Money talks with parents in Nepal: 5 conversations to have before they retire

Most Nepali parents won't talk about money. The reluctance is not a generational quirk; it is a cultural pattern reinforced by decades of believing that adult children should not need to know.

Then a stroke happens, or a contractor sues, or a sibling abroad asks for a property statement, and a 33-year-old discovers they don't know the PIN of their father's locker, the name of his life insurer, or whether the family home is actually in his mother's name. The cost of the missing information is rarely written down. It usually comes due in the worst week of the year.

Conversation 1: What does retirement income actually look like?

Most Nepali parents will name a single number ("I have my PF" or "I have my CIT") and stop there. The number is rarely complete.

Five income streams are worth knowing the status of:

Two facts most parents won't mention without prompting. First, civil servants hired after Shrawan 2076 (mid-July 2019) moved to the contributory SSF scheme; the legacy non-contributory pension formula does not apply to them. Second, the private-sector retirement age was formally raised to 60 by the January 2025 ordinance, while the civil-service age remains 58 (a bill to raise it to 60 is currently under consideration).

What does the income actually look like in rupees? A simple illustration. A parent with a Rs 30 lakh lumpsum at retirement, parked in a senior-citizen FD at 6.25% (the high end of the FY 2082 commercial-bank range, with the 0.5–1% senior bump), generates Rs 15,625/month before tax, assuming the principal is preserved. A Rs 50 lakh corpus generates ~Rs 26,000/month. A Rs 1 crore corpus generates ~Rs 52,000/month. None of these are inflation-protected; in ten years the real buying power roughly halves.

That number, combined with the Rs 4,000 old-age allowance, is what your parents will actually live on. If it does not cover their current monthly expenses, you should know now, not at retirement plus 18 months. The CIT vs PF vs SSF post covers the contribution side.

Conversation 2: Where is the money, and how do I access it if you can't?

Three documents and three accounts. Not asking is the most expensive form of politeness available.

The documents:

• The will (icchapatra). Wills are uncommon in Nepal. Legal commentary describes them as "a system totally alien to Nepali commoners." A registered written will overrides ansh-banda default succession; without one, partition follows the Muluki Civil Code 2074. A short written will registered at the Malpot, witnessed by two adults, prevents most post-mortem family disputes.
• Power of attorney (adhikrit warisnama). Under Muluki Civil Code 2074, a POA must be created while the principal is mentally competent. Once a parent loses capacity (stroke, dementia, late-stage illness), it is too late; the courts move to guardianship instead, which is slower and contested. A POA written in stable health and held in safekeeping is cheap insurance.
• A single-page asset and liability list. Bank accounts (which branch, which bank), life-insurance policies (insurer, policy number), Demat / Mero Share, property documents (where the original lalpurja is filed), open loans, fixed deposits. Every household has different items. None of them are useful if no one knows they exist.

The accounts and access:

• Bank deposits. Under Section 111 of the Bank and Financial Institution Act 2073, the nominee on the account has first claim. The nominee is not an absolute owner; they are a trustee for the legal heirs as defined by the Civil Code. Two practical implications: name a nominee on every account, and tell that nominee they will need to coordinate with co-heirs, not run with the money.
• Mero Share / Demat. Securities in a deceased parent's Demat account transfer via the brokerage's deceased-account claim process (citizenship + death certificate + heirship affidavit), one of the several steps the claiming-assets-after-death guide lays out account by account. For a hospitalised parent, the cleaner instrument is a POA registered ahead of time.
• Lockers. Bank lockers in Nepal are governed by each bank's locker agreement. Most allow joint operation or nominee-only operation after death. If your parents hold a locker, update the locker form to add joint operation or a nominee while both parents are alive.

The cultural script will resist this conversation. Frame it as "what would my mother do if you were unconscious tomorrow," not "I want to know what's in the cupboard." The first version is the actual question.

Conversation 3: What property is in whose name, and what is the succession plan?

Most Nepali household wealth sits in real estate. Most Nepali household disputes are about real estate. The Muluki Civil Code 2074 standardised what daughters get, but the practical implementation is still inconsistent.

Three legal facts worth quoting at the dinner table:

• Daughters have equal inheritance rights to ancestral property under Muluki Civil Code 2074, Section 215. Marital status no longer affects the entitlement. The Constitution of Nepal 2015 (Article 18) anchors the equality.
• The coparceners (those with automatic shares in family partition) are the wife, husband, father, mother, son, and daughter. A grandchild does not automatically inherit if their parent is still alive.
• There is no Capital Gains Tax on inherited property. Transfer to legal heirs is treated as succession, not sale. The registration fee and stamp duty still apply: roughly 4–6% of government-assessed value in municipal areas, plus 1–2% stamp duty. Kathmandu Valley adds a 5% Bagmati Sabhyata Kosh surcharge on the registration fee.

The conversation has four practical questions:

1. Whose name is each property in? Father's, mother's, joint, or undivided ancestral. The answer changes the partition path.
2. Where are the originals? Lalpurja, blueprint, tax-clearance receipts, char killa, last 5 years of malpot rent receipts. If they are in a paper folder under the bed, mark this as a fire risk.
3. Is there a verbal partition with siblings, and is it written down? Verbal partitions break in the second generation almost without exception. A written, registered partition deed (ansh-banda dharta) costs Rs 5,000–15,000 and prevents most of them.
4. Is there any pending court case on the property? Most parents will say no. A simple Malpot check confirms it.

