(MONEY Magazine) – Margie White ran for the phone. It was the summer of 1993. White, her husband and two teenage sons had just moved back to Plano, Texas, near their families. There were boxes everywhere. The kids had back-to-school jitters. Tradesmen were handing her estimates for repairs. And then her parents called. "We're at the bank," her mother said tearfully. "There's nothing left."

"I'll be right there," White said, grabbing her car keys and flying out the door--and into a financial disaster. Piecing together 25 bounced checks, White realized that her mother had been an easy mark for every sweepstakes, every telemarketer, every traveling salesperson. She bought scores of Michigan bulbs to improve her chances of winning a sweepstakes. She purchased $800 worth of cosmetics over the phone. "She'd write a check, and my father would sign it," White recalls. "And neither of them balanced the checkbook." But the hit to their assets was just a symptom. The problem, she quickly understood, was that her parents--both of whom would eventually be diagnosed with Alzheimer's--were no longer able to take care of themselves.

Within weeks, White, now 49, had become a full-fledged member of the Sandwich Generation, that growing group of adult children who are caring for aging parents while raising their own kids. According to a study from the National Alliance for Caregiving and the American Association of Retired Persons, there are more than 9 million Americans in this situation, 40% of them between 35 and 49.

For White, a stay-at-home mother, her parents became a second full-time job. Every morning she'd rush out of her house to beat her father to his mailbox. If he got there first, some bill would go missing. Whenever he wandered off--which was often--she'd get a call to go find him. "No matter what we did, it wasn't enough to keep him safe," she says. "We changed the locks and covered the burners on the stove. But he'd put a metal pot in the microwave and ruin that."

Then there were the financial headaches--all compounded by the fact that she didn't have power of attorney, which would have let her make decisions for her parents. One supplemental Medicare policy had lapsed. The keys to their safe-deposit box were missing. They hadn't paid taxes for years. When her father went into a nursing home and her mother needed a full-time companion, Social Security and Medicare covered only one-third; to pay the rest, White began liquidating her parents' six-figure portfolio.

The fact that they had significant investments meant that White, unlike nearly half of all family caregivers, suffered no financial hardship. She didn't have to dip into her own assets or choose between saving for her own old age and paying their bills. But that doesn't mean she wasn't paying a price. Her absence from her own family--she'd often throw breakfast on the table and head out before the kids even left for school--strained relations with her sons, who were no longer willing to visit their grandparents, even to mow the lawn, and with her husband. "It cost me my marriage," she says sadly. Today, she and her husband are separated.

They're not suffering alone. The stress of belonging to the Sandwich Generation is taking a toll countrywide. "All of a sudden you're struggling with this huge balancing act," says Beth Witrogen McLeod, author of Caregiving: The Spiritual Journey of Love, Loss and Renewal. "How do you fulfill all your roles? How do you balance your marriage, your children, your work--and elder care?"

Everyone's answer is different--and no one's is easy.

DOING DOUBLE DUTY

They call it parenting your parent. But that term is off the mark. If your third-grade daughter belongs in advanced math, you go to see the principal. If your teenage son needs special surgery, you spend hours interviewing doctors until you find the right one. You do this for your kids because they can't do it for themselves. They may not appreciate every gesture, but they certainly expect it. Caring for your parents is another matter entirely. Handling their physical needs, at least at the start, feels inappropriate. So does battling their doctors, insurers and creditors--particularly if they don't want your help. "It's much, much worse than caring for a child," says Joan Gruber, a Dallas financial planner who specializes in helping adult children with aging parents. "You can't tell your parents what to do."

John Strohl has gotten that message loud and clear. Strohl, 47, a program manager at Dell Computer, has what you'd call a houseful. He and his wife Joyce have five children vying for their attention and support. Surprisingly, none are more in need of it than their eldest daughter, 21-year-old Katie. Almost three years ago, she went off to college. It was her first time away from the nest, her first step toward financial and emotional independence. And it was a total failure. Eighteen months later, Katie had earned zero credits, was two months pregnant and had spent the night in the county jail. She'd been arrested for shoplifting.

