<p>Your post just prompted some thought of mine. They were not directed towards your specific situation. :)</p>
<p>BC Eagle,</p>
<p>“There are a lot of people in the US that have or make a lot of money. There are more that don’t have or make a lot of money. If you associate with and/or work mostly with one of the groups, then you might not realize that there are lots of the other. A random Google search on the number of millionaires in the US turns up 9 million.”</p>
<p>I know. That’s why I said, “I can’t RELATE”. Surely, I understand that my sacrifices are not of the same size or scope as others for MULTIPLE reasons. It’s just difficult for me to relate at all.</p>
<p>“This is the kind of environment that I grew up in with my mother working two jobs to support the family and my father working on and off (mostly off), not helping at all with the housework and taking off for long periods of time. They eventually separated but he came back on and off because he had nowhere else to go. You can imagine the kind of resentment my mother had and the kind of marital situation that resulted.”</p>
<p>Wow, that’s terrible. That has not really been our experience. I rely on him greatly for things not monetary and he comes through in blazing brilliant color. We’re best buds and I cannot imagine life without him. We’re both pretty happy with the situation.</p>
<p>“There are warnings and cautions that parents give kids when they are in their early 20s. I ignored those and perhaps I would have saved myself some problems by listening to them. Using the wisdom and knowledge of others can make the path of life easier. Unfortunately, 20-year-olds think that they’re smarter than their parents. Until they get a lot older.”</p>
<p>Very true. Even though we’re not tangled up too much in their finances, and we’re happy with their choices overall, we’re not short on advice! :)</p>
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On the one hand you say that your fiance/husband was an industrious young man who worked hard to put himself through college, had a plan to pay off the debts, did so in 5 years, and is presumably a good provider and a good husband even to this day. But your parents resented that he would benefit from their hard work and generosity? I don’t understand this. </p>
<p>Would they have preferred that you remain single, so that no unrelated person would ever benefit? Or that you marry someone who was already rich enough (and debt free) so that you wouldn’t need any “assistance” from them? Did they ever indicate in some way that they resented “helping” him or the fact that he was benefiting?</p>
<p>One thing to consider–limiting choices based on existing financial status of those in marriage pool may be QUITE limiting, considering how many people take on debt in connection with their educations. Debt, financial compatibility are things to consider, as well as all other factors, NOT sole issues and really up to the parties involved.</p>
<p>^ Good point HImom…</p>
<p>Debt/financial compatibility…</p>
<p>Really it can be a matter of someone buying something they cant afford…in this case education …</p>
<p>Money is a tool.<br>
Debt - and the amount of debt that people carry - whether carried over credit card or bulging educational loans etc is often a red flag.</p>
<p>Suze Orman often tells people they CANNOT afford things they want to buy…Wish she’d do the same to these kids.</p>
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<p>Well said. </p>
<p>To me the level of debt would be a BIG variable in the conversation. At 99+% of the schools in the US any student on financial aid will have some student loans when they graduate. I can’t imagine having a conversation with my kids which essentially says I have concerns with any possible mate who went to school on financial aid. A ton a debt would rank a conversation … but a manageable level of debt would typical for the majority of college educated possible mates.</p>
<p>Ok i’ ll bet. The cynic in me notes the scenario where your debt free child marries the SO with heavy debt. They scrimp and save and pay the bulk of it down… And they get divorced. I put my first husband thru BU and he promptly split within 2 years of my paying for his degree. I.'m finally getting the money back now by making him contribute to our son’s pricey college …</p>
<p>Really, the parents and loved ones need to step up to the plate and help serve as a reality check instead of cheering on, “dream school at all costs,” and co-signing ginormous loans that hamstring everyone for a very, very long time.</p>
<p>Marriage is a long way off for Joy and Love, but they will be debt-free out of undergraduate studies, and then both say they want to go to sponsored science grad programs. In other words, they will be poor for a while.</p>
<p>I’m with BCEagle on the concern about the in-laws family finances, not just the future spouse. If the future in-laws borrowed heavily to pay for college, and didn’t save for retirement, that’s a financial time bomb. But how do you know? Maybe they seem wealthy but are up to their ears in debt. Maybe they seem to be just making ends meet, but are sitting on a trust fund. There are just so many permutations of what could be that maybe it’s better not to focus on one thing to worry or warn about.</p>
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Love that woman! I can imagine it now:
Suze: What do you want to buy?
Kid: I want to go to this fancy pants school I was accepted to. I’m a great student, I’ve held two part time jobs and hope to do the same in college. Yada yada yada.
Suze: What are you majoring in?
