Editor s Note: As money evaporates from their retirement savings, many parents are turning to their kids for help. SmartMoney Senior Editor Beverly Goodman, an expert on investing and personal finance, embarked on Parents in Crisis, a special report for SmartMoney.com and the February issue of SmartMoney magazine, after observing the challenges her 65-year-old mother has been facing since the financial markets imploded last fall.

It s been nearly nine months since my mother and I went in search of help for her portfolio. She loves her job, but, at 65, she s naturally thinking about retirement and when the market crashed those thoughts quickly turned to panic. Since then, the market has fallen further and then rebounded (somewhat). It was time to check in with her new financial planner, Gary Schatsky, to see where she stood and what changes might be necessary.

After pulling my mother s file, Schatsky came back with some great news my mother s portfolio was up 21 percent since the beginning of the year. That s more than double the S&P 500 s return. Part of that success is because one of Schatsky s first moves was to increase my mother s bond allocation, then at less than 30 percent of her total portfolio, to more than 40 percent (and still inching up).

But Schatsky didn t want to talk about my mother s investments instead, he started throwing other numbers at me. If you count the fact your mother paid off her car loan, her return is more like 23 percent, he noted. If it sounds like he s massaging the numbers, he s not: Managing your finances shouldn t be viewed through the single lens of investment performance, he says. It has to take into account taxes, debt and cash flow. The fact that my mother no longer owes $8,000 on her car at 5.9 percent is on par with a real investment return.

That s not the only way he s trying to boost my mom s returns by saving money on debt. Schatsky had encouraged my mother to participate in her employer s stock purchase program, which allows her to make monthly purchases at a 15 percent discount. As those shares pass the 12-month mark, at which point profits are taxed at the lower long-term capital gains rate, he d like my mother to start paying off her home equity line of credit. If the proceeds from the sale of her employer s shares won t cover it, he wants her to tap the $19,000 she has in a money-market account. At 3 percent, the rate on her line of credit is pretty good, he says, but the cash in her money market is making half a percent at best. That makes it a no-brainer for him pay off the debt and keep the line open, serving as a backstop emergency fund now that her money-market fund will have less in it. Finally, he crowed about how $7,000 had finally been liberated from the penalty timeframe of my mom s B shares generally the most expensive share class of a mutual fund, which often come with penalties for selling within a certain number of years.

Schatsky had moved most of my mother s funds in to lower-cost (and often better-performing) mutual funds, and he had been keeping an eye on this last batch of shares to move into a similar, lower-cost fund family.

My mother, as most would guess, is pleased. But as those of us who know (and love) my mother would expect, she s not too pleased. The past year has certainly made her realize she needs to get a better handle on her finances, but when I prod her for more of a reaction to Shatsky s news, she says (with just a tiny bit of irritation) you know, Beverly, how busy I ve been with other things. I ve never watched this stuff that carefully, and don t have an interest in ever watching it really carefully. I just need to have a solid plan that includes some investments I can trust.

Don t we all.