^^If by “directly” you mean being exempt from gift tax, as far as I know - no. Medical bills and tuition paid directly to the provider are exempt.
My son bought a 2BR2BA coop in Manhattan while single in his name only. He has a pre-nup stating that in the event of a divorce he will get all of his down payment (pre-marital and separate property)without interest before any equitable distribution of their marital property.
My D and her H are about to close escrow on their first house. My D paid half of the down payment out of her account that has been kept separate as this account was created by us when she was a baby(Uniform Transfers to Minors Act account) into which we have deposited our annual gifts. They also created an agreement between themselves stating that in the event of a divorce she will get back her share of the deposit before distribution of any marital property. The other 50% of the down payment is all marital property.
If your kids don’t want to have a formal pre-nup or post-nup, they can always make a signed agreement between themselves regarding specific issues.
My D’s best friend and her H bought a new house recently and they share this house with her elderly mother who contributed a sizeable down payment. She also has a similar agreement with her husband who was not able to contribute much money. Both friend and her mother are lawyers, so is my SIL.
Comparing to several CC parents who posted on this page and the previous page, we are definitely “below average” in terms of our financial resources to help with our offspring.
Paying off students loans: We are still helping with this. Using our own financial resources, we will never be capable of paying these loans off completely by ourselves before our reritirement. He will have to take over the whole responsibility from us some time in the near future.
Actually he has taken over the payment of the largest one. This institution loan offered by his school requires payment starting the end of last year. The term of this loan is somewhat strange: the payback period starts N years after graduation and no interest is accrued during the N years; but, after the monthly payment is due, its interest rate is much higher, at whopping 7.5%. Not sure why the components of his student loans includes such institution loans, as we found out later, it could be composed of the usual Federal Direct loans exclusively as the loans could cover the whole COA. He was completely ignorant about loans (no experience before that) so he accepted loans for whatever the school arranged for him. Basically, three kinds of loans every year: Perkins loan which is the “best” but the amount is small, unsubsidized Federal Direct (except a small subsidized Federal Direct for the first year) and the school’s own institution loans.
Wedding: We are still working on the expenses. Just this month, a large chunk of our “joint” credit card payment is for his upcoming wedding. The limit of his own credit card as of today is not high enough to pay this deposit. Whenever this is needed, he will call us to ask our “permission” in advance to help pay for it from our joint credit card first - and decide who will actually pay for it later. So far, the bill is mostly paid by us because our income is still higher than his.
Saving/paying for the down payment of his first house, it is unlikely we will be capable of helping him out. (He/they won’t need it. He lives in her own house, with mortgage.)
Our most urgent task is to save and pay for our own retirement. We have very actively been working on this only after his college (Frankly, since then, we have downgraded our standard of living quite a bit in order to “accelerate” the process of growing our nest egg, e.g., move to a 1-bedroom apt from our own house.)
We are probably well below average on the CC forum also; the CC forum has Folks with a range of income levels, but the median is super high. We helped kids pay for weddings to the tune of $10K each. Downpayment assistance was $40K each, but only because we received an inheritance. We’re done now, and what we will be giving them is time, love, garagesale baby toys and unsolicited advice!
Re: “He has a pre-nup stating that in the event of a divorce…”
Son is on the opposite end of such a deal. Wonder whether he will be asked to sign a pre-nup. LOL. We won’t know if this is the case. (It is unlikely they will tell us if they sign this. We are not interested in knowing it either. Maybe only one side of two families and the young couple will know.)
It is completely “fair” to have such a legal agreement.
Subconsciously, I think we (as this side family of the two families) have given oursself some pressure to help pay down some of DS’s student loans (and their wedding expenses which are less a concern due to its smaller amount) because the other side of the family has paid for her loans completely. We do not want to see that their marriage starts with a burden of large-sized student loans not through “the fault” of either one of the young couple.
You fund a kid’s Roth by gifting them an amount equal to what they can contribute, and then they put the money in. Since the max Roth contribution is $6500 or so, there are no gift tax complications unless you are giving them a lot of other money.
One way to handle gifting a down payment is to structure it as a loan that is forgiven over time, or after they are married for a certain amount of time.
My mother gave us $10k to help with our down payment on our first house 39 years ago. With our son, we worked out a mutually beneficial arrangement. We loaned him (emphasis on loan; we hold a mortgage) 100% of the purchase price of his tiny condo. 9 yr interest only loan at 3.75%. We have found the monthly income very useful. He enjoys a much lower monthly payment than if he had a bank mortgage. We “gave” him nothing. He owns the apartment and has about $100k in equity after 5 years.
Even a better way of giving a downpayment: give $30k* in December and then another $30k in January. The kid is now set to close on a $300k house in February. 
*2 parents each giving $15k.
Exactly what notrichenough said about funding your kid’s Roth. Of course they have to have enough income to qualify.
@NJres I like the idea of loaning instead of giving. I am not quite understanding your arrangement. Somehow you paid for the house asking your kid to pay back interest only and the kid owns the place? That sounds like partially giving and partially loaning.
I ran through my tax. No AMT! Getting some refund.
I assume that you could just write a check to the kid’s account #, as well. Few banks/brokerage houses will refuse inbound money. 
Good for you!
I bought a box of TurboTax at Costco. That is as much I could go without spoiling my weekend. I will install it next weekend… then will kick the can until April. 
BB, It was a lot simpler for me this year. No itemized deduction this year. For the first time in my tax paying life.
But they do keep track of money and if it is over the annual limit they report to IRS.
@axiousmom, re: “We helped kids pay for weddings to the tune of $10K each. Downpayment assistance was $40K each,”
This is roughly the amount we plan to give him for the weddings.
If I remember it correctly, you have sent two/all of your loved ones to private colleges in-state, plus one to a private grad/professional school in the northeast. (if I remember it correctly…)
This is quite an achievement, in my opinion.
We have an only child and we think it is already not easy to do it plus preparing for our own retirement. (We only have had a very small pension so we need to rely on our own IRA/401K savings/investment and SS for our retirement.
Our family has always been an one-income family in the past 35 years. (We started from having only a couple of thousands in our total assets when our child was born. It has been a long and “satisfying” journey since then.)
Just a curious about the answer to this question for the fellow CCers: in your life time, at what age do you think you have the highest savings in your bank accounts (excluding the retirement saving account)? For our family, it was when our child was graduated from high school! (Then, the college took a big chunk from it in the next few years.)
Is there a way of hiding threads?
I’m really tired of seeing this thread… and a few others.
Would you trade that for a generous handout?
Tired of seeing threads? Well, you can always asks the mods to close a thread… but if there is no TOS violation, it is unlikely they will do so I personally never open the Binge-watched Shows thread because I don’t watch TV… I just don’t open it. Highly recommend that strategy.
Highest bank account balance? When we sold House1 but have not closed on the kiddie condo yet. Then it went downhill. 
Why would you keep opening a thread if it irritates or disturbs you?
I have stopped opening the cake thread because it makes me want to eat cake, so very much.
People are always going to want to talk about retirement, and how to do it. This is a concern that will never go away
If you don’t want to get the emails any more, you can unsubscribe from the thread. There’s no way AFAIK to hide it on the page that lists the threads.