Can I draw any type of retirement, unemployment, or Social Security if I left my job to take care of my elderly mother, who has dementia?

As you quit, you wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment. You are eligible for pension only if you’ve served the minimum years with these agencies for a pension. Social Security won’t pay you early or extra for this, either.

You need to get back to work and place mom in a facility.

I'd look at getting rehired back at the police department or sheriffs office. At age 53 you need the income.

Find other placements for Mom or hire in home caregivers for Mom while you are working.

You made a bad mistake. Let's start from there.

By quitting your job, you gave up contributing to your social security account, so you don't have the credits you would have had if you'd kept working. This means that your benefits amount when you are eligible to draw upon those retirement funds will be less. As for your pension at your former jobs, you need to check into that.

The help that you hope is available is mom's house. She needs to sell it to pay for her care in a nice memory care unit. Then you can go back to work and try to make up the deficit in your funds. I hope you are POA for mom so you can sell the house whether she likes it or not, because with dementia she may not have capacity to make decisions like that.

"But I promised I'd take care of her till the end, and she refuses to go to a 'home'!"

What she wants is no longer important. You can make sure she is safe with professional caregivers and then resume working. That (and possibly what you inherit from mom consisting of her funds after selling the house) is the only thing that can fix the mistake you made to begin with.

I hope it goes well.

You need to check with the HR at the local level and the County level to see when you can start taking your pension. Where I live, a number of Township officers retire after 20/25 yearscand go onto county jobs.

You are not entitled to any unemployment, you quit your job.

SS . As said cannot get till 62. Then its based only on the last 35 yrs u worked. So if you file at 62, SS will only go back till age 27. So lets say you do not work 10 yrs in that 35, your SS earnings will be based on 25 yrs. Then you take SS at 62 you only get 75% of that.

Your future is important. You will need all the money you can get to live. IMO, it would be better to place Mom, according to her finances, and you get back to work. There is no program that will pay you enough. I will be 85 when my youngest is 50 and oldest 58. I do not plan on them caring for me. They need to work.

We read stories here ALL THE TIME of children who quit jobs to care for elderly parents. And wind up homeless and penniless as a result!!!! Please DO NOT BE one of these people! Mom has a home to sell that will finance her care in Memory Care Assisted Living. Then you can go back to being her son again instead of her 24/7 caregiver, your job and your life. If you made a promise to "never" place mom in managed care, sometines promises have to be broken. Especially in the case of dementia where things can get pretty hairy.

Sit down with a Certified Elder Care attorney to discuss your best course of action here. Your life and future matter too, and you do not want to have no real funds available for own care later on in life.

Best of luck.

If you contributed into a public pension plan you should already know what the parameters for collecting are. I was in one in NJ and the minimum age to collect was 55 BUT you could collect early with a penalty. Have you even checks with the pension plan you contributed into?

Wanting to care for your mother was an honorable goal. But it also had the side effect of likely devastating your financial future. I’d bet your mother, if healthy and whole, would never want this for you. Please consider returning to work and guarding your own health and future

Eyeroll

You did not HAVE to quit your job to care for your mother. Get that silly fantasy out of your head and focus on reality.

tonythetiger: Freqflyers suggestion to sell the family home to make funds available in order to place your mom in care makes sense in your situation. This would enable you to return to work, save for your retirement and start contributing again to SS work credits,

tonythetiger, as wonderful as it is that you are caring for your Mom, would she want you to run out of funds for your own future? Was it her idea for you to leave employment? Leave behind health insurance? Matching 401(k), if that was a perk at your job?

One suggestion is to sell the family home, use the equity to help pay for your Mom to be in Memory Care where she would be around Staff that understands dementia. My Dad was happy to sell his house and move into Memory Care, being around people of his own age group, loved the meals, and having a RN on Staff around the clock. Once your Mom starts to run out of her own funds, she can apply for Medicaid via the State. Make sure the Memory Care will accept Medicaid.

At 53 you can return to work and probably work for another 20 years and hopefully build up the funds you lost.

You will of course need to check in on the job you had yourself; there isn't a way we can do that for you. I don't know what their retirement rules are.

We on Forum often see people end up jobless and homeless when they leave work to care for their parents. In all honesty we end telling them to start out by going to a shelter to get work.

The luck thing here is that you are ex police forces and likely can return to that job. If not you are very well qualified for security work. I think you will need to place your elder because I doubt that, even if you find remuniration for caregiving from Medicaid, or other sources, that it will be enough to live on, even if you are living rent free, and certainly not enough for your own retirement.
Wishing you good luck.

In the US, the youngest age you can start taking SS is 62 but you are not entitled to your full amount until you reach your retirement age which depends on the year you were born. You should take a look online at the SSA.gov website. Is your mother getting SS ?

Does she have Medicaid? My understanding is family caregivers can possibly get paid/get a stipend through AFL/Adult Family Living program if you and your parent qualify. I'd google 'AFL or Adult Family Living program' to see results in your state (my link is showing me location specific results).