Bailing out recent grad?

Parent Cafe
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<p>How do you feel about providing financial assistance to your adult child after graduation? Does the current state of the economy affect your decision to provide extra funding? What behaviors or circumstances might alter your response?</p>

<p>I’ve been giving those questions a good deal of thought lately. A few folks might recall that our ds went through a life threatening experience, long term hospitalization, months of home care and a slow return to “normal.” His new normal includes a chronic condition, the medication for which destroys his immune system and leaves him vulnerable to every nearby bug. Those are the mitigating factors. </p>

<p>Ds never found a job in his univ. town or at home. He abruptly moved to another state w/ a GF he met online via WoW (after taking an expensive vacation w/ her) who was supposed to share half the rent of a very costly apartment & other expenses while she attends school there. We’ve learned that GF is not in school, not working, not sharing expenses. Ds didn’t find a FT job in his new location, but has just started a summer job thanks to dh’s help. We hope it leads to a real job w/ health benefits. Ds has not seen a doctor since moving, even though he’s supposed to get labs done monthly; he’s using up “extra” Rx meds left from dose reductions. Ds had accumulated gift money (most from us) that could have funded as much as 2 yrs. in univ. town, or 1 yr. in other locations, had he not blown much of it. At the current rate of spending, funds will run out before Thanksgiving.</p>

<p>Despite evidence to the contrary (he graduated early, with honors), ds is something of a slacker and procrastinator. He tends to assume that everything will somehow work out, without much effort on his part. Dh has made it clear that we’re in no position to help out any longer; I had to postpone replacing my ancient minivan and use the funds saved for that purchase to do critical repairs on our house (water intrusion/ mold remediation.) Should ds run out of money before he lands a job, all we could do is permit him to move back home, providing free room and board. We could not pay for his medical care, discretionary spending, etc., and would not offer to support the new GF, whom we’ve never met. We dread facing that possibility, with the attendant stress and conflict. </p>

<p>It boggles my mind to recall that less than 18 mos. ago, there was still a strong chance that ds would not live. Dh & I spent months providing around-the-clock care, learning about PICC lines, heparin flushes, & TPN; dealing with 2 a.m. IV-pump alarms and 4 a.m. runs to the ER; living on broken sleep just like when our children were babies; and all the while wondering about the long term outlook. Ds made an amazing recovery, astounding his doctors. He responded by spending months partying until his liver threatened to boycott and his gallbladder retaliated. At least he paid attention to that wake-up call and stopped drinking. We tried several times to get ds to go for counseling or other assistance, but he refused.</p>

<p>If ds had not experienced the medical crisis, and was not living with a serious chronic condition, dh and I would force ourselves to step back and let him deal with the consequences of his choices. The medical condition complicates things for all of us. It’s probably borrowing trouble to wonder about how to respond should ds want us to bail him out, but I think that dh & I need to figure out what would be best for us as well as for ds.
It’s a long shot, but has anyone else dealt with a similar situation?</p>

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<p>H and I provided health insurance for 2 years to slacker son after he dropped out of college and was living with an overly kind older relative who allowed S to live there rent and responsibility free. After relative retired and moved away, S realized what kind of accommodations his nonexistent income would provide him with, and he moved to a new city and got a fulltime temporary office job that for 2 years has supported him. He seems perfectly happy to keep working that job, where he is underemployed and has no benefits. </p>

<p>Since S doesn’t have a chronic health condition, H and I have stopped paying for his health insurance. S is now 25 and may have to learn the hard way about the importance of getting a permanent job and insurance and getting regular medical care, something that he didn’t bother to do even when he had insurance.</p>

<p>In your case, I suggest paying for health insurance, but nothing else. I also wish you well as you go through this situation with your S. I ended up in the hospital with stress-related chest pains due to my concerns about my S. With the help of therapy, I finally understood that I can’t control his life, and I was able to let go --with love – of trying to do that.</p>

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<p>Thanks for your reply, Northstarmom. I’m very sorry about the stress-induced health issues you experienced, and am glad that you’ve found help to cope. </p>

<p>Dh and I are trying hard to let go, and for the most part have gotten pretty good at it on the surface. However, we’ve both seen an increase in BP and since dh was under treatment for hypertension already that’s not good. My response is over eating, and since recurrent foot problems have kept me from walking much, my weight has ballooned. I need to take more Pepcid instead of feeding the pain. Dh has also begun having a cocktail each evening, which he hadn’t done in over two decades. Job-related concerns plus the death (& now near-death) of older family members in the past year have added to the stress.</p>