The next morning, her parents picked her up and took her out for breakfast. "Over eggs and strong coffee, we told her she had to have a decent job before she hit her seventh or eighth month, or she'd never find one," Strohl recalls. "We got her lined up with Medicaid for the pregnancy. And I was her birthing coach." It was torture to see his daughter struggling, he admits. There were days when he wanted to say, "Stay home. Put your feet up. Rest." But he held his tongue. And she found a job helping to manage a local apartment complex. She's been promoted twice, but her salary isn't enough to make ends meet, so her mother watches Katie's daughter. Not for free, mind you, but for about half of the cost of outside care. Strohl believes that the only way to make his daughter learn to take responsibility for herself and her child is to insist that she pay something.

Meanwhile, he feels increasingly responsible for his parents, who live 1,200 miles away, in San Diego, on a modest pension and Social Security--just enough for the necessities. They haven't been able to go to the theater or to concerts as they've done all their lives, and the only restaurant they can afford is a cafeteria. To make things worse, Strohl's 76-year-old father is suffering a relapse of prostate cancer. Despite Strohl's pleas, his parents wouldn't accept help--even when he presented it as payback for their support in the early '90s when the defense industry, where he'd been working, turned sour.

Then his daughter Alenna, a high school junior, decided that she'd like to go to a California college. The Strohls realized that sending Alenna to live with his folks would solve two problems: She could establish residency and qualify for in-state tuition, and he could send his parents $500 a month for her room and board. Not that it was an easy choice. "It was hard for us to let her go," Strohl says. "But it was the best thing for her." Alenna, now a student at Mesa College, moved out of her grandparents' house in January, but Strohl still sends his parents the checks--and they still cash them.

A ONE-WOMAN SHOW

It's not sexist to say it; it's simply a fact: Most caregiving duties fall to the daughters in the family. According to the National Alliance for Caregiving, 73% of family caregivers are women. And not because they have more time. Three in five female caretakers from 35 to 49 hold down full-time or part-time jobs, and about half have to change their work schedules. It's also a fact that caregiving is typically a solo enterprise. Even when there are several siblings, the job of taking care of Mom and Dad generally falls to just one.

That's what happened to Roz Schaffer, 46. Three years ago, when she was a commercial lender with a bank in Philadelphia and the mother of a teenage son, she decided she was ready to kick her career into high gear. Her 20th high school reunion had convinced her that she needed an advanced degree, so she'd started the course work for her M.B.A. Classes were just beginning when her mother, Tina Horn, fell and broke her back; she lay on the floor of her Seattle apartment for 12 hours before she was found.

While Horn recuperated in the hospital, Schaffer and her siblings convened. "My sisters [one in Detroit, the other in New York] gave me two choices: Move her to Philly or move her to Philly," Schaffer recalls. "So I moved her to Philly."

All of a sudden, doing her course work wasn't her highest priority. Schaffer began scouring the city for an assisted-living facility. Her husband Charles was supportive, but as a commercial pilot, he was often away, so she did most of the looking alone. Finally she found a place she liked. It was clean and bright, and the staff seemed energetic. But after only a few weeks, Schaffer recalls, "I would show up in the dining room and see a full plate of food in front of my mother. They'd say, 'Tina's not hungry.' But as soon as I'd cut it up so she could handle it, she would eat." So Schaffer started spending more and more time with her mother.

Then last summer Horn developed Crohn's disease, became incontinent and lost her ability to swallow. "Terminal," the doctor said. Simultaneously, Schaffer's son was diagnosed with learning problems. It seemed that if she wasn't sitting at her mother's bedside with one doctor, she was shuttling her son to another. She used up all five weeks of her vacation time, not to mention any chance of scaling the corporate ladder. "When clients would call with referrals, I'd have to turn them over to other loan officers," she says. Eventually her bank transferred her to a suburb, where she was closer to her mother but invisible to her bosses.

