Should I help my daughter with college or retire early?

<p>Retiring at 50? Have you thought about the cost of health insurance?</p>

<p>I believe the OP says his wife will continue to work…bet she has the health insurance.</p>

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<p>Very hard for me to take this post/question seriously. I strongly encourage people in their 50s who don’t need to work and hate their job to stop. So many don’t even realize they can step off the treadmill/ratrace. But in your case, at age 50, one freaking year? If you drop dead at age 50.75 then I guess it won’t be worth it. </p>

<p>What were you planning on doing? Bicycle across country? Climb K2? Deliver meals on wheels? Write a book? Just wondering.</p>

<p>I stopped working involuntarily at 54, and figured out that maybe… maybe we can make it from here without working. I have too much to do.</p>

<p>If you have a job during this recession, you she keep it. Keep working for a while longer. You have to do something for the next forty years - get paid.</p>

<p>I woukd be worried about the wife’s job security and the need for benefits if anything happened to her job. I felt quite secure in my last job- until the day my position was eliminated! This is not an economy in which to take chances.</p>

<p>My 2cents. Keep working. Help daughter with grad school.</p>

<p>In my opinion, you should continue to work and also be open to the fact that she may need help beyond these two years - it is a tough economy and she may require further education or unpaid internships etc.</p>

<p>Although she’s in grad school, she does need your help. It’s not like she’s being flakey.</p>

<p>This would be a no-brainer for me. I wouldn’t want my kid having that kind of debt…especially if I could prevent some/most of it. </p>

<p>Why not split the difference? work for 6 more months and put that towards your D? She’d have half the debt.</p>

<p>( I think this thread is odd. His wife will be working full time, so likely HE"LL be expected to do all the household chores (like a housewife would). He may find that to be MUCH worse than working…many/most men sure would.)</p>

<p>I suggest you continue working, regardless of whether you decide to help you D. Many of us worry on a daily basis about job security… how nice it would be to work without that worry.</p>

<p>So much depends on whether you HATE your job or could easily work a year or a few more years. H has worked longer than many of his peers because we met, married & started our families after they did. Fortunately, he enjoys (mostly) his job and it’s fairly secure with his 40+ years of seniority. </p>

<p>If your job is at least tolerable, it would seem to be a good thing to continue working for at least a year or two to help your D pare down her loans to something more manageable, especially until she gets a solid job that will help pay her living expenses and loans. It’s another issue entirely if you have serious health issues that makes your health somehow at risk (which you haven’t mentioned) or that everyone in your family dies very young.</p>

<p>I am curious about what you intend to DO when you retire? My sister found it very boring when she decided to stop working in her mid-50s & has ended up helping at her husband’s office with data entry, as well as getting together with a few friends that are SAHM and some who are retired. Retirement may not meet expectations for many people.</p>

<p>It does feel great to work because you love it and knowing you COULD quit if you chose at the time of your choice. It might help you in making your choice. Basically, I am working now because I love it and what has been created and would be sad to see it end. I would agree that your spouse may expect you do to shoulder the lion’s share of household duties if you retire & she continues working full-time as well.</p>

<p>“Adequate savings” in today’s world means that you need to assume that you are only going to get a 2% to 4% return for the foreseeable future.</p>

<p>What are your assumptions here?</p>

<p>Heck, many of our investments have not even made 2-4%/year and not sure when they will reliably! If one assumes they will live to be 100 years old, that’s a very LONG time to live on savings only generated by working from around age 22 until age 50, or 28 years. Tough to know what prices will be as we age & how long & well healthcare costs will be affordable.</p>

<p>I suspect the OP is a ■■■■■…</p>

<p>First I want to reply to Dad<em>of</em>3 about his “zeroes and onesies” comment … perhaps you should keep in mind that some people don’t make that decision and are blessed to have even one child. As the parent of an only child, your comment rubbed me the wrong way. </p>

<p>To the OP, DH and I had an arrangement with DD that we covered undergrad and she covered grad school. She attended grad school for one semester (paid by her) and then landed a great job so it’s really a non-issue with us but I would be willing to help her with grad school if it was a hardship for her.</p>

<p>Without knowing your personal circumstance we cannot criticize you but in my case the thought had not even crossed my mind. I can retire right now with guaranteed pension of over $80k a year plus cost of living increase each year of my life with all benefits included ( I am Canadian) and my D is in her Senior year of undergrad in the States and thankfully will have zero debt load. She wants to do her Masters next year and hopes for a major U in the States again. We are looking at $75k per year with very little in the way of scholarships even though she is a 3.98 gpa student. There is no way I would retire until she is done and expect her to carry that amount of debt if I have the means to help.</p>

<p>SplashMom, Even as a parent of 2 kids, I found the remark condescending. As if apparently Dad<em>of</em>3 has figured out the magic number (3+ and you’re golden). Lots of people either choose to be childless or have fertlility issues. Not everybody broadcasts their business to their coworkers. To make assumptions about your coworkers because they are not doing what you think is correct seems very insensitive. One never knows what others are going through.</p>

<p>Anybody else “rubbed the wrong way” by the " they will be picking your retirement home " comments? Not just in this thread, but in others. That one drives me a little nuts, because it feels like a threat, and as if at any point in raising your kids, you could do one wrong thing, for which they would want to punish you. Don’t we expect them to be at least as “good” as us one day?</p>

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<p>I did not birth them all but I am the only mother they know. Sometimes life deals kids some really rough cards and I feel blessed to be able to parent some remarkable children who, eventhough I may not have given birth to them, they are the biggest blessings in my life. There are so many kids in this world that NEED a loving and caring home who are “hard to place” because of silly things like age or the color of their skin. But we can’t be frustrated for the choices of others. We can never know why someone only has one child or no children at all. While some families might be able to afford two children, they may only have one because they don’t have the financial or emotional resourses for IVF or adoption or may just be against it all together. Honestly, we tend to get judged more than supported eventhough we have never taken or even qualified for pubic assistance or ever asked for any type of charity. We work hard, earn enough for everything they need and some of what they want. We travel, we pay for college, we enjoy life and we would not do it any different than we did.</p>

<p>Realistically, a person closed to retirement at 48 year old needs a lot more nest egg than a person retiring at 62 or 65. With the person making over $100k and a wife working also in technical field which should push their income to around $200k or more. In this scenario, we should be talking about many millions and potentially 10s of millions in retirement savings to keep the income in similar range and inflation adjusted for potentially 40 or more years.</p>

<p>To worry about 10s of thousands to help the daughter simply makes no sense. This has got to be a ■■■■■.</p>

<p>I wonder if this is the child posing as the parent? Maybe the OP is actually the child of a parent who is saying that he wants to retire at 50 rather than work an extra year to help with grad school costs?</p>

<p>Frankly, I can’t imagine many men really wanting to retire at 50, nor do I know many wives who would want their H’s to retire while they were still working. Too many wives would be thinking, “uh, no, I’ll come home to a mess while you’ve goofed-off all day.”</p>