@eyemamom, Congrats for having save more than enough.
This issue of Money Magazine has an article about the average mortgage size for the top 10% earners right before they retire. If I remember it correctly, the average mortgage size is about $150K. It means that the average new retiree has $150K in mortgage debt.
I guess many CCers here do much better than this. I will not be able to pay off my mortgage before my retirement but its balance is now much smaller than $150K. (the house did not cost that much to begin with, when we purchased it.)
Among the list of future expenses in post #7658, we will plan for āhelping kidās weddingā and plan for nothing else.
How about the wedding cost if your child decides to get married before she makes any ārealā money? Will you likely offer some help if this happens before she makes enough money for this?
Is there any loan that people can take out to pay for their wedding and honeymoon? If there is, the interest rate must be very high!
If we want our kids to be able to live in HI, we will have to help them unless they start making a TON of money (which does not currently appear to be likely). We would love for them to live in HI, so we are willing and at this time able to help them with funds toward HI housing.
We have already paid for Dās wedding, and hopefully will be able to help S with grad school which he talks about. I would love to help my kids/grandkids.
I think getting a loan to pay for a honeymoon and wedding would be a terrible idea. If you havenāt saved much money nor have parents willing to pay for it, you find a way to stay within your budget. One can have an inexpensive wedding that is wonderful. My niece just had a lovely wedding at her home, that was pretty inexpensive. Nobody wants to go to those fancy, expensive dinners, anyways. Boring!
I will bribe my children not to have weddings. Much better to have a down payment on a house, or a car, or an emergency fund. Sorry to be such a bah humbug, but I donāt attend weddings, although I guess I would if one of the kids insisted on one.
How much are people here willing to spend to bribe their child? 2K? 5K? 10K? 20K? or an even higher amount? I guess nobody here is willing to bribe with 100K per kid, right? (Just a thought experimentation here.)
Didnāt bribe, just threw the wedding. If anyone who showed up was bored- thatās their problem. Lots of guests told us it was the most fun wedding they ever attended.
However we would not have done it if we could not have afforded it or had to go into debt.
Question for the group: We gave our S a wedding gift. So typical of him and his wife - we gave them a butter dish as a wedding gift, and they gushed and smiled, and said they loved our thoughtfulness. Then we told them to open it, where they found the check. I was so proud of them for being grateful for a butter dish!
Anyway, we have put money aside for our Dās wedding and gift. What is the fair thing to do if she doesnāt get married? Should we give her the equivalent monetary gift that we gave our son? If so, how long should we wait? Should we not give her anything unless and until she marries? Iād love to hear peopleās thoughts.
@hayden, I suggest that you give your daughter the money now or in the next few years and tell her that itās your wedding-equivalency gift. So, she can save it for a wedding (if one occurs) or not but she doesnāt get a do-over if she does spend it on something else.
I donāt parent by even steven. If your son needed a new pair of sneakers would your daughter get an equivalent? You never know what life may bring. Maybe in a few years sheāll buy a home, or lose a job or God forbid have a health crisis of some sort. See where life goes, she will probably appreciate help down the road.
I offered my daughter and my son in law cash if they blew off the wedding idea.
They chose the wedding. I am glad they did. Hopefully, it is a once in a lifetime event. The photo album from the wedding is 20 feet from me as I write this. As a father of the bride, the wedding was a priceless experience.
My daughter said she had her dream wedding. That makes me
This is the retirement thread but life is a lot more than money.
I was planning on retiring when I go back to work on January 4th particularly to scr** my boss who is on vacation that week and because I have no replacement. However greed is overcoming my need for revenge. I have a number of weeks of unused vacation time pay which I get when I leave and also can contribute to my 401k plan. Unfortunately this doesnāt apply to profit sharing which isnāt until the end of February. I have to be employed to contribute to my 401k plan from profit sharing. Also the maximum I can take out of any paycheck is 75%. Any ideas around this? I donāt qualify for tax deferrment for the measly 5500 or 6500 for an IRA.
On a side note, my daughter is getting married in June. The cost of a photographer astounds me. Iām thinking of offering my services. I used to take great photos with my Brownie from the 50ās. I donāt think my daughter or her fiancee would think this is a good idea however.
Iāve never calculated it, but Iāve told my kids that Iād pay them 2x the cost of a wedding. Theyāre honest kids, so they wouldnāt puff up the wedding cost in order to get more.
The funny thing is that Iām a romantic, but Iāve seen so many wedding plans go south that I just donāt believe in them any longer.
I have known several people who were either offered the choice of a big check or a wedding themselves, or offered to give their kids a check instead of a wedding, and I canāt think of one who took the check.
I am not one to contribute evenly to all kids. One of my sons is at an expensive college (he got a partial scholarship). The other chose our state flagship. He didnāt chose the school that would have cost is almost nothing but room and board. I will not be writing a check to make the amount we paid even.
@eyemamom, we did a financial plan with a financial advisor and I think we assumed I would live to 98. Iām currently visiting my mom who is 92, completely cogent and physically active (drives during the day and goes to the gym 3-5 times a week). She is selling her house, in part, because she can afford to live in it for that long ($29K in property tax). Iām kind of guessing that you need to go to late 90s or 100.
@mcat2, the top 10%-ers may have mortgages because rates are low rather than because they need to have debt.
@Himom, we expect to pay for at least one wedding and our financial plan includes two weddings (one per kid). We will work on grandkidsā education pretty soon. Neither of us will retire, though my income is much more significant to our lives than ShawWifeās. But, Iām sure I will slow down a bit.
The photo album from the wedding is 20 feet from me as I write this. As a father of the bride, the wedding was a priceless experience.