Comment by raw_anon_1111
4 days ago
Looking at statistics of how much most people have in income in retirement and how much most depend on social security, people aren’t retiring rich.
While I understand helping your kids to “launch”, letting them move back in for a couple of years after they graduate, subsidizing some of their expenses because they aren’t making enough to live where the opportunities are early on, etc, I never understood why parents pressure themselves helping grown kids buy houses, pay for expensive weddings etc.
I told my parents plenty of times they should “die dead broke” - in other words spend their last dollar on their last breath and not worry about leaving me anything (only child).
I can’t explain the parents pressuring themselves.
if you look at any tier one city’s job centers unless you have a great career, living in a comfortable home near your house just isn’t affordable on a regular person salary.
Which means your kids spend more time in their car and less time parenting their kids.
Many families, especially ones that were careful with their spending, will choose to support their kids and enable them to live in neighborhoods. They couldn’t normally afford on their lower income.
That’s just it, why should parents feel a moral obligation to be careful with their spending above helping their kids through college, helping them early on and then after that, it’s time for parents to “enjoy their best lives”.
But let’s be realistic. The median income of a retired couple is only around $85K a year.
https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/planning/what-aver...
The median net worth is around a quarter million.
https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-net-worth-of-americans-a...
Parents should set expectations early on - don’t have any expectations that our job is to make your life easier once you are launched Once you decide to get married and have kids, your life is your responsibility. If my wife and I have any excess after taking care of all of our needs and wants. We will help our adult children. Even now at 51 and 49. Our older son (28) knows that we will help him a little but not much and our younger son 23 knows that the subsidies are cut once he turns 26.
I save “enough” for retirement for my wife and I to be comfortable. But we aren’t over savers. We travel a lot, and enjoy ourselves.
We asked our younger son was he absolutely sure he didn’t want to go college. We told him once he made that choice, we were moving to Florida, left him in Atlanta at our house and he and two of his friends paid us (heavily subsidized) rent for a year and a half and we helped them move out on their own when we sold our home.
We have a two bedroom and one is an office. There is no room for our kids to move back in Even when we leave for months at a time we rent it out as a short term rental (prime location six miles from Disney).
> it’s time for parents to “enjoy their best lives”.
Personally, spending money doesn't bring joy to my life above a certain threshold. Research agrees with this sentiment [0]. I don't believe that a $400 camping trip near my house is 10x worse than $4000 trip to Europe. Likewise, you moving to FL (reducing lifestyle costs by 20%) doesn't make your life 20% worse than wherever you were living before.
My issue with broad national or global surveys is they are largely meaningless on the individual level. You could be double the national income/wealth, but you still can't retire in Manhattan (if that is where you want to live due to being near your kids). Also, why stop at national? Why not compare yourself to global income/wealth?
But circling back to the original point: If the next generation wants to live in a good area [2] in a tier1 city, the either need to the top 10% of their field or their parents need to lift them up. If someone wants to skip college to pursue plumbing, great! but they will never be able to compete with DINK tech/finance/medical households or trust fund kids bidding on properties in Buckhead.
Land isn't growing, but population is. Even if only 1% of the parents each year subsidize their kid's housing, as t approaches infinity, cities will be filled with DINK and trust fund families.
[0] - https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/does-more-money-correlate-g...
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Die-Zero-Getting-Your-Money/dp/035856...
1 reply →