Most of the parents around here subsidize their kids and the vast majority of these kids use those advantages to build more wealth into their generation. The truth is that It allows wealth to perpetuate wealth. Its real downside is that it causes more economic inequality but in the vast majority of cases it does not cause their offspring to work any less hard or to be any less capable of being independent in terms of how they run their lives.
When I mentioned enabling, I could have said promoting a sense of entitlement. For example, my 20 y.o. Patient refused an Accord and his family got him a car way more $$$ than anything I would drive. Others live at home with their parents into their 30’s, without contributing rent or having chores. That is just 2 examples from the past week.
This is a far cry from a young person willing to live with roommates but be in NYC for a job, or be in grad, medical, law school, or join the Peace Corps (sons close friend). Nor the person joining a nonprofit or beginning a career as an artist, writer, etc. As a parent, I’d happily help out my child to find their way and take productive steps to,further their path.
Our youngest is about to move to his company’s insurance – like his sibling, he stayed on ours because the coverage was a million times better. Because their care was the primary way we met the deductible, we thought it fair to return that by paying the bills.
On their own insurance it’s a bit more complicated. S2 has many medical issues and a partner with student loans to pay off. We gift him his deductible, and help with bills as needed. S1 is healthy as a horse, so that doesn’t apply. BUT I don’t want him to struggle to pay rent or whatever, resenting the $$$$ S2 gets from us, so when thinggs arise I offer to help. Sometimes he takes us up on it, sometimes he doesn’t. We always say “we are a team, and teams stick together” .
DH’s parents often offered to help us, but would never actually help. We had a $400 car repair when that was much of our takehome pay and they said “we’d be fine” but we went without lunch, both of us, for weeks after we paid it so we could make ends meet. That same week, they booked their second cruise to Jamaica. This happened so often that we understood we were on our own, hell or high water. Intellectually, I kmow it is their money. But it has always been hard esp for DH to know that they would never help us. (My parents loaned us funds, which were paid back as we were able. My mom actually had a ledger to keep track, and sends payment receipts wrapped around her facorite candy bar. They also gifted all 8 of their grandchildren a monthly allowance – about $50-- while they were in college. )
I pay the family premium. My kids currently range from 20 - 29 and are at various stages of launch/failure to launch.
When my D, who is now 27, graduated, she was a NYC teacher for one year and had her own coverage. Then she left teaching and got a fellowship. It provided basic health care coverage, but I put her back on my plan. My employer also keeps them on dental till 26 and allows COBRA till 29. When D got a new job, I kept her on my coverage for dental and paid the COBRA when she turned 26. She then decided that she wanted the better dental plan (the one I don’t even have for the rest of us) so she paid the difference between the original COBRA, which I was also paying for my oldest son. She also paid her co-pays. She is domestically partnered with her bf and went onto his dental plan when he started working for Google. Before the bf worked for Google, he was self-employed and he went onto her insurance the day after she turned 26 and graduated from my health plan, which was the day they partnered.
My oldest son went onto employer health insurance (USPS) when he turned 26 but stayed on my dental until he turned 29. I paid the premium, which was less than $20 monthly. At first, I paid the co-pays, but when D went off my dental, I told son he had to pay his.
The other boys are all under 26 and I pay everything. The middle 2 are unemployed college dropouts. The older of the 2 has “issues” and will probably go on Medicaid when he turns 26 but the younger is looking for work. He has an inflated sense of what he should command in the work place, given his lack of work experience, and refuses to work retail, so it’s been hard. I can’t force him, I refused to work retail myself but I had office skills. The youngest will graduate college in May and I expect him to get employment. I will keep him on my health insurance and dental as needed, while I am still working.
They are all on my phone plan and I actually get a nice discount from Verizon due to oldest son’s employment with the Feds. The 2 oldest now buy their own phones. I provide low level phones for the others. I pay all car insurance but they are all (except college kid) expected to pay for their own gas. I give them the EZPass when they travel, but I expect reimbursement. It’s usually son 3 who drives on group trips and he collects money from his friends to pay me back for the tolls. I provide food but if they choose to eat out, it’s on them unless I am treating for a family occasion. I don’t pay for social activities.
Reading the responses here makes me realize how badly I am enabling my kids. I want to sell my large home and downsize but H refuses because the boys all still live here. I truly feel that I failed them because they have no shame at taking money from me.
I’m a couple of years away from my oldest graduating college so haven’t given this much thought. I don’t plan on enabling my kids by continuing to pay for many things they need to budget for (I.e. phone, etc). WRT to medical expenses, I will say that premiums for our current health insurance are not any more expensive depending on the number of kids in our family so we wouldn’t save anything on premiums. In addition to that, dh’s company pays our deductible which is a nice savings for us. Our family is usually pretty healthy so some years we never even meet it. However, D17 just had an unexpected ER visit that turned into an overnight stay at the hospital while we were on vacation. The bills just started coming in so it was nice to pull out that company card to pay our portion and not have to pay out of our pocket. As long as we have this benefit, we will probably continue to keep our kids on our insurance as long as eligible. However, once out of college and with a full time job, I don’t plan on paying their co-payments for office visits and I can’t imagine they’d expect us to.
