Who pays? How have you transitioned who pays for things with your adult children?

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Sorry that it’s taken me so long to answer. I am with the kids right now for ds1’s graduation and having a great time.

I told my friend so much but maybe the main thing – I say this because she has reminded me of it! – is to not make her son choose between her and his wife, because she likely would lose that battle (as she should). But I also told her that her expectations aren’t unreasonable so be honest about how you feel. And then when you visit, don’t be needy. Stick to your agreement about when and how often you see the grandbaby and let them come to you. And they did. She even got invited to a dinner with her DIL’s grandparents, who ALSO relocated there to be near them.

Her situation is so different than mine and makes me sad. She lives an hour from her DIL’s parents and hasn’t seen them in the FOUR years since the wedding. She has reached out to the mom to arrange a lunch date when the kids are in town and has been rebuffed every time, although not directly … she makes the DIL turn down the invitation. So, basically, I’ve told her to keep modeling how she would like to be treated. Do things like text her cute pics of the baby when she sees him. Normalize having some kind of relationship with her. The DIL’s family spends a lot of time together – every holiday, weeks in the summer and winter at their resort place – and this year is the first time my bff has been invited to be a part of the summer vacation time in their home. Great progress.

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We are lucky to have both D1 and D2 live here in town. Our family loves to ski and this past winter we did 3 big skiing road trips and both Ds joined us. We had Airbnb’s that we paid for and treated the kids to meals. We all have yearly ski passes so that part was already paid for.

Next month we are going wine tasting for a weekend. It’s a 5 hour drive to Paso Robles on the Central California coast from our home. Again we rented an Airbnb and the girls are joining us. We will pay for the wine tasting and food. We love that our kids want to do things with us and they are always so appreciative when we include them.

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We bought my parents a new mattress for Christmas one year while we were visiting them so that we’d have a comfortable bed to sleep on.

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Amazon sends me an email when my daughter buys something (my account) This week she bought 2 camera cases, so I guess her boyfriend bought her a new camera. She’s going on vacation on Wed and wanted the new camera, but it is a gift for taking the PE exam and she won’t know if she passes until June and she said she wanted to wait. Guess not.

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I just caught up on the last 60 or so posts with this thread due to being on vacation with all three sons and two DILs (with the third GF coming next week).

All I can say is I’m super glad we’re a family who enjoys being together a lot and the number of bathrooms in a place doesn’t matter a bit. We only have one in our house and successfully raised all three boys there. The kids always stay with us when visiting and we stay with them when going to their place including once staying in a dorm room with our guy (he had a large single and college wasn’t in session). We almost always stay with an Aunt of mine otherwise when visiting that college - she’s given us a key to her place (also just one bathroom). Our parents stayed with us until they couldn’t do stairs (bathroom is upstairs), then they had to get a motel room. When more than one “group” visited at the same time as with a wedding, people would get a room due to lack of space, but that was the anomaly, not the norm.

We’re all super thankful to have this two weeks together on a trip. H and I rented two cabins (one bathroom and 4 guests each) and are paying for everything - though the kids have offered to pay. We’re eating out once per day most days. They have offered to cook and clean up when we don’t. Last night we stayed up to midnight playing Dice Force after sunset. It was a blast as is kayaking, sailing for those who like it, walking to town (2 miles one way), frisbee, other games, and chatting.

We simply enjoy being together. I honestly can’t fathom life any other way.

With our kids’ in-laws, we encourage them visiting them as much as they do us. I sent S3 to DIL’s mom for Mother’s Day even though they offered to split the time. We’ll be celebrating Mother’s Day this Sunday.

There are times in the future when we just might vacation with a couple of the in-laws. We seem to enjoy many of the same things, so why not?

Our finances are more solid at this point than our “just starting out” kids who need to be saving more, so why should they pay? If things change in the future, that will change I’m sure. We’re more of a team than individuals.

We’re weird, I suppose, but we genuinely like it and have no plans to change. We did contemplate adding a second bath to our house this past year, but once again, travel desires (coupled with higher than normal building costs) won out for the money.

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As much as I love being together and traveling as a family (we have a trip planned for December and I am looking forward to it), I still don’t like sharing a bathroom with anyone but my husband. (and truthfully I would like to not even share with him).

That’s just me :smile:

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We don’t always share a bathroom. On some of our travels we share an outhouse (non-flush toilet) or the woods. :sunglasses: I don’t think it’s ever occurred to any of us that a bathroom needs to be private beyond the moment of use.

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I think you’re very lucky, or blessed depending on how you prefer to think of it, to have no experience with Crohn’s/Colitis/IBS-D. I truly don’t mean that in a snarky way. I just wish everyone in our family felt as y’all do.

It can get depressing when such conditions take over your life, particularly when combined with other health problems.

