Posted on 04/24/2019 11:19:44 AM PDT by EdnaMode
Financial independence, once a hallmark of adulthood, has gone by the wayside as adult children increasingly depend on their parents to help them cover the cost of rent, student loans, health insurance and more. But parents' desire to give their children a financial assist could be misguided -- and even backfire in the long run.
Half of American parents are unable to save as much as they'd like to for retirement, and their grown offspring -- whom they still count as dependents -- are to blame, according to a new Bankrate.com study.
While they likely mean well, parents who support children into young adulthood often end up encumbered when they reach retirement age. They can inadvertently hamstring their kids, too.
Instead of bankrolling their grown kids' lifestyles, parents would do well to keep an eye on their own finances while teaching their children financial independence, experts say.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
“I told my kids that I expect them to take care of me and their mother when we get old”
That’s exactly what my dad told me when I was 12, and I will man up. I left the house when I was 19 and no matter how many times I try to give money to my dad in the last 5 years, he refused it.
Us brothers even joked we might send them to the Philippines where it’s cheap to take care of old people. (It’s OK, my brother is married to a wonderful rightwing Filipina)
ZERO excuse for any parental support past 18 unless the kid has severe disabilities.
I’ll give you two examples. One a colleague of mine, the other a relative.
Colleague: Daughter went against his wishes and at age 18 married a guy entering the US Army. In relatively short order she had 3 kids. The husband got shipped to Iraq. He came back messed-up, with PTSD. Ran off with another woman and they got divorced. Daughter had no marketable job skills so he has been subsidizing her living with the 3 grandkids while she tries to finish school and start a career (thusfar without success).
Relative: His flighty, immature, unmarried daughter went and got herself knocked-up during a one night stand. The father is a druggie and eventually ended up in a prison several states away. She has had 9 jobs in the past 5 years, either because she proves to be incompetent, or cops an attitude with her boss and tells him to go f*** himself. Relative is letting her and her son live with him and subsidizes their living expenses.
When asked why they are doing it both of them reply “because its the only way to save my grandkids”. Doing anything else would leave them at the mercy of their schmuck-brained bad attitude moms.
A parent who fails to turn a healthy child into a productive adult should be viewed as a disgrace and a likely criminal.
No, the parents are to blame for raising deadbeats who they enable by not giving them their walking papers.
I could have had enough to retire on by now, if it weren’t for Canadian taxation to pay for a pension plan that I won’t receive and the social state.
Instead, I expect to.ve homeless when I can no longer work.
I’d rather give my money to my kid while I’m alive then have the government try to get their hands on it when I’m dead.
The parents could always say NO
or I’ll help for 6 months or so.... and then you’re on your own.
Our kids were given grace through their first 4 years of college.
When they graduated, they all left on their own.
Now they all finished or are finishing grad school while gainfully, full time employed and living not only out of the house, but out of the state.
Sometimes people overcompensate for mistakes their own parents made.
I was forced to give up private music lessons when I started to fall asleep in class in high school. I had a part-time job and traveled more than an hour each way to school. Add in homework, and something had to give.
I swore I would not do something like that to my kid. The part-time job idea was the thing to go.
So I am one of those who made the big mistake described in the story.
What is the answer? You have to do both somehow. Let them continue something they truly love and have shown talent for, but get some earning experience in there somehow as well.
Also, I think, a firm instruction in the way of the world and the old American work ethic. I trusted 16 years of Catholic school and my own good example, but it wasn’t enough.
A huge factor. Huge.
Obama’s recession cost me my retirement.
Spot on!!! I pay an obscene amount of taxes every year. The federal government is by far my most costly dependent: a whole lot worse than my recovering addict 35 year old son!!!
Well said.
Can we send the H1-B visas back home first?
The best thing we could do for young people is to end ALL immigration for 30 years.
The book “The Millionaire Next Door” found this 25 years ago. The more economic outpatient care you give your children, the less wealthy the parents are AND the less the children are over the long term. They earn less in response to receiving gifts.
My sister and I discuss this sometimes. We’d be bag ladies before asking for, or expecting, even a single dime from our parents. As it turns out, we support them to a great extent. (Our brothers, OTOH, have no problem asking for “help”, even though the ‘rents don’t have it.)
One of my stepsons became quite rich. If I die first, my wife will be just fine. But my family lives a lot longer, so we’ll see.
Our goal is to die together in a fiery crash. And my wife believes, based on the way I drive, that is how it will happen. :)
Worthless college degrees is CORRECT, many,many, in our day never went to college, they worked their way up in companies the debt these kids have right out of the gate is absurd!!!! Government taking over college loans was a deliberate way to get these kids NEVER able to get ahead!!!
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