Something had to give. She hired a private-duty nurse to come in eight hours each day and monitor her mom's care. The bill: $3,500 a month, which Horn, fortunately, had the money to pay. Astoundingly, Horn rebounded. Now she's back in assisted living with the private-duty nurse by her side. And Schaffer has a new challenge on her hands. In mid-August she was offered a new job--the "job of a lifetime" she calls it--working in organizational development at a marketing start-up. A chance to use that M.B.A. With her mother and son stable, she said yes. Then she put out the call to her brothers and sisters that she was going to need more help. No dice. So she's forging ahead, taking it one day at a time. "After all," she says, "my mother could live another 20 years."

WHO CARES FOR THE CAREGIVER?

Even when your parents and your kids are doing well, you, the caregiver, may be losing big time, says Carol Abaya, who writes a monthly syndicated column about caregiving. Interruptions in your career, less money for your 401(k), no time for vacations--not even an hour to yourself.

A year ago, Diane and Darin Aldrich and their three children (the two oldest are Diane's from a previous marriage) were living in Washington, D.C. Darin, 34, was a Navy officer at Camp David, and Diane, 44, was working as a special-education kindergarten teacher. Her mother, in the early stages of Alzheimer's, was in an assisted-living facility nearby. And nothing was working.

Her mother hated where she was living. She wouldn't let the attendants bathe her, she didn't trust the staff to wash her clothes, and she didn't like the food. So Diane ran over to bathe her three times a week; she did her mother's laundry; and every other night, she brought her mother home for dinner. The facility certainly wasn't worth the $3,600 a month her mother was spending.

And the price Diane's family was paying was even higher. "I never saw her," Darin recalls. "She was always watching her mother or the kids, and I was watching the President." Finally, he'd had enough. "If you brought your mother here to live with us," he told Diane, "then maybe we'd get to see you sometimes." Their D.C. place wasn't large enough for six, so after mulling things over for a few months, they moved to Maine, where Diane had bought her family's six-bedroom house 20 years before, and where Darin's mother also lived. "We did what needed to be done," says Darin. "If it were my mom, Diane would feel the same way."

Financially it's been a strain. The plan was for Darin to go back to school on Uncle Sam's dime (courtesy of the Montgomery bill) and for Diane to find a job. But as her mom's condition worsened, she decided to stay home; she expects that this may be the last year there are still flashes of her mother left. The family's only source of income is her mother's savings. From an elder-care attorney, Diane, who has power of attorney, learned that she could pay herself a monthly stipend for caring for her mother, about two-thirds what she'd earn in the work force. Diane and Darin fill in gaps--for things like private school tuition for the eldest child and a family vacation--from their shrinking savings. To make sure they'd have funds for an emergency, they refinanced the Maine house, cashing out $15,000.

"I don't want to put my own family in financial jeopardy because of this," Diane says. Nor does she want her family to feel the sacrifice so heavily that they come to resent her--and her mother. "My kids don't have to have their own cars. They don't have to go to Europe. But I don't want to say, geez, we can't go to Florida this year because we have to pay for Grandma."

The move has helped Diane spend more time with her kids, but it hasn't been a cure-all. "My two-year-old was running up the stairs at night to bed and reading her own book," she says. "For weeks, my 10-year-old has been begging me to teach her how to shave her legs. I came home one night and found that Darin was teaching her how to do it."

For the kids, at least, the situation is livable. For Diane and Darin, it's harder. "I'm jealous of my 17-year-old son out at the lake at nights with his friends," Diane says. "I want to be out there with my husband. And I feel terrible about that."

REACHING OUT FOR HELP

Here's an oft-repeated (and oft-ignored) piece of advice for caregivers: "You cannot be--and should not be--doing this alone," says financial planner Joan Gruber. She makes sure her clients have not only a geriatric-care manager on their team but also an elder-law attorney and a bill payer.

