You have 2 adult kids. One kid is doing well financially and another is pursuing his/her passion and is not doing as well financially. When there is a family vacation or family wedding to attend, do you pay for one kid’s hotel room and not the other’s or do you pay for both or neither?
If you have the means to give your adult kids money from time to time (like the holidays), one kid is married and the other is not, do you give equally to 3 people (treating the married SO as another kid) or do you just give equal amount to 2 kids?
We’ve had few discussion among my siblings. One of my siblings said she helps out her children as needed, which means the one that’s not doing as well is always on the receiving end, and the other kid who is busting her behind working at a high paying (soul sucking job) never gets any help.
I think we all make choices in life and pursuing a passion, knowing that it pays less, is one of them. Working a soul-sucking job because you like the financial rewards is another choice. I’m of the opinion that adult kids should pay their own day to day expenses all the time and should be treated equally when it comes to gift. This would include vacations and weddings, etc. The only exception would be emergencies…I would do what I could if it meant putting food on the table or making the VERY occasional rent/mortgage payment to avoid homelessness, and health insurance premiums.
My parents stopped helping me financially at 17 years old, including no $$ for college. A bit drastic but it was the 70s in poor rural town and neither of my parents are hs grads. I offered to help S1 with college but he chose the military and has done quite well for himself, now at 27 working as an engineer with no college debt. I am helping D1 to pay for college but she has been responsible for all her other expenses since age 16. I treat them the same at Christmas and birthdays. They are both hard workers and know that they must work at a job that will pay the bills.
YMMV of course, I think much depends on the financial security of the parents. In my case, my S already makes triple what I earn and I expect D will do the same. But, in the case of a financial emergency, I am in a position to help out.
Ds2 and I just discussed an aspect of this last night. He is realizing how wealthy some of his friends are and how much their parents are subsidizing their lives. That’s not happening for him. Sorry, kid.
I think it depends and it’s not necessarily entirely consistent. Our kids have vastly different earnings - it was close to a factor of 10, though the lower earning kid now has great benefits. Anyway for a family vacation I’d pay for all the rooms or all the airfare rather than pick and choose. But there are other ways of helping out. When my mother moved in with my brother they made a bunch of changes to the house - some for her, but some because they just wanted them, some fit in a more gray area. My mother paid for the stuff for her (bathroom on the ground floor), and gave my brother a super low interest mortgage for the rest. I think I might have been told about it in some very general way, but I know exactly what she loaned them, because it came out when the estate got divvied up.
My parents paid for a few vacations to St. John, and DH’s parents paid for a house rental in Dewey Beach a few times. My parents gave each of the three kids some money for our first mortgages - I have no idea if the dollar amounts were the same - for us it was enough to get it up to whatever number kept us from needing mortgage insurance.
We’re doing what my parents did - everybody gets the same amount. Same checks for Christmas (I’ve given up shopping), paying transportation and hotels for both at a family wedding requiring expensive travel. No help for grad school tuition or living expenses.
Once long ago I got a check from my parents and couldn’t figure out why, turns out one of my siblings had needed help.
It’s hard. If one ends up with an 8 figure net worth while the other is struggling, I’ll adjust. But we’ll leave the same in the will anyway, and they can decline the inheritance if they want.
It’s difficult to do everything fairly, in my opinion. Our 5 Ds don’t earn similar salaries but all work hard and have good careers. We have helped the two who earn less than their sisters probably more than the others but we don’t keep a ledger. We have helped all of them with cars and buying homes. We take an entire family vacation every year and we pay for everyone. We are fortunate to be in an excellent financial position to do this, and as my husband says, it’s just part of their eventual inheritance anyway.
My sister-IL’s parents have accumulated quite a bit of wealth by owning a dry cleaning place (multiple commercial buildings in NYC). She has an unmarried sister. She said every year her father wrote 2 checks, one for her and one for her sister, nothing for my brother. When my brother and SIL needed help from the father on few of their ventures, the father also gave the sister the same amount.
Honestly just ASK THEM what they feel like in YOUR family situation! I don’t know why we parents don’t talk financial (ours not theirs) and this is a great place to start. Perhaps ask on the phone separately and say it won’t go any farther without permission so that you can get a real answer.
That said, we have one working and one still living on grad school stipend. We gift equally for $$ and pay for trips that they take with us for both.
We give equal gifts for birthdays and Chanukah to S1, S2 and DIL. When we gifted S1 and then FDIL one of our cars, we gave S2 the value of that car for grad school.
