If you’re caring for elderly parents who are still living on their own, consider a simple step that to protect from junk calls and scams: change the number on their landline phone. 

My parents used to get multiple calls a day. Many were recorded offers like car warranties, but plenty were live scammers with a variety of techniques to separate my parents from their money. Luckily they knew better, but that was years ago, and I’m not sure they’d be as resistant today.  

But it wasn’t just those scam calls that led us to change their number. The ones that caused me the most aggravation and required the most time came from insurance agents. One time they got both my parents switched off their very solid Medicare Advantage plan and into lesser coverage, and another time it was just my father. I have no idea if my parents actually agreed to make these changes, or if the agent deviously just said they did. But it was completely unethical of the agent, as the changes did not improve my parents’ coverage or lower their costs. All they did was earn the agent a commission, and take hours of my time getting my parents back on their original plan. (The fact that a change in something as monumental as health insurance can be made through a phone call, with no signature required, particularly for an elderly person, is crazy. And is something we’ll explore more later…) 

Obviously changing your phone number would be a big deal; there might be hundreds of contacts you’d need to inform. But for our parents? Not so much. Chances are good many of the people in their address book aren’t making calls anymore, leaving a reasonable number who need to be given the new digits. Now the calls will only come from family, friends, and others your parents want to hear from. 

Some systems allow you to restrict who can even get a call to your parents. Mine are on Spectrum, which lets you block anonymous calls, while only allowing calls from 30 specific numbers to go through. Are there really more than 30 people who need to call your parents? Check with your parent’s phone provider to see if they have something similar available.