? If an older person begins to change their spending habits — giving more to a local charity, for example — at what point does a loved one step in? 

It’s a “tough, very tough” question to answer, said Lichtenberg. 

And he’s thought about the question a lot.

Tackling sensitive issues

Over the years, Lichtenberg has helped policymakers, law enforcement and staff in long-term care around the country understand the need for older residents, including those with dementia, to have sexual relationships. 

He’s been called on as a national expert in peer conferences and in court to help others find the fine line between a person’s right to make poor decisions and outright exploitation. (In one case, Lichtenberg testified in a case of an elderly man who was conned into — and then criminally charged for — carrying what he had been told were gifts but was actually a suitcase that hid meth.) 

He has led research that guides the website olderadultnestegg.org, where seniors, families, and professionals can find tools to test for financial exploitation and guidance for having difficult conversations about financial decision-making, and he had piloted the SAFE (Successful Aging thru Financial Empowerment) program that offers free services to help seniors guard against exploitation.

After all, memory loss can be expensive. People aged 60 and older fell victim to scams costing them more than $3.4 billion in 2023, according to the FBI.

“We're always balancing protection and autonomy. If you don't protect people enough, terrible things can happen to them,” Lichtenberg said. “In other cases, if you protect them too much, terrible things can happen to them because they lose that sense of power control, and quality of life goes away.”

First worry, then relief

While the study is small with just 150 people, it also involved lengthy interviews with each participant, revealing a common-held worry about their continued ability to protect their wealth. 

Gwendolyn Swain was among those who volunteered. An active 72-year-old seamstress who volunteers in a number of community programs and takes care of her Detroit brick colonial and its property, she nonetheless has felt niggling worries about her own abilities in recent years.

“I want to be able to handle my finances and stay in my home and I feel confident,” she said, “but there’s always that little thought: Can I?”

As it turns out, she said, according to her study results, she can. 

“I’m doing okay” — so okay, in fact, she said she feels better about taking weekend trips from time to time with friends, or splurging on a particularly beautiful piece of fabric from time to time.

Perhaps that’s the most surprising finding, Lichtenberg and others said: Older Michiganders who worry about their financial decision-making abilities — those like Swain — also may be surprisingly willing to open their accounts to a trusted confidante rather than risk becoming prey to exploitation.

“We asked them a lot of times: ‘Why are you participating?’” Lichtenberg said. “People are worried about how they're doing.”

Family members should have those conversations if they’re worried about older relatives, he said — but thoughtfully and without accusation.

“This is a very sensitive topic, so you’ve got to think of it as a little bit of a longer term negotiation, not a one-off conversation,” he said.

“There's always a sense of taboo around finances, but maybe the taboo is not as strong as we think,” said Vanessa Rorai, who as program coordinator of the Healthier Black Elders Center at the Institute of Gerontology, assisted Lichtenberg in recruiting participants. 

Even without a trusted family member, she said, many seniors “really are looking for some other trusted, vetted person that they can go to.”