Yep, mine was a BFA Theater designer and actually had some professional paid work but saw the light at the end of the tunnel quickly then after two years switched to (another school) for anthropology with poly Sci minor with some specialty in South East Asia (in Indonesia working at a Ngo as we speak… Third time in two year’s and 2/3 fully paid for?). Will put off taking Gre for a year since needs time to study if she goes this route… Will most likely join a non profit or some social justice cause.
Facing that potential issue now. DD’17 is a cc graduate and seeking work. Has a little bit of independent contractor work at the moment that may grow. Of course keeping her on family health plan until she gets something with benefits. Will play it by ear on her OOP medical expenses until she gets into full time work.
She has asked about braces/Invisalign. We spent a lot fixing up DD19’s major issues, but DD17’s teeth were not so bad, she didn’t want braces and we let it go. Now it bothers her. I’ve told her to get herself to a consult for a plan and pricing and then we’d talk. Hasn’t happened yet. IDK what we’ll do.
We kept all of our kids on our plan as long as they needed it. We paid the deductible and bills as long as they were on our plan. We also paid the dental expenses. We just last month removed the last one from our plan as she got married. She is now getting insurance through her H. No more subsidies from us.
We do continue to keep all of them on our cell plan but they buy their own phones.
We can afford it and they are all hard working.
It obviously depends entirely on circumstances. My parents haven’t had private insurance since before the ACA passed so I haven’t been on their insurance since I was about 17.
Not only do they not help me with my medical bills but I often help them with theirs. It’s because I make significantly more than them as they rely on SSI. We’re a family. We help where we can, medical bills included.
We kept ours on our insurance because we had a lot of kids and until next year, there was always at least one dependent. The charge for one or ten or a hundred (?) the same. Two of mine got health insurance premium free with their jobs but we’re still on our policy as secondary. Two of them really wrung every penny out our insurance. I was grateful we had it. I’m also grateful they all have jobs with good health coverage now but the youngest’s is expensive. He would have to pay for it. Since he’s still got some years to go, we are just going to keep him on our policy, because it’s cheaper to do so, we have excellent coverage, and because I know how our insurance works.
As for who pays for what, it depends. One of mine has unusual expenses that he’s learning to navigate in the healthcare care system, but a lot of things beneficial to him are pricey and not covered. He wouldn’t want to shell out that kind of money for some of these things, but I want him to avail himself to thosecresources. So we pay. It’s not unusual, IMO, for parents to pick up expenses here and there for young adults. Most of mine have covered all of their medical business ess themselves, but for some, I’ve helped out. And willingly.
It’s a family decision as to where to draw lines. My mother and father would have paid any medical type bill they could afford and even what they could not without blinking an eye, I know. I’m grateful that most of mine have been dealing with their own but Id help if they askrd .
Our insurance changed to a plan that charges by the number of family members insured, not a blanket family plan as we previously had. At that point, DS went to his employer health care with cost deducted from his pay. It was less expensive and just as good if not better. I have been helping with some non-covered expenses that I want him to take care of. With my youngest, as soon as he has a job with health insurance i expect him to take it. I would help him if there was an unusual cost he could not afford, but will expect him to pay his own co-pays.
Ours is only $5/month different for “family” plan vs just two people on the plan. We have the family plan because D needs coverage and $5/month is really an amazing deal. Our plan has excellent coverage for the most part.
D has been on her own as far as health insurance goes since she started college. H is considered self employed as a pastor, so our health insurance is off the exchange. It would only cover D if she stayed instate for school, she went out of state, so got the school coverage. She currently has her med school’s student coverage.
D paid for most of her schooling herself. She earned a huge (but not full) merit scholarship, had some need based aid, and worked 25 hours a week. We paid a just a little bit her freshman year. So, she paid for the school coverage herself as it was added to her school’s bill.
We did pay for her car insurance until about a year and a half ago when we moved from the midwest to the west coast. She had been using our address as her permanent address and the car was plated in that state. We (and she) didn’t want to make our new address her permanent address and replate her car in a state she would never live in, so she got a different car insurance and took over the premiums.
I do still pay for her phone bill. She is on our plan. She was married last December, I do not know who pays for her husband’s phone, he is not on our plan. He is also a grad student. I will have a talk with her in the next few months about what the plan will be when she graduates med school in the spring and starts her residency next summer. It may be a good time for her to take over her phone bill. In exchange I may take over payments on one of her UG student loans. (she only has the direct subsized loans for UG)
If my son needs to see the doctor, I don’t want him putting it off because $25 copay is a lot of money to him. I’d help. Ditto on the teeth … if he needs a (god forbid) root canal, I think we’re contributing. Of course, we have that ability. I recognize that as a family we’re pretty lucky to be able to do that.
