We will never dream of living together with our son. Doing so will give both our son and DIL too much potential troubles.
If we could make it happen, we would like to live in the same city (but not too near) or just one flight away. This is unlikely though. Where we could afford to retire is likely in a low COL state, and they may not move to our state.
We will try our best to not become our son’s financial burden any time soon. We think we will likely not be his burden for the next two decades. But we could become his burden (likely only partially, not totally) after 20-25 years. Coming to this country at a not-so-young age (around 30 yo), we have not had enough time to accumulate a large enough nest egg, after having paid 4 years of college expenses fully and 4 years of graduate school partially for our son. (He will not carry a student loan debt as high as 300,000, only a fraction of this amount.)
I’d love to live within an hour of both of my sons. Sadly, I don’t think that’s likely to happen. S2’s GF is from Puerto Rico and would love to live there after S2 is finished with grad school. And with my luck, S1 and his soon-to-be wife will wind up living in Seattle. @-)
Back to the issue of 2 philosophies on how to fund one’s retirement:
I was surprised on another thread that a family was choosing a pricey school w the expectation that it would translate to higher financial support by the child for the upkeep of the parents in their old age.
The family’s financial particulars:
Parents age: low 50’s
children: 1
Parent occupation: laborers
Household income: 65k
Total retirement savings: 40k
FAFSA EFC: 8k
Net COA for school after FA: 25k
Name of school: the usual suspect
If it is the thread I remember, some additional factors:
Net price of the student's cheapest option after FA: $17k.
"The usual suspect" may be within commute distance; I do not recall seeing the poster mentioning if the $25k net price was for living on campus or commuting (if on campus, commuting may bring the net price down to the level of the cheapest option).
Parents did *not* want the student to take any loans to attend college (i.e. they wanted to pay the whole net price and live frugally on something like $29k).
From the minimal retirement savings, it is likely that the student in that thread would have to help support the parents in retirement regardless of what college the student went to (even if the student found a full ride somewhere else).
Interesting perspective from the kid’s side. For some reason, I have never been able to tell our son this. I will have a chance to see him in a month or so. Hopefully, I can manage to do that at that time. (Hmm…I remember he did call me first, not my wife, as soon as he learned that he got into his first school. Not sure what thought he had when he made that call. He very rarely called me when I was at work. So that call must mean something special to both him and me.)
We did not want our kid to take any loans for UG either. But we decided to ask him to take out loans after that. I told him that this could help the cash flow in our family’s finance – e.g., more emergency fund may be available to our family. This is especially true that about 1/3 (at grad, about 1/2 as we have been trying to pay down some of them) of his loans from his institute will not have interests accrued while in school.
"Interesting perspective from the kid’s side. For some reason, I have never been able to tell our son this. I will have a chance to see him in a month or so. Hopefully, I can manage to do that at that time. (Hmm…I remember he did call me first, not my wife, as soon as he learned that he got into his first school. Not sure what thought he had when he made that call. He very rarely called me when I was at work. So that call must mean something special to both him and me.)
"
He got into medical school?
At same time I come from different culture. In my culture you have to do whatever your parents tell you. And it is a given that I will have to take care of my parents and bothers/sisters if they don’t do well. My dad takes care of his brothers as well.
“Interesting perspective from the kid’s side. For some reason, I have never been able to tell our son this. I will have a chance to see him in a month or so. Hopefully, I can manage to do that at that time. (Hmm…I remember he did call me first, not my wife, as soon as he learned that he got into his first school. Not sure what thought he had when he made that call. He very rarely called me when I was at work. So that call must mean something special to both him and me.)”
I hope you are able to tell your son this, if you have never done so. Even if you assume he knows, if it’s never been said, to say it out loud would probably mean a lot.
There is probably a good balance between saying things too much, and not at all. I recently told my husband to stop telling the kids how proud he of them, because if you say something all the time it becomes meaningless. And I know my constant hugging and praise probably has gotten annoying, so I’m purposefully trying to tone it down. Somewhere between not doing it at all and doing it repetitively is probably the best place to be.
@turtle0099, Yes. Unlike your parent, we did not pay all the COA like we had done for his college though. We also did not give him a second-hand car until his clinical (rotation) year when he needed to drive to another city for some rotations.
@busdriver11, I will try to do that. It could be even better if I could manage to do that in front of his GF But, as I believe, both her culture and our son’s culture tend to be on the “humble” side (arguably speaking, sometimes be overly so.)
I once heard that complimenting your offspring too much could give him/her pressure too.
But saying you love your child often isn’t too much pressure. I always end phone calls with it, both because it’s true and because I want that to be what’s in their head and heart if something happens to any of us.
Somehow we do not say things like “I love you”, “I am proud of you.” We do not “hug” either unless he was still a toddler or baby.
But I think our child knows we will be there for him whenever he needs us, unless we are unable to help. He actually complains to us occasionally that we do “too much”. An example: for his college move-in, we were there for 10 days to help him “settle down”. In a sense, it was good for him that he went OOS for college.
A (male) coworker of mine married with someone who is from a cultural background similar to ours. They have been living in the (not very wealthy) parents’ house (on the wife side) for a couple of years and he could not tolerate it. He said her parents kept doing things for them, claiming that the young couple do not know how to do things properly. (He said "it is almost “insulting” when his inlaws said things like this.) They moved out eventually (after 2 years). Shortly after, his inlaws helped them with the down payment to buy a small condo and they are trying to sublease their newly leased house (or condo) just recently. I guess their inlaws likely transferred a significant portion (1/2?) of their assets to their D and son-in-law just because the young couple are unable to live under the same roof. (We won’t do something like this.)
^^ You coworker shouldn’t have accepted the down payment from his wife’s parents if he thought the in-laws were insulting him if they did things for him.
Hypocritical comes to mind.
Rising college freshman. I’ll be working during college and my college costs will be minimal due to scholarships and FA, but my parents will still support me financially where I need it.
They should be okay for retirement, but I’ll supplement their income as soon as I can afford to and make them more comfortable. Probably means I’ll be paying for the younger sibling’s college fees as well (if there are any).
I’m an immigrant and I think a lot of this has to do with culture, although nowadays in the U.S. I’ve observed more parents, regardless of home country, supporting their kids for college. Probably because it’s not like it was decades ago- it’s often impossible for students to put themselves through college now.
^ Wow! (I would not be very surprised if DS’s GF will also be so good toward her parents – at least I heard she went home whenever there was a long enough break.)
Back to topic:
I supported my dad for 7 years after my mom passed away, and his estate for another 2 years after that. “Supporting” meant handling all his personal, medical, financial, tax, legal, caregiver, car, you-name it stuff. He had funds, but he had cashflow issues, so we had to manage things, refinance things, and luckily were able to access his long term care insurance eventually, which helped with the cashflow problems. In between, we helped him financially. As others said above, it was a LOT of work, directly and emotionally.
I hope we will not be financially dependent on our kids when we are older. They live on the opposite coast, and if we ever considered relocating there, that would change our retirement financial picture. For now, we plan to stay put, but managing an elderly parent long distance was vary difficult, and I hope not to do that to them.
My mother, now dead, lived alone for many years after my father was gone. She had sold her home and moved into an apartment. I paid her rent for the last 10 years she was alive. It was the least I could do given all that she had done for me through the years.
But, as I believe, both her culture and our son’s culture tend to be on the “humble” side (arguably speaking, sometimes be overly so.)