Sorry for throwing a pity party here.

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In general we have been very lucky with such things. Dealing with my mom’s end stage cancer (and C Diff) and MIL’s Alzheimers (literally forgetting how to use the restroom and often missing the toilet) has been the worst as far as those “continual” things go, and both of those have been at their houses, not ours, but still affected the communal bathroom.

We don’t get many colds or nausea events either fortunately.

Otherwise, in my family (and family line) it tends to be heart disease, diabetes, and I’ve been the first “lucky” one with a brain tumor - none of which have affected restroom issues.

My grandmother often related stories of having no indoor plumbing through a good part of her life, including young kids, so I guess I was just raised being happy to have one. She never had more than one even raising 6 kids.

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deleted for privacy reasons

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@Silpat I definitely think humans relate things to how they were brought up (heritage) coupled with personal preferences, and there isn’t really a right or wrong - just preferences. It goes along with the “snob” thread - what one considers important, another doesn’t, and that’s ok. We’re wired differently and our differences keep the world running.

All it really means is we shouldn’t vacation together and we’ll never be in the market for the same house - but we can still enjoy each other’s company on the internet. :sunglasses:

I’m fine with a wide range of living conditions including a lot of people sharing one room to sleep (temporarily). My kid are too, even as adults. We like that we can go anywhere from camping to a third world country to a top resort and feel content. Between those resorts are actually pretty low on our preference list given options because we don’t feel we really get the “experience” of a place.

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It’s interesting to think of all the different ways people do things. We used to do a lot more staying with family and just cramming into a house and sleeping on air mattresses and all that but it’s harder for us now (husband has health issues) and honestly I hate sleeping in the same room with anybody now if I don’t have to. I’m OK camping and just figure it is OK to temporarily rough it (and quite possibly not sleep well!) but I’m glad we don’t have to sleep on the fold-out couch at the in-laws’ any more. My parents (who were divorced) used to come stay with us and crowd into our one bath house when they were single. After they each remarried, they started staying in hotels even though by then our house was bigger. It is nice to have a little time alone at the end of the day, in my opinion, especially when hosting lots of meals over a holiday period.
Well, I just came back from my first post-vaccine trip! I stayed with my daughter and son-in-law, not in a hotel. They have room for a guest even though it means rearranging some of the work from home things. Then we spent a couple of nights at my parents’ house but there weren’t enough bedrooms so I stayed on the couch. It was OK, and I was happy to have a sleepover party feeling. In addition to my daughter and son-in-law, a sibling of mine was there, too.
When I was with my daughter and her husband, I paid for an expensive dinner out, although my son-in-law offered to pay. I felt like he had done enough by picking me up at the airport and making homemade pasta one night. When we were with my whole family, the grandparents (my parents) paid for most things, but then I paid for a less expensive takeout dinner one night for everyone and we all helped with dishes and all. So I guess I mostly feel like we are still going with the idea that the older generation pays for most things, but the the younger ones help out and do more home-cooked meals or more dishes, or host some less expensive things, because they don’t have as much money.

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One of my best holidays ever was when my D and SIL were in Peace Corps and they asked me to come with his mom and we’d all travel together. I think they were rather thrilled to get the parental visit out of the way, and have us pay for lodging and meals. But with their in country knowledge and language skills, it was an incredible trip and priceless to spend that time together. The other mom and I tacked on a side trip to Budapest together, and have talked about other trips. It helps that I am single and her H is better left home alone.

I have a mixed situation with S and DIL, as they are doing very well financially and spend far more money on hotels (well, he plays points games) and meals out. On occasion I am happy to spring for a nice meal, but can’t do it for sequential meals, multiple days, so he picks up for some meals. A few years back I took other D and sig other to Florida for a significant BD. I figured we might share some expenses, but I ended up springing for the entire thing…every meal which was a bit hard as left to our own devices, D and I would have had simpler and healthier meals. I am always happy to cook for people, whether visiting in their home or in mine, which is how I like to contribute at times rather than going out.

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My kids are still 16 (S) and 19 (D), so not really paying for anything on their own yet. D has a paying internship that’s continuing full-time for the summer, but we’re not making her count that money against the expenses we’d already been paying, like her rent, groceries and utilities (and of course tuition). She shares an apartment with three roommates and is quite conscientious with her/our money. While she doesn’t live an ascetic life, she’s careful about purchases and eager to start saving and investing. S hasn’t had a paying job yet, in part because we’ve moved around a bit internationally. But he’s saved a lot of his allowance and wants to start trading through a Robinhood account, which we’ll let him do with close monitoring.

One thing we haven’t done with them is the “don’t order the most expensive thing on the menu” idea. Not generally an issue for D since she’s a vegetarian, but if we’re going to a restaurant, we don’t treat anything as off-limits. Hopefully they’ll be sensitive if they’re taken out by someone who’s more concerned about that.