The buying-land checklist post covers the document-verification side. The same checks apply when inheriting, with one addition: insist on the partition deed being registered while both parents are alive. After one parent dies, the surviving spouse's share complicates every transfer.

Conversation 4: What health and care assumptions are baked in?

Two-thirds of Nepali households still assume the eldest son will house the parents in old age. The other third have already discovered that the eldest son is in Sydney.

Census 2021 confirms the second is increasingly common: 23.4% of Nepali households have at least one member abroad, with 2.19 million Nepalis absent on the day of enumeration. Sons aged 18–44 are the dominant cohort. The "default plan" of son-takes-parents was workable when the average extended family had three sons; with one or two adult children, often abroad, it isn't.

Four questions worth asking:

1. What is the living arrangement assumption for ages 65, 75, 85? If "with the eldest son" is the answer for 75 and 85, and the eldest son is in another country, that is the plan that needs revising, not the assumption.
2. Are your parents enrolled in NHIP? The premium is Rs 3,500/year for a family of 5 and the government pays it entirely for citizens 70+. National enrollment is still around 19%. Renewing it annually is one of the highest-return household actions in Nepal.
3. What is the dementia-and-decline plan? Around 78,000 Nepalis currently live with dementia, projected to reach 134,000 by 2030 (Alzheimer's Disease International). Diagnosis rates are dismal: the Ministry of Health has recorded only 117 cases of Alzheimer's nationally, against an estimated population near 80,000. Memory issues mostly go undiagnosed and unsupported. The aging parents' medical fund post covers the cost-of-care side.
4. What about old-age homes? Pashupati Briddhashram is the only government-run home (capacity ~230, admission requires Nepali citizenship and proof of destitution). Private homes in the Kathmandu Valley start at around Rs 30,000/month. The cultural stigma is real and persistent, but the option exists and the cost is plannable.

Whether the family agrees or not, the answers should be on a page. "We'll figure it out when it happens" stops being a plan the moment the first fall happens.

Conversation 5: Debt, guarantees, and contingencies

The hardest of the five, because it tends to surface things parents had hoped to keep private.

Five items to confirm:

• Outstanding loans. Home loan, personal loan, gold loan, overdraft. Most Nepali parents hope to retire debt-free. Many do not. The repayment plan post-retirement, on a 50% reduced income, is the question that matters.
• Co-signed or guaranteed loans. Did either parent sign as guarantor for a relative, a cousin's business, or a younger sibling's home loan? In Nepal, guarantor liability survives the death of the primary borrower. A guarantor signature on someone else's loan, forgotten 12 years ago, is a known cause of family disputes when the original borrower defaults.
• Life insurance status. Endowment or term, premium paid up or in lapse, beneficiary current. Nepal's life-insurance penetration ran to 47.4% of population by policy count at the mid-2025 peak (Nepal Insurance Authority), but a meaningful share of policies surrender or lapse before maturity. A 20-year endowment stopped at year 14 is a sunk cost; the question is whether there's still a paid-up value worth claiming.
• Pending court cases. Property disputes, business disputes, anything with a case number. Most Nepali parents say no. A specific question helps.
• Tax filings. For salaried parents with TDS, this is usually clean. For self-employed, freelance, or property-rental income, there may be back filings open. The freelance and side income tax post covers the structure.

None of these conversations are easy. All of them are cheaper than the alternative.

How to actually have these conversations

Three things help.

Pick one of the five, not all five. No parent will respond well to a single sit-down covering pension, property, health, debt, and access. One topic per conversation, spread over months, lets each one land. The order is up to the family; for most households starting at 30+, Conversation 2 (where the money is) is the most useful first.

Bring a written prompt, not a notepad. Print a list of questions, hand it over, and ask your parents to fill in what they can over a weekend. The conversation that follows is review, not interrogation.

Frame it as 'in case of an emergency,' not 'in case you die.' The first reframing makes the parent the protagonist (they are organising things for their family). The second makes them feel like an obstacle to overcome. Same information, very different conversation.

The giving parents money post covers the related question of monthly transfers and the joint-family-allowance framing. Both posts assume the same starting point: the cultural default is silence, and the cheapest move is to break it earlier rather than later.

What you actually need to know

Three takeaways:

• Five conversations, not one. Retirement income, where the money is, property succession, health and care, and debt and contingencies. One topic per sitting, spread across months.
• The legal framework now favours equal inheritance and clear succession. Muluki Civil Code 2074 gives sons and daughters equal claim. A registered written will or partition deed prevents most of the disputes that follow when the default kicks in. Nominees on bank accounts are first claimants, but trustees for the legal heirs, not absolute owners.
• The earlier you start, the cheaper everything is. A POA written today costs Rs 2,000–5,000. A guardianship petition after a stroke costs that much in lawyer fees per month for a year. The same asymmetry runs through every conversation on the list.

Got a specific scenario this post doesn't cover, like siblings abroad refusing to engage, a parent in a second marriage, or a property in dispute? Email parjanya57@gmail.com.

This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the save-the-gap section.