There are so many different families here with many different financial experiences.
Since my post was quoted I’ll respond.
No inheritance that I know of. Hoping that our parents will be able to be self sufficient until they pass away after a full and rich life.
I think that my position has a couple of adjectives.
-
we’d like to retire and live a full rich life. After college, we needed to work on our own goals. I am pretty sure that now we will achieve that goal at retirement.
-
and this is from personal experience and something I want to avoid. I want my kids to be independent and be able to provide for themselves at any point in their lives. I actually have a lot of anxiety about this. I want them to be able to support themselves despite whatever life might throw at them. I’m paranoid about this. So for us, the end goal for our kids is that after college, they have a job and a career that will fully support them.
My kids have jobs, cars, 401k, short term savings, one has a house. They go on multiple vacations and live really good lives. This is the life I wish for them. They can write checks for just about anything they want. And have since they graduated college. Why should I pay for these extras when I’m sacrificing to finish paying their debt and saving for our retirement.
I know too many parents who are still paying their kids bills. I have friends in their 80’s still supporting a fully functioning daughter in her 60’s. They bought her a condo and they buy her a car. They paid for her divorces and paid for her weight loss surgery. These parents are swimming in money, they are very middle class, living a nice but definitely not luxury life. And you know what, when they fell (both in the same day) guess who didn’t drop everything and help. Nope, the neighbors did. And their other daughter, the one they don’t support. I could go on and on.
I have a young relative who quit college and works a part time job following his passion. Personally I think life is so good, why would they need to try to figure out another job to pay the bills. He didn’t like living with roommates so the parents bought a house for him and completely renovated it. The kid can’t even afford the carrying cost of the house so the parents are. They charge him $20 for his phone (it costs more). They take the kid on expensive vacations and when he ages out of their health insurance at the end of this year, they’ll probably pay for that. I think it tells the kids that why work hard, because you’ll get exactly what you want anyway. No mental illness, no underlying issues at all. Smart kid, he’s figured it out imo.
Rant over
I think it’s fine to pay for things if you want to. But this is my very personal stance on this.