�鶹���³�Ʒ

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 37.1 million Americans provide unpaid eldercare, defined as someone age 65 or older. The majority of those caregivers are women.

Caregiving can be stressful, exhausting and, yes, rewarding. And sometimes, the need takes us by surprise — but it doesn’t always have to. The time to start to wrap your hands around your responsibility is preferably before you step into the arena. That means you’ll need to acknowledge if there’s a likelihood that you may become a caregiver in the years ahead. It also means spending time now readying yourself for what’s coming. So, how do you do that?

You won’t truly understand the scope of the possible need unless you talk about it. But sitting down and doing that? “No one likes to have those difficult conversations,” says Heather Winston, assistant director of financial advice and planning at �鶹���³�Ʒ^®. “But you have to otherwise you may end up having the conversation at an inopportune time.”

Try to ask, and, eventually get answers to, the following questions:

• What are your wishes?
• What are your fears?
• What plans have you made?
• Where is everything held?
• And how can I help?

And note, it may take more than one conversation before you get anything close to the answers you need.

As if having these conversations about future caregiving duties wasn’t difficult enough, they may lead to deciding if and when it’s appropriate for you—or a sibling or someone else—to start playing a more participatory role in your parent’s finances. Ideally, the best time to do this is before you have to. But that may feel invasive to one or both parties. What do you do? One way to think about it is on a decision-making continuum. “If you notice your parents having a hard time with one thing, it might come from a different cause,” Winston says. “Those conversations can help you understand where your parents are today, what they want, and what may be needed in the future.” For example, do you need to help monitor that a bill is getting paid or do you actually need to take on the responsibility of paying it?

It’s one thing to know your parents’ wishes; it’s another to be able to fulfill them. But you won’t be able to do the latter unless you are legally empowered to do so. That means making sure there is a will, a healthcare proxy (which names someone else to make medical decisions), durable power of attorney (which names someone else to make financial ones), and living will (which tells a hospital whether or not you want life support) in place. Having access to account passwords (or at least the password manager, a lifesaver in these situations) is another must.

Talking about caregiving plans should your parents or other loved ones need is different than deciding to take on the caregiver role yourself. Before you do, there are two things to consider:

1. What are your own wishes and fears around caregiving?
2. What is the financial impact? When you step out of the workforce, you don’t just lose your current salary; you lose future pay increases, retirement contributions, Social Security credits, and the ability to network. If and when you do re-enter the workforce, it may be at a lower salary than the one you left. Of course, none of those numbers mean you shouldn’t make the choice to be a caregiver if that’s what you want to do. But it’s important to know what those tradeoffs are.

Finally, whether you are pulling together a plan to help your parents or just thinking about the steps to take should you be responsible for caregiving duties in the future, it is tough to find an argument for putting it off. Yet most people do. “Acknowledging the unknown is hard, but the best you can do is look at your family’s history, their current health, and financial means, and then plan for as much as you can,” say Winston.

A version of this article originally appeared on Her Money.