I’m really transparent with my kids. They wouldn’t come asking, because I would’ve volunteered the amounts. In fact, I ended up giving ds2 more for the Roth IRA over three years than I gave ds1 for the wedding years before so I gave ds1 more money to keep things more even. They used the money to get rid of the bats in their attic.
I may as well add here that my parents gave my two siblings money for a down payment for their first homes. I got nothing. No idea why. I should’ve asked before they died.
I would guess everyone would consider a special needs child to be a special situation, but as the OP didn’t mention one no need to go there in order to answer the question.
My in laws gave us several $10,000 gifts over the years…$10,000 to each household. No consideration of marriage, kids, household income etc. They included a copy of the same letter (well…we think it was the same…we never asked) saying they were happy to give each family $10,000.
We know that one sibling has gotten things like free vacations (think…Alaskan cruise and the like) when they traveled with the in-laws.
And we also know they were more generous with some grandchildren than others.
The inequity really bothered my husband and a few of his siblings, mostly because MIL would tell us what she gave to some grands…when our kids got nothing.
I say…keep it even Steven.
If you want to help one of these kids pay off college loans, do that as a separate transaction at a separate time (like as a graduation gift or something like that). My opinion!
Not to take this too far afield, but one thing cc has taught me – as in changed my way of thinking – was the idea of giving with “warm hands.” When we finally sell my mom’s house and split the cash in her bank accounts i plan on giving some money to our kids. They have no idea, but I can see how it’s great for them and for us to see them get unexpected cash infusions now, rather than having to wait another 30 years when we are gone and they are in their 60s, like we are now. They’ll get the same amount.
My kids have no idea that they have cc to thank for this, lol.
Let me preface this by saying I am an only child, and I have an only child. So, my perspective may not be relevant.
I am the odd woman out here, OP. It’s yours to give, and I think you should give it however you want. Now, with that said, that doesn’t mean that your choice might not come with some consequences. The single child might feel, “penalized,” for not being married if you gave double to the household of the married child. The married child might feel, “penalized,” for being financially more successful if you give more to the child with debt. Splitting it 50/50 between the two siblings seemingly avoids that situation.
Many on this thread have spoken of, “unfairness,” from their own life experiences. I don’t have those (see only child reason above). But, I have a friend who is the eldest son who greatly resents his younger sister because more has been done by his parents over the years for her. His wife resents this, too. No idea how the middle son and his wife feel. But, our friends (eldest son and his wife) have this underlying mindset that they are entitled to fairness. In lifetime gifts and in his parents’ wills. “They have to be fair,” they say. Um, no they don’t. But you may suffer consequences if you’re not.
It’s your money, OP. You get to do what you want with it.
I feel the same though I imagine it might evolve when my kids become adults. At the moment, they are all college aged and below and I don’t really know how I’ll feel decades from now.
But trying to split money evenly seems like a lot of work and it would never even occur to me to do so. When my oldest was in elementary school and my youngest was a toddler, you better bet the fourth grader got a more expensive Christmas gift than the toddler who probably just got the cardboard box that the oldest’s gift came in. Obviously an extreme example, but I didn’t try to match the $ spent on the middle children either. The focus was gratitude “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
Similarly, if I got some unexpected cash when my kids are adults, I just don’t think that I would be worrying that I dispensed evenly between them. I’m actually startled that so many posters do think about this, and I wonder if it is a bit cultural? I do have a sibling who has received money from our mother over. the years to help with bills when I have not gotten the equivalent. I supposed that it stings a bit, but I know that sibling’s family struggles more than the rest of us do. If anything makes me angry, it is not that my mother chose to give the sibling more; it is that the sibling chose to take more even knowing that choice might my elderly mother’s financial situation more perilous. So I am annoyed with my sibling for not being thoughtful not with my parent for not trying to make things “fair.” She raised me. She doesn’t owe it to me to make things fair.
We have three children with radically different needs and future plans. So, we’ve never tried to make the money spent/given to each of them come out exactly even (though they did each get the same college budget). I wouldn’t want to spend the time and energy scorekeeping - do we count the orthopedic surgery/sport rehab costs incurred by one, to the private music lessons paid for another? I believe it’s close to parity, even if the money was spent unevenly across the years.
My ILs were what I would considered overly-scrupulous with making everything exactly equal between their children. Spouse has received many ‘surprise’ checks over the years with a note from his parents explaining they just gave the same amount to his sibling so were ‘trueing up’ the accounts, as it were. It has made us both uncomfortable as the reasons for the cash given to sibling were also shared at the same time. We didn’t want that kind of insight into the spending/money management of someone else, especially when it was none of our business.