<p>Ds is covered under our health insurance until the end of the year, or until he is hired FT, whichever comes first. I’d offer to pay for continuing individual health coverage next year, if it’s needed, but would expect ds to save any monetary gifts he receives from relatives to help with out of pocket expenses. We had to raid retirement/emergency savings to pay for a lot of his health care costs not covered by our insurance, and need to look to our own futures as well.</p>

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<p>It’s good that your S is covered now under your insurance.</p>

<p>It may also be helpful for you and your H to get counseling so you can get support with the stress about your S. Doing this also helped me and my husband with problems with ourselves and our marriage that had been exacerbated by the stress due to concerns about S. </p>

<p>I forgot to mention that the health insurance that we gave S substituted for all presents we would have gotten him throughout the year.</p>

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<p>If he feels he’s mature enough to move out of your home and live with some girl then he should be mature enough to support himself. Maturity involves knowing this and not even considering entering the situation he’s currently in. If it were me he wanted financial support from, I’d consider allowing him to move back in the home, without the girl, and provide minimal support that way. I wouldn’t support his current lifestyle. But that’s just me.</p>

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<p>This is a tough one Brink and you have my sympathies. I have a child with a serious medical condition as well, and it has caused problems between us because I would have handled things differently than the now young adult handled things.</p>

<p>I realized that I had to keep my opinions about treatment to myself but I didn’t always succeed and the result of my unsolicited advice was usually an argument.</p>

<p>I have come to know that I can not change the way the individual is living their life but I can change the way I react to them and I can change the support I give them.</p>

<p>This individual is not finished with college yet but is now working on it successfully. </p>

<p>We told the child that we would cover the insurance and medical bills and they could live at home for free but we would not pay for incidentals. </p>

<p>I found that I felt guilt over the child’s illness (if I had gotten them to a doctor earlier maybe…) and this influenced some of the earlier decisions I made and I feel that the child used the illness as a crutch for some of the troubles they were having (if I was well I would not be experiencing…)</p>

<p>Therefore, my advice would be to recognize that the illness happened and you may have some PTSD over the real possibility that your child may have died and they will have this chronic condition forever. But if you make life easy for him now he may never get to the point of making the illness something he deals with, along with going to work, paying bills, being responsible for his life.</p>

<p>You can not change what has happened in the past but you can change how you deal with the situation going forward. It doesn’t seem right for him to be having fun with a girlfriend while you and spouse suffer health issues due to worry and financial hardship.</p>

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<p>I would suggest you get yourself to an Al Anon meeting. You will find support there and some help with detaching with love. Also with setting boundaries that you and your Husband can live with. Maybe paying for health insurance is okay but not giving any other form of monetary support.
I have also have a child with health issues. Even when she was not in school we continued to provide health insurance. We did not want finances to prevent her from getting quality health care when she needed it. We also felt that if we cut off the insurance and she had a hospitalization we would end up footing the bills. We felt paying the insurance was cheaper in the long run.
Our mantra has been “We are willing to support you as long as you do the next right thing.” In my D’s case she is now back in school. We pay her rent, insurance and give her a small living allowance. When she was not in school we paid her dr bills and her rent but all other expenses were on her. She worked. But even the rent was with the boundary that she be working on her health and working towards the goal of being healthy enough to go back to school.
I am no longer willing to let my children manipulate me. No is a complete sentence.</p>

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<p>You’ve all made excellent points, and I can’t express how helpful your replies are for me.</p>

<p>Like Mom60, my dh believes that we would end up paying for ds’s health care and our resources would quickly be depleted. Even with pretty good ins., we were out of pocket a large sum. Paying for health ins., but no other expenses, would be a compromise on which dh & I could agree. </p>

<p>Dh is so flabbergasted at ds’s recent behavior that we just had our wills rewritten. I never liked the idea of a trustee portioning out an estate (ha! as if we’ll have one at this rate) over decades, but dh hated to think of how ds would respond to inheriting enough money to allow him to goof off for an extended period should dh & I both die before ds matures.</p>