S1 and S2 have different earnings, and even when he was a grad student, S1 refused to let us pay for transportation home or transportation & hotels at family weddings. Now that he’s earning good money, we no longer even offer him. OTOH, we do pay for S2’s transportation home and transportation & hotels to family weddings. He pays all his other expenses, including tuition for grad school (he works full-time & goes to school evenings).
My parents gave as needed to myself and my siblings sometimes someone got more, but overall, thru the years, it has probably been fairly equal. Husband’s parents ALWAYS gave evenly to him am and his brother.
My own college age kids, I try to keep things pretty equal.
Interesting question. We had a question like this on wills and inheritance. It was something along these same lines as to how to treat rich child versus poor child. But with this question we live to see the results of being seen as not being fair.
By next Christmas we’ll have a new son-in-law. He’ll get a gift like our children, probably money. But if I were giving away big dollars (say down payment or money for a car) then I would treat the married couple as a unit and my unmarried child as another unit, just like I would in a will. The big money gets divided two ways. The small gift money is given per person.
Being a kid who could have used, but didn’t outwardly appear to need, the financial help due to hard work and persevering through crises, I’ll admit to a fair amount of resentment toward the ones who were given substantial help over many years.
Fast forward, and the kids who were given all the help through the years don’t even reach out to contact our parent once a year. I have taken in the parent (for 5 years) and am doing full-time caregiving for this parent- while the will divides things evenly between us kids.
So far, we’ve tried to give as evenly as possible to our kids.
I can offer my perspective as the youngest of 4 siblings. My parents always showed blatant favoritism to the two oldest, giving them cash when they were home for holidays but nothing to me. It’s continued throughout our adult lives, with my oldest sister getting free cruises to Greece, all-expenses vacations to the Caribbean, etc. When we were all adults, an aunt died and my parents inherited her estate. My mother offered to pay for everyone’s airfare to attend the funeral using the estate money, and did reimburse all my siblings but refused to reimburse me.
I don’t need the money, as I’m doing the best financially. But it certainly would be nice if they would’ve at least offered something once in a while. Anyway, for those reasons and others I very rarely see or speak with my parents. I visited them for the first time in a decade recently and my father actually asked why I don’t visit more often. My response in my head was, “We have exactly the relationship you cultivated.”
anomander did they ever give reasons for example why they didn’t reimburse you for the funeral airfare?
MIL/FIL always try to keep things equal, along the lines of TatinG’s description. Smaller amounts are given per person, larger amounts by the unit. I think everyone sees that as the most fair, so there isn’t resentment. H and I are trying to do the same with S and D now that they are launched.
One of my siblings is doing what anomander’s parents were doing. My sister would pay for the older kid’s hotel room (to D1’s wedding), but the younger kid is going to use her points (from work) to get her own room. The older kid is pursuing government work, and the younger kid is told not to give up her (high paying) job to do peace corp. It is creating a bit of resentment for the younger kid.
Keep in mind that circumstances can change and while one child may be doing much better now, there is no way to know what the future holds. I think it’s fair to help a struggling adult child, but the most successful child might need some help down the road. I think it’s a good idea to divide assets in the will evenly for this reason.
I spend equally on my two adult children, who are now married. I always have. When gifts come up, they all get the same. They were offered the same amount of money for their weddings, though both had very different types of weddings. The only thing that was not equal money was their education because one kid went to four years of graduate school I paid for, and one didn’t opt or need to go to graduate school. In that regard, I saw it as equal opportunity as both had the opportunity, if they wanted to, to attend graduate school and I would have paid.
Sometimes I feel badly that I spent more on one kid than the other because of this one difference (attending graduate school), but in all else I spend pretty equally. My kids were treated equally in the expectation that once they finished their schooling, they had to support themselves and they do. My parents treated me and my siblings equally financially while growing up and as adults and same with all six of their grandchildren.
As one of 5 siblings, my folks always helped out the two siblings who really needed the financial help and didn’t give money to those of us who were doing fine. I was grateful for this – it helped out my dearly-loved siblings but also allowed me not to worry about them as much!
Kid in grad school gets some things other kid doesn’t. Flights paid for home, half if car insurance covered, she pays me less of her phone plan cost. We all pile into one hotel room together anyway.
Older kid knows if she goes to grad school, I’d cover those for her as well. I did talk to older one about it when younger was heading to grad school. Older lives with fiancé, dual income (very good jobs), no kids. She seemed fine with it.
My parents gifted to all of us equally over the years (estate planning gifts).