If we were to give money towards downpayment/weddings/warm hands gifts - I think we would give the same amount of money to each child/household. We aren’t yet at that point, so I may well be mistaken as to what future us will choose to do.
I have an only child too and my parents were very fair with my brother and I and tried to even everything out. I’m definitely in the keep it fair and even camp.
We have other family members that played favorites with money, and I can attest that there are still hard feelings 30+ years later.
I think playing favorites among children does lead to hard feelings, and it is super difficult when a family has that dynamic. Or a black sheep/favoite/scapegoat dynamic among the siblings, but I guess that I don’t associate one child getting more money (in my family) as a sign of that child being the favorite. There are so many ways beyond monetary gifts to show love. I wouldn’t assume that a cash gift is a sign of favoritism. I don’t know.
My mother will spend hours on the phone gabbing with me and she’ll go shopping with me for random things, activities that she doesn’t do at all with the sibling that she has given money too. She probably chats with them on the phone once every six months if even. I’m not sure that time spent makes me her favorite, but I don’t think her giving that sibling cash makes them her favorite either.
I agree with others that no matter how close you feel to a child’s partner, it’s far more fair to divide gifts by household.
I could understand the temptation to use a “per capita” rationale if the more economically-challenged household were the “coupled” one. But advantaging the dual-income household when they’re already in better shape financially doesn’t make sense to me at all. 50:50 by household would be my baseline, and then I might look for ways to help out the single/indebted/student child a bit more if it can be accomplished without hard feelings… but tilting in the other direction would be a big nope, for me.
I admit, when I think about gifts, I consider how I think the potential gift-ees spend money.
My son was VERY frugal in college, shopping at Costco and eating at home, paying attention to costs, not drinking alcohol, etc.
My step-d thought spending $250 a month on Uber and eating and drinking out “only 3 times a week” (3 drinks a pop) was perfectly reasonable.
So, the fact that she doesn’t make as much money as he does now, does NOT make me think we should gift her more money, even though she has graduate school debt, that we made clear we were not paying for.
If she’d been more frugal along the way, I’d be more inclined to “help” her, but I feel like she needs to feel the impact of her choices.
re: fairness… I think there’s a big difference between a one time cash gift given to all parties at the same time vs trying to balance out every EC cost, every difference in clothing article, Xmas present, etc. I try to be reasonably fair with the latter, but no way am I going to count all of the nickels and dimes.
And of course, it’s your money to give, but I would also hate for one kid to feel like I love one more than the other! I hope both of my kids (and GFs) know that I love them all with everything I’ve got and would do whatever I could for them. That’s what I tell them anyway.
But there are some cases when I give “gifts” to one and not the other. Once, younger S flew home to see me. I asked if GF couldn’t make it. He replied, she wanted to, but she couldn’t afford the ticket. Oh no! If she WANTS to see me, do not let $$$ stop her. I told them I’d pay for her ticket if she wanted to come. And that’s what I’ve done. Of course, they also fly Jet Blue with only personal items, so it’s not like it’s that much. And I know they are appreciative, since they constantly thank me. Older S/GF live within driving distance, so I’ve never done anything like that for them. But I would if ever a need arose. And soon younger S/GF will also be within driving distance, so it’s not something I’ll have to keep doing forever either.
But IMO that’s a different ballgame than 1 one time large cash gift handed out to parties at the same time.
Yeah, when the kids were quite young, I made sure they knew that fair isn’t necessarily equal. The easiest/best example of that was their sports ECs. Ds1 was in a pretty inexpensive sport in terms of enrolling, but the equipment was expensive. Ds2 played a travel sport so the price of admission was much steeper than ds1’s sport, but the equipment was cheap. They understood perfectly.
It you are not fair with big gifts to your children, they might not only feel that you love one more than the other, but it might also damage their relationship with each other.
@Youdon_tsay gave the best example of what the OP needs to think about, as far as I’m concerned.
Would you want one kid to kid half the estate when there are 4 kids - probably not.
If I am lucky enough to have grandkids, other than saving for their educations, I want the “wealth” to come through their parents to them, of there is any “wealth” left when I die.
Sure, there may be an “x amount per grand-kid” that I’d leave per, but I don’t wouldn’t want one family, that have twice as many kids as another, to get way more money - that just doesn’t seem fair to me.
I won’t derail the thread to ask what people think should happen when you have one “kid” who doesn’t even speak to you, but it is a tough situation.
