One of the most frustrating things about helping my mom out is watching her play dumb. At least I think she’s playing.

It’s not that I think my mom was born dumb. But she was never allowed much responsibility — by her parents, her husband, society — so that whenever an issue comes up, she’d much rather feign helplessness and defer to someone, rather than take on the challenge herself.

I still don’t think she quite understands what an IRA is, for example. We had an appointment at the bank today, to transfer her IRA, from some weird stock brokerage account my father had set up, to a more manageable, less risky IRA through Washington Mutual.

She showed up 15 minutes late and immediately launched into questions about health insurance.

Anyway… She realized we were there for retirement savings quickly enough, but then balked at the fact that she couldn’t take money out until she was 59.5 — which, by the way, is only 9.5 years away.

Then once she found out the money in the IRA could be saved tax deferred, she asked repeatedly if she could put more money in at whim. I’m not sure she quite understands what the $4000 maximum for 2005 means.

Then she kept asking how much she’d “get” a year once she retired. Again, I’m not sure she’s willing to believe that the money she gets depends largely on the money she puts in.

It’s a good thing she doesn’t know how to put in or take out money without me.

But while knowing those retirement savings are safely out of my mom’s caprices gives me some peace of mind, the sense of her helplessness is really getting me down. I think it’s partly guilt about the opportunities I had that she didn’t have, and partly frustration over having to treat my mother like a child. It’s like having an unruly dependent who can still legally sign complicated, binding contracts without reading the fine print. Then I’m called in to clean up the mess.

My father used to deal with most of this stuff. Not very well, but he kept it under control. But when he died I really had to step in to make sure the electric bill got paid and stuff.

I have a long-term plan to hand everything over to her in, say, six months, starting with utilities. But I’m beginning to wonder if this is a realistic goal…

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