Janet Berry-Johnson, CPA, CFEI

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Omaha, NE
Janet Berry-Johnson, CPA, CFEI

I'm a CPA and Financial Educator. I help families organize their aging parents' paperwork and finances before a crisis hits.

10/29/2026

Episode 45 of Caring for Your Aging Parents is live today! In this one, listeners asked questions and Lynn and I answered them. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or on YouTube at the link in my profile.

10/28/2026

That charity calling your parent might not be a charity.

Scammers know older adults are often generous, and they respond to a good cause. That combination makes aging parents a frequent target for fake charity solicitations, especially around the holidays or after a widely covered disaster.

Watch for red flags like high-pressure asks for an immediate donation (especially by phone or at the door) or requests to donate by gift card, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency.

Legitimate charities don't ask for these.

And fraudulent charities can have names that sound almost identical to well-known ones.

If your parent wants to give, encourage them to look up the charity independently rather than donating on the spot, and to give directly through the charity's official website rather than through a link or number provided by the caller.

Has your parent ever been targeted by something like this?

10/27/2026

6 signs your financial life needs a reorganization, not just a budget:

1. You have accounts at four or more institutions and can't say exactly what's in each one
2. Your beneficiary designations haven't been reviewed since before your last major life change
3. You're paying for insurance policies you can't locate the documents for
4. You don't know the difference between your gross income and your take-home pay
5. You have a "someday" financial task that has been on your list for more than a year
6. If something happened to you tomorrow, your family would have no idea where to start

Would you add anything to that list?

10/27/2026

Feeling scared about your aging parents’ situation? Every one of these is fixable, but it costs a lot less to fix before a crisis than during one.

What’s the scariest thing you’ve found in your parents’ files?

10/26/2026

Feeling scared about your aging parents' situation? Every one of these is fixable, but it costs a lot less to fix before a crisis than during one.

What's the scariest thing you've found in your parents' files?

10/26/2026

Your parent could own a long-term care insurance policy and forget about it. A policy only helps if someone knows it exists.

Watch the full episode on YouTube at the link in my profile or listen to Caring for Your Aging Parents wherever you listen to podcasts.

10/23/2026

Being capable doesn’t mean you have unlimited capacity.

Your life and retirement planning need to stay on the list while you sort out your parents’ care. That’s harder when every unfinished task (paying bills, refilling medications, doctor’s appointments, insurance claims, etc.) defaults to you.

Start by documenting what needs attention and who will handle it. Tasks nobody has agreed to take on are a conversation, not an automatic assignment to you.

Save this before you take on more of your parent’s care.

10/22/2026

Financial caregiving is hard when your parent’s password manager is a collection of scraps of paper, Post-its, and envelope backs.

If you live far away and manage your parent’s money, that system won’t work. The usual workaround is to share logins and text codes back and forth. But 2FA exists to protect people from fraud, and fraudsters particularly target older adults, so the goal is to work with those security steps rather than around them.

In this week’s Substack newsletter, I cover options for getting the access you need without putting your family at risk.

How to manage a parent’s financial accounts from a distance, work with 2FA instead of around it, and retire the Post-its for good.

10/22/2026

Which costs more: in-home care or assisted living. It depends on our location and the level of help your parent needs. In this week’s episode of the Caring for Your Aging Parents podcast, Lynn and I talk about your options so you can estimate costs for your own family.

Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or on YouTube at the link in my bio.

Address

6818 Grover Street Ste 402
Omaha, NE
68106

Website

https://jbj.cpa/

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