My father died 12 years ago and lived far away from us with his second wife, so we didn’t dine out with him enough in our married life to have a pattern about paying or not. We’ve had a fraught financial relationship with my mother, who has had some mental-health issues and other medical woes. We largely supported her for a few years after she became unable to continue the consulting work she’d been doing; my younger brother, a real estate agent who knows a lot of celebrities but never seems to sell or rent them anything, was no help. My mother finally sold her apartment, enabling her to pay us back the low-six-figure sum we’d lent her and giving her a modest nest egg that our financial adviser is managing. She moved more than a thousand miles away from us, to a sunny clime, so we don’t see her often. But we’ve certainly picked up every dinner check for many years.

My in-laws live less than an hour from us, and now that everyone’s vaccinated, we see them fairly often. MIL is ailing, and FIL retired to care for her (they’re only in their late 60s, as my wife was the result of a youthful affair her mom had with an older man; she later married a guy her own age, my FIL). We haven’t been dining out lately given MIL’s condition, but I play golf with FIL most weekends and always pay the fee. He usually brings me a sandwich and bottled water, and that’s all just fine. They’re on a fixed income and we’re doing well, so no tension there.

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S tends to find and pay for all his plane trips and has been since he graduated from college over a decade ago. When he’s at our place, he buys groceries if he wants something that’s not in the house or fridge. He also bought things to organize the house and refresh his sister’s bedroom (built her a gorgeous variable standing desk and a new daybed, bought new coffee table and dining room chairs, bought new smart thermostat for condo where he quarantined).

D has been unable to work due to ongoing health condition but cheerfully and willingly helps with my nonprofit needs tech and graphic arts.

Both are very considerate and grateful for what we provide. We pay for the T-Mobile $60 for 2 lines unlimited voice & text. When we travel as a family, we have paid for everything, except S’s transportation. We are financially very comfortable so fine with things as they are.

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When my husband and I started dating I knew his dad was frugal so I urged DH to offer to pay when we went out. My future FIL said “ absolutely not. You pay for your kids when you have them.” We have followed his example and wouldn’t dream of letting our kids pay. We pay for cell service. I don’t know when we will stop. It’s so much less expensive to bundle for more people then having everyone have their own. We pay for many treats to during the year. Biggish ones sometimes like a bar cart or a new table. We always pay for plane tickets home for them. We have the money and it’s our pleasure.

The plane tickets thing does remind me of a joke I heard. A man calls his son and tells him that after 50 years of what appeared to be an extraordinarily happy marriage he and the mom are divorcing. He’s going to see the lawyer in a few weeks and sign papers. The son is flabbergasted. Dad, please hold off this is crazy. I’m calling my sister. We are coming there and going to have to sit down and discuss this in person! The man gets off the phone, turns to his wife and says “Great news darling, the kids are coming home and we don’t even have to pay for the tickets.”

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My in-laws organized a trip to an exotic place each year just after I met my wife. They told each of their kids that they could invite a BF/GF/SO or just a friend (the youngest daughter was in her early teens at time). First trip was 3 weeks in Maui over Christmas vacation. The second trip was a bicycle trip in China – we may have been the first tourist group in China to organize a bicycle trip. We certainly were the first Caucasians in some of the places we cycled through. The father’s idea was to make too enticing to pass up. The offer was: we’ll pay for your airfare and all expenses on the ground. Your BF needs to cover his airfare to get here.

So we vacationed with them. They also had a vacation house (actually two for a while) and then rented a place in FL in the winter, so it was a lot cheaper to take a vacation there.

We have tried to do the same thing for our kids. We took them hiking in the Canadian Rockies a couple of summers ago. Earlier, we would meet one or both in some nice place and cover all expenses. We sold the house where we brought them and moved to a house that was described by a friend as “It seems like a combination of a vacation house, a petting zoo and a botanical garden” or something like that. We’re hoping they come here for vacations.

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We always offer our house for parents (and where we can other relatives) who want to stay and used to, at times, moved out of the master BR. We had to put my mother in a nearby motel because all the BRs were upstairs at our old house. Now I’m not sure either my mother or MIL could make it here.

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That’s gonna be a hard no for me. The only people that I can tolerate in my home are my kids. My in laws. Nope. My mom. Nope. Only in an absolute emergency. I wouldn’t want to stay at my kids homes either.

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ShawWife is so generous, she would (does) offer up our house for many visiting itinerants. We had her much younger cousin for a year in the old, smaller house (she was a major help with our truly brilliant and severely dyslexic son in his teens, so it was worth it). This is now even easier as we “downsized” to a house that is at least 1.5 times the size of the old house (but now we are empty-nesters). Many BRs unused (really a whole wing).