Sorry ! You can never escape being part of the Sandwich Generation.

I'd just like to take the opportunity to provide a personal update on this post and take the opportunity to point out to everyone NTUC Income's fairly viral advertisement on retirement planning that forms the theme of my personal update today.

The conclusion I'd like readers to accept is this : There is no escape from being part of the Sandwich Generation. Managing your finances well can, at most,  mitigate the negative effects of being part of it.

a) Training business and marketing

First of all, if you are familiar with the going on in the Finance Blogosphere Wu Lin, my business partner Dr Wealth had to apologise to FAs for an overly aggressive marketing email that was sent out this week.

While the issue did not concern my ERM Masterclass, I was affected somewhat by the event as I did volunteer little help to review the email to see whether any legal liability has resulted from it. Even as I found no legal risk, it led me think about the current conventional approach of marketing aggressively via email which have its fair share of critics as of late.

Direct emails are important because they have a broad reach. But the truth is that a trainer's personal brand can be affected negatively by the quality of these marketing emails. For months, I can only review these email broadcasts on hindsight. As a non-employee, I don't have powers of vetting over these documents. Needless to say, my good friends and customers have given me some really blunt and candid feedback regarding this marketing approach when sharing with me on why they unsubscribed from the channel.

At this stage, I still believe that my business partners know what they are doing, but I have subtly proposed a shift in the way the ERM class does business.

Last night we concluded a fairly good evening where my audience were driven by my investment articles and not by those emails sent to the mailbox so I am going to start getting my leads without direct mail for a month or two to see if I can sustain my course intake. More importantly, I had a friendly crowd what I could genuinely interact with.

If you wish to review the quality of these posts that I will be using to get new leads, you can refer to this link here. So bottom line, I really hope that I will not need to spam your mailboxes in the future.

Consequently, as a peace offering, I stopped asking my preview attendees whether they trust financial advisors, instead, I ask a less confrontational question which I shared above.

All these months, I thought I would become the "problematic trainer" who will have the testiest relationship with FAs but, over time, I realise that my biggest allies in the ERM are in fact the licensed financial advisors and tied agents who helped me refine my course material to reflect the truth about the Financial Advisory business and debunk some of the worse tactics used in the industry.

( Even in discussion groups, occasionally I would back Money Maverick and he would come to my defence when I get attacked. We're at the opposite ends of the spectrum and should have been sworn enemies. But life is not simple that way. )

There are good people out there who are really uncomfortable with what's happening in the industry.

Right up to the point that they are volunteering to help me - the proverbial Satan in the insurance agent cosmology !

( For no referral fee, I can introduce my FA allies to you ! )

b) My father's hospitalisation.

Work problems are very microscopic compared to my personal problems.

My dad has gone back to hospital and things seem to be getting worse. Unfortunately for me, visiting relatives heard my dad struggle against nursing staff and then "kindly" decided to advice my mother to move my dad to a new hospital. The result is that my mother could not sleep one entire night, thinking that she did not do right by my dad.

I think my dad's medical numbers are getting better and had to put my foot down to prevent moving my dad. What makes people think that going to older hospital would be better if we preserve the same B2 class ward ? What's next, destroying six digits of wealth by going Mt E ?

Relatives do not pay for our dad's hospital stay and certainly do not play a role in caregiving. They have no right to advice me or my mum on next step. Worse, my mum was sensitive to being called a bad daughter-in-law because she was bullied by my grandmother in the past. I can't allow this to repeat itself.

From now on, I have to balance my mother's welfare against my dad and now have to play the role as an "unfilial son". All decisions made on my dad's behalf are mine and mine alone.

Now tell me how your kids can avoid not becoming a sandwich class when Asian values try to interfere with family decisions.

c) I fired my maid

All in all, my relatives still  meant well, all I had to do is to just ignore them, so the previous issue is microscopic compared to what happened to me yesterday.

My dad on his sick bed received a call from Singtel. My maid took my dad's handphone while he was lying in bed and racked up $800+ of phone bills with calls to Myanmar. I was furious and I just sent my maid back to the agency with a warning never to provide her with employment in Singapore again.

The financial damage is minimal, but my maid received months of caregiver training from Khoo Teck Puat hospital. My mother is so traumatised, we are not getting a new maid in the meantime and she'd rather do the housework herself.

Now my family is in serious trouble.

If my dad gets discharged, there will be no manpower resources to help him at home. I would either have to send him to a home or hire expensive nursing staff to come to my parent's flat. So far, my father has mental capacity and will not be willing to be put in a home.

There is no workable solution so far other than to get my dad round the idea that he needs professional care that my mum and me cannot provide. When we tried and he got rehospitalised as a result.

As a trainer for Early Retirement, I'm going to say that no amount of money can prevent you from joining the Sandwich class. I think this is an impossible aspiration and I don't want it any other way myself.

In fact, the future is even worse.

As we find a solution to cancer and live-spans increase to 110, we may end up with a Double Sandwiched class - A generation that supports 3 generations at the same time because people are living so long.

Finally, we are Asian, even if the family is wealthy, family ties and smaller households will mean spending the Autumn of our lives caring for our loved ones and spending time in their service.

My dad has given to me so much as he only had one child.

Now I have to make the tough decisions on his behalf.