Kid: <em>insert some non lucrative major</em>
Suze: Sorry, kid, but you are DENIED! You can’t afford to go to a school that will put you into $100K in debt. </p>
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True, but existing and future financial status is heavily weighted in my book.</p>
<p>Neither H or I had any college debt when we married in our early 20’s.</p>
<p>We hadn’t been to college! ;)</p>
<p>I graduated with the amount of money in my savings account that I borrowed in my 7 years of college & grad school. My H worked his way through college over 7 years and owed nothing. I agree that no one really knows what potential in-laws have saved and/or borrowed over the years, whether they will need to have help as they age (financially or physically or in any other way). It can be tough to know whether any sibs of beloved may also need some help in some way.</p>
<p>Our friends are happily married but do have as a sore spot in their 26 year marriage that the H is “expected” by his family to help out his sibs who have made poor life choices. Another friend also felt obligated to help out his sibs who have not made as much money or achieved as much over their careers–the friend was an MD and his sibs were service workers earning close to minimum wages. It can make tough times in the marriage and the MD’s 25+ year marriage didn’t make it. My other friends keep several different accounts, so they can only considering donating funds and resources from the H’s account and not their joint or the W’s individual account. I am glad not to have these complications for now, but at least one of my sibs is grumbling that they have no retirement savings and are in their late 50s (they’re the ones who have been to Europe many times and always have new vehicles, etc.)</p>
<p>Wow! What hapened to “for richer or poorer; in sickness and in health”? I have never been married (adopted my daughter) but we have many couples in our social circle. There are many imbalances in salaries and working hours and home responsibility and philosophy of spending and saving, but they work it out. My daughter is extremely conservative about money, but I am glad she was exposed to such a variety of people.</p>
<p>Her best friend’s dad died of an aneurism when she was in third grade. This girl is a h.s. junior now and a few years ago, her mom became involved with a wonderful guy. The mom’s financial situation is much more stable than that of her partner, and I am sure they will never marry, at least until all the kids are grown and out of the house. For people without religious ideas about marriage, with children from prior relationships, and with different debt loads, credit ratings, etc., that may be a good way to go. But they are adults, as will be all of our kids eventually, and IMHO all they can do is make sure their kids have a good understanding of personal finance, and assuming the fiance/e is a good person and a good match, a good future parent, and then welcome the new family member.</p>
<p>It’s hard to read all the conditions some parents place on helping their kids through school. If you don’t have it, fine. If you don’t want to borrow or contribute because you think it’s not a good place for your kid or unrealistically expensive, fine. But to place conditions on future spouses, I don’t get that. It’s not I who would bear the burden of a partner with a lot of debt; my kid would, as she would with assuming any kind of debt. </p>
<p>The caged bird flies away when you leave the door open. I want a good relationship with my kid and her future partner for the rest of my life.</p>
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<p>How would you feel if your daughter was Katherine Russell?</p>
<p>BCEagle, of course I would be horrified. But it is what it is. My daughter will be an adult when she turns 21 (18 in some respects), and I hope I am “graduating” the adult I’d like her to be. But I am sure she will make decisions I don’t agree with. I hope I never have to feel so disappointed that I have to cut contact, but she will always be my daughter.</p>
<p>Tsarnaev was a violent guy, had a history of assaulting a former girlfriend, didn’t seem able to support himself and was uneducated. If you’re the parent and you know this, what do you say - before marriage of course. Then he convinces her to drop out of college, gets her pregnant and changes her religion.</p>
<p>My daughter dated two guys that she met at school. I met both of them. I told her what I thought of them. The first one turned out to be a stalker and I suggested that she go to campus police if he continued to bother her. One of her professors noticed his behavior and offered to go to security over him. The other guy was not as bad but he got aggressive which really turned my daughter off on him. So she considers me a good judge of guys now. But what do you do if you can see that your son or daughter is headed for a train wreck?</p>
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<p>I would like to think that I would try to find the right strategy for her to regain her footing. I made some awful choices when I was a young adult, and I cut myself off from my parents because I was sure they would be angry and disappointed and I couldn’t face that. I am sure they knew something was amiss and didn’t know what to do. I like to think that my mistakes made me a better parent to my daughter. And I think that a letter or email or text letting her know I was there for her whenever she was ready to come home would be a more successful strategy than cutting her off.</p>
<p>My son is about to propose to a girl who has $200k+ (medical and UG) school debt while we worked hard to make sure he has none. She is finishing up her residency and is in a field that has the lowest level of compensation.
He is going to purchase an apt in NYC on his own before marriage and knows enough not to co-mingle his premarital assets. After marriage, it’s 50/50.</p>
<p>BC, my daughter went through a ton of boyfriends that were not suitable for her. We knew that within seconds of meeting them but it took her sometimes a few years to recognize that. Fortunately she did not marry them.</p>
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<p>How do you feel about that?</p>
<p>She is a nice girl from a close knit family. What I can’t understand is that her parents are retired (Dad is younger than my H), go on vacations, yet not helping with kids’ tuition.
I come from a culture that will starve first but will pay for the kids’ education. My H has no plans to retire, loves his work.</p>