“We are in the minority I am sure but once the kids graduated from college, they were responsible for their expenses, including health insurance, car and phone. We paid for college, they are debt free, that is our gift at great personal sacrifice on our part. In the part of my life outside this forum, we gave them much more than many parents we know. It was a gift we gladly sacrificed for and were happy to.”
I think this makes some sense if paying for things is a sacrifice. For us our children are lucky that they will inherit money from us one day. Thus having them pay for things like their own cell phone or insurance is a complete waste of family money, we pay nothing extra to have them on our insurance and $10 a month for cell service. If they were paying for separate cell and insurance it would be significantly more money being used If we needed it they would of course reimburse us the $10 or the co pays but it’s just not necessary.
We currently pay for our D20’s school health plan and reimburse her for OOP costs like copays and glasses (which I can claim against my flexible spending account). Transitioning her back to our plan post graduation will all depend upon what coverage she will have (hopefully) from her first full-time job. Unlike folks that have multiple kids, she is our one and only, so adding her back on will cost us in additional premiums. We want her to get used to the security of being covered so that important health issues aren’t ignored or put off, so I don’t think we’ll be cutting her loose until we know she’s set.
We pay for medical insurance, and most bills. They pay if there is a copay because they are there. One kid took a little while to get a professional job, and so he’s been on our insurance. He will get off next spring. Other (younger) stays on because it’s just as cheap for2 kids. When older gets off, we will compare costs for younger.
We pay all dental so far, but when they start going to another dentist the bill will likely migrate with them.
I would rather pay than have them do without, and it’s not hard for us.
Once older kid got a “good” job, he had to take over car insurance and maintenance. I gave younger til January after college. (he has a great job).
They pay for their own phones. Other than gifts and medical help, they are self sufficient now. Of course we would help if they needed something. They are re both pretty frugal, and haven’t taken advantage of the help I’ve offered. If they were wasting money (by my definition - eating/drinking out often, taking UBER at $50 a pop often, things like that) I’d be less inclined to help.
We got ours through undergrad with no debt and gave them each a “low end” safe car. I feel like from here on their should be no expectations of financial assistance. If it’s health or safety related, and truly a need, I would probably offer to help, whatever the expense.
D will likely have better insurance than I do, so she will drop off my insurance once she starts working full time. I’ll keep her on my phone plan because it’s only $10/month. She will pay her car insurance but stay on my plan for a while. In my culture, we don’t abandon our kids financially once they turn 18. We help as we can along the way.
As soon as my kids have a job and are graduated college they can pay their own copays. Not sure what will come first but when I deem them able to pay, they will pay it themselves. We are not wealthy enough to just keep paying for everything.
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.
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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.
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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.
@MaineLonghorn, D was an art history major. She didn’t end up working in the field, but her senior year internship at museum and writing skills have served her well professionally. One of her graduate school professors commented on her excellent writing and when she said undergrad major was art history, his response was “of course, that’s why you had best paper in the class.” I am sure your D will have strong writing skills as well that will help her launch into a successful career path. Fingers crossed for her!
Writing skills are a great ticket to many jobs. When S1 was in a sports management master’s program, he applied for a paid internship in the English department. They called to tell him he was by far the best candidate, but felt they needed to hire someone in one of their English programs. D2, our free spirit child, is also a good writer and that will probably open doors for her.
But, back to topic. We carried S1 and both D’s on our insurance until they are/will age out. H is a CC professor and they just can’t get the level of coverage we have. It costs very little to go from 2 to family plan. (S1 is on his own now.) They pay their copays which are rarely more than $5. We pay the auto insurance until they are truly launched or married. D2 caused damage to her car and I made her pay the repair. Major health expenses that aren’t covered, we would help out if needed.
Life is so different for a single mom with one child. My insurance was awful so son was put on college plan. Besides, my insurance would have been hard to use in his state. Who pays for what is fluid. Overtime my son took over everything, just letting me know. For example, he still drives my 2004 Accord. Years ago, I paid for new tires and shipping costs across country a few times. Son is still a grad student, so I am contributing towards his wedding. I like to think he knows I’ll have his back, financially and emotionally.
I am in total agreement about parents enabling their healthy adult children, paying their expenses when the young adults could afford to. In my area, parents buy fancy cars and houses for their children.
Parents who have the means can enable their kids to take advantage of opportunities that may otherwise be inaccessible. But too much parental subsidy can enable their kids to stay dependent.
Of course, low SES parents may not have the means to help their kids, which may limit their kids’ opportunities in some ways. Or they may require assistance from their kids (e.g. reply #23).
So I just brought this subject up with one of my 22 year old employee that just graduated college and several 19-22 year old patients today (I have a younger sports medicine practice). They were all hoping their parents would support them till they get on their feet. Some were actually scared of the possibility of having to take on health insurance right after college… Lol…