Unfortunately, many people don't have the resources to put a whole team on the payroll. That doesn't mean they need to go it alone. Diane Aldrich, who is in effect her own geriatric-care manager, has found help from official sources--when she and her family head off to Disney World on vacation, for example, the State of Maine will provide two weeks of respite care--and unofficial ones. Her support group on the Internet is always there when things get really rough--like the time she found her mother at the kitchen sink washing dishes, wearing nothing but Darin's Jockey shorts. Diane booted up her computer and routed her way to Caregivers' Support and the Elderly on aol.com. "Desperately Seeking Advice," she typed. "Please help. My mother is getting up in the middle of the night. Taking her diaper off. What do I do? Desperate. Desperate. Desperate." Within an hour, she had 15 responses. "Can you get her doctor to give her a sleeping pill," someone suggested. "Put kitchen mitts on her hands," said another. "You're in the military," said a third. "Buy her a flight suit, and put it on backwards. She won't be able to get out of it."

Suddenly, Aldrich remembered a flight suit packed in a box downstairs. It worked. "I should have thought of that myself, it's so simple," Aldrich says. "But the thing is, you're so crazed that you can't. That's the best part of these boards. There's nothing I can say to these women that they haven't already been through. I can even say, 'I wish this were over already.' They know I don't really mean it. They understand." (See below for resources for caregivers.)

HOW TO PREPARE FOR THE SANDWICH

As we continue to have children later in life and our parents continue to live longer, more and more of us will find ourselves in the Sandwich Generation. This prospect is responsible for the growth of lifetime-care facilities, where people can move in as independent adults and segue into nursing-home care if needed, and for the boom in long-term-care insurance. If parents aren't buying their own policies, many of today's wary, workaholic kids are offering to ante up.

Jodi Van Kirk has her own strategy: She's saving as much as she can. Van Kirk, 31, her husband and three kids, ages 8, 7, and 2 live in Juneau, Alaska, near her mother, 49, and her maternal grandmother, 81, neither of whom has any significant savings or investments. Van Kirk knows the financial responsibility will fall on her. Already the groceries and sundries she buys for her grandmother add up to about $200 a month.

"I just took out a large life insurance policy on myself, so if something happens to me, my husband and my kids will be covered," says Van Kirk, a stay-at-home mom who also cares for other children to supplement her husband's income as a salesman for Coca-Cola. Her husband puts 15% of each paycheck into his 401(k); his employer matches 35[cents] on the dollar. They've maxed out his Roth IRA contribution for the year and stashed $700 in hers. And she may take in two more kids, which would let her put away another $500 a month. "We'll do what we can," she says.

Kathy Hampton, 36, a legal librarian in Washington, D.C. with two kids, is taking a different tack: She's pushing her mother to help herself. Today her mother, Faye Snoddy, 60, is self-sufficient; she has lived comfortably, outside Atlanta, on disability since a stroke forced her to stop working as a teacher seven years ago. She owns her home outright, but Hampton and her sister have long suspected that she had little in the way of retirement savings.

"When she turned 60, we decided to ask her some questions," Hampton recalls. As it turned out, they were right. Snoddy's disability would take her to age 65, when she'd start to receive Social Security and a small pension. She had no IRAs, no investments, no other savings to speak of. "She said she'll sell the house; she doesn't realize that won't be enough," Hampton says. "My sister and I will have the burden of carrying her financially, and we can't do that right now."

So they got their mother started with an automatic investment plan and sent her back to school. She's enrolled in computer classes to learn word processing and spreadsheets. "We think she's going to be healthy enough to sit at a computer and take in work at home," Hampton says. "And she's loving it. It's opened up a whole new world for her."

TAKING BACK YOUR LIFE

Being in the Sandwich Generation does not have to be all negative. "Every night," says Diane Aldrich, "my mother kisses me and says, 'I don't know what I'd do without you.' And that's enough." In fact, most of the caregivers we spoke to hope that their efforts for the older generation provide a lesson for the younger one. If Aldrich ever falls ill, she says, she'd like to think one of her kids would care for her.

Not Margie White. Now that her father has passed away and her mother is in a nursing home, she's taken back her life. She's traveling, she's going to church, she's exercising regularly and she has dropped 50 pounds. Her mother's money is in the hands of financial planner Joan Gruber. And White has gotten her own finances in order. One prized asset: a sizable long-term-care insurance policy.

"There was a definite lack of foresight and planning on my parents' part," she says. "I can understand. They never expected to live that long. But it took five or six years out of my life. I don't want my sons to have to do this for me."