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<p>I feel your heartache. We have a 26 year old DS who shares some similarities with your son. He has Type 1 diabetes and although very smart is very laid back. He taught English for 1 1/2 years in China and returned to the USA in Fall 2008 but has been unable to find permanent work in his field in NYC. He has had a few temporary jobs and has been living off his savings which will run out soon. He hopes to return to China to teach. However, his health insurance coverage there is minimal and his city’s large hospital provides medical care but it is 20 years behind us. They were somewhat knowledgeable about insulin pumps but had never seen his new model. This hospital in the largest city in China only had one continuous glucose monitor and wanted to hospitalize him for 4 days to use it; here, his endocrinologist has a few and loans them out. Once we went on vacation and overnighted it back. In China he only saw an endocrinologist once; here he sees the MD 4X/year and the retina specialist several times. We are paying his health insurance on our policy under a NJ law which allows this up to age 30. After a lot of discussion back and forth, I think he FINALLY understands why he needs a real live job/career here or over there with terrific benefits and what it means to have a pre existing condition. We are crossing his fingers that he decides on grad school here within the next two years. I find it SOOOOOOOO hard to keep my mouth shut.</p>

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<p>^^ Isn’t there someplace a little closer to NYC than China where he could teach or do some other job? Why is it a choice between NYC and China?</p>

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<p>ucla_dad, my DH and I think the same thing but… DS has a degree in film but is finding it next to impossible to get a paid, entry level position in NYC (there are hiring freezes in place) and he does not want to move to LA. He has two internships and one he loves. But it is a small place on a shoestring budget and is not hiring. He has had a few temp jobs but they too are scarce in NYC. School in China, parents, and kids loved him. Also there is a Chinese GF in the picture. One good thing is that he really enjoys teaching and might pursue that in grad school – eventually.</p>

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<p>Northstarmom, our sons are quite alike–we should start a support group! S should have graduated two years ago but was fired from the internship that was his very last degree requirement when he got in trouble with the law in an exceedingly stupid fashion. He had a small nest egg that he depleted signifcantly for his legal bills (no way we were footing that). Since then, he’s rented a tiny room in a house and has worked in a low-paying job, though he is getting some valuable experience in field he doesn’t love, but doesn’t hate. Unfortunately, to make any further headway in that field he’ll need to graduate. Whenever I’ve inquired about his plans, he blithely assures me that he is actively researching alternative internships so he can complete his degree (he’s officially on a leave of absence from school)–I despise having baloney shoveled at me, so I’ve stopped asking. The car he drives is in my name and I pay the insurance–he lives in a high crime city and parks on the street and couldn’t afford the insurance himself–but I know I should cut that cord. I also pay for his cell phone because it is part of our family billing and I’ve been too lazy to take the steps to spin it off. He has no health insurance (or other benefits), and we really can’t afford to buy it for him, though I know we would be stuck with his bills should he fall ill or be injured. He realizes how stupid this is and avoids what he considers high-risk activities he would otherwise enjoy, like touch football, for fear of getting hurt. He doesn’t realize that life is a high risk activity. </p>

<p>I try not to let his situation make me nuts. But we have significant Parent Plus tuition loans that we will be paying off for umpteen years, and each time I write the monthly check for the degree he abandoned, it kills me. H and I were very achievement oriented at his age and its hard for us to comprehend his attitude. S and I have always been close, but his situation is creating a gulf between us. It’s very hard for me to speak to him without a fury building inside. I could deal with the crappy job and lodgings just fine if we didn’t have the debt and if he could pay for the basics in life–and if he didn’t lie to me about his plans. If nothing else, it’s all been a cautionary tale for D, who is appalled by her brother’s pathway–I hope that feeling lasts.</p>

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<p>MommaJ,
It is amazing how wonderful life is when we’re able to as people in Al-Anon put it, “Let go and let God.” This doesn’t mean not loving them. This means loving them and welcoming them as they are – without our feeling responsible for them, worrying about things we have no control of, and without our trying to get them to follow the path we want. </p>

<p>Therapy, meditation, and diving into my own interests helped me do this with my older S. When I really let go, I noticed he also stopped BSing me. </p>

<p>My S has no car, and now has lived in 2 years in a city with wonderful public transportation. I suspect that either he lost his license or he realizes that with his low wages, he can’t afford a car and insurance. The former possibility is probably what happened.</p>

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<p>My heart goes out to you. From you experience, I can sympathize with the position you find yourself in with your ds’s former illness, and the challenges before you now.
Some ideas…determine the boundaries that emotionally and financially support you and your husband. With that information, define those boundaries to your ds. By taking care of yourself, you will in the long run be able to take care of ds…discuss living/job options with ds in terms of more long range, as your wisdom might provide ds ideas he never had before…own your decisions, with the knowledge that it is being done in love not punishment.
I will hold you in my thoughts and prayers. APOL-a mom</p>