@techmom99. I know what you mean. Reading this thread and I am wondering how I made it this far as a parent. ?.
But everyone’s situation is different and at the end of the day we have to all do what we feel is right for our situation.
I find the whole phone plan thing funny but then just realized if I take my kids off of our 4 pack plan then I will end up paying more lol…
But maybe peel back the curtain a bit. Let the kids that drive start to pay for their own car insurance/gas. Maybe charge a small rent to contribute towards food. Things like that so they know what to expect. Let them pay half of their phone monthly bills
Those are usually set amounts so you most likely can come up with a monthly charge to cover it all. They can’t live on their own for $250 /each right? I am a year or two away from this but my daughter has already “warned” us that she is moving in with friends when she graduates and we say… Good! ?.
We tell kiddo that it is our scheme to pass our wealth down to her by keeping her on our cell plan. ? She actually used to save those $40 she would otherwise spend on her phone! But she just got a fancy cat that eats only special food (wrinkles her little flat nose at any other catfood!)… so there go the savings! 
Even if my kids were making lots of money I’d keep them on my cell plan. It’s ten dollars a month for each and that includes unlimited everything. And I don’t collect the ten dollars. It’s not an issue.
Both my children drive cars that we handed down to them, but they pay the insurance, etc. They both pay their renter’s insurance. The oldest is severly underpaid in an otherwise good job; sometimes we pay for the difference between a red-eye and a better flight to put my mind at ease but I silently curse his cheapskate boss. But we don’t pay those sorts of things unless they ask for help, and they are always grateful and we always negiotiate the amount. Parenting youngish adults, I find saying “how can I help you?” and then listening gets us all better results. I want them to struggle a little, but know that if things are desperate, we will help as they decide what that means.
I had a lot of ideas about what I would, and wouldn’t do for my new grads/new adults. That whole “life is what happens while you’re making other plans” has certainly applied to us. Faced with them driving around in horrifically unreliable cars, or buying ourselves a used car a bit ahead of schedule so we can give them our 4-yr old reliable car wasn’t exactly a plan but it made more sense than any alternative.
I’m a bit confused about cell phone plans where posters say that their kids phone lines are $10-$20 per phone.
Now I am on a unlimited family plan from Verizon for $40 per line. It’s my sister, her 2 kids and one of mine. My H has a phone through his employer.
I pay the bill and figure out how much everyone owes me and I Venmo them every month.
I pay around $51.50 all in. Taxes plus insurance, for my iPhone 7 that is paid off. The other lines have newer phones with a phone payment so those are more.
What cell phone provider do you have that is $10-$20 per month?
Before we had this unlimited plan, we paid $20 per line plus an additional $40 for 4g of data. I’m paying a little more now but have unlimited data.
But we’d love to change where we can pay a lot less.
Seems like there is a difference between letting adult kids stay on a favorable family plan for cell phone, medical insurance, or whatever, with them paying the cost associated with having them on the plan or splitting the total cost of the plan, versus subsidizing them to the point of encouraging dependency.
@deb922 We have Verizon too and our youngest son is still on it. His share is also definitely higher than $10-20 per month. We paid his share for his first year out of college , while he was still getting settled , but he has paid us since then. He pays once a year and just transfers money from his checking account to ours. He’s been paying us $500-$600 a year depending on how the bill works out. i assume he hasn’t found(or hasn’t looked for) a better deal since he hasn’t talked about getting off our plan. We’ve had Verizon forever so have stuck with it, since the coverage has been good .
The plan is T-Mobile Simple Choice. I pay $131.47 per month for five lines, which includes taxes and fees. If I remember correctly, the first line or maybe the first two lines cost the most but each additional line is $10/month and I’ve got both kids and son-in-law. I’ve been with T-Mobile for 20 years so maybe that has something to do with it.
We’re also longtime T Mobile customers, and we’ve been paying $120+ taxes and fees for 4 lines. D recently voluntarily switched to a plan with her soon-to-be H, and if I recall correctly, our plan was 4th line free, so it didn’t make sense to stay on the same plan. If we switched to what is now being offered for 3 lines, we would save $15/mo. However, H rarely uses his “dumb” phone, so he switched to a $3/mo pre-paid plan (includes 30 minutes or 30 texts or combination of the two, 10 cents per minute thereafter and no data). S and I could then switch to the 2-line 55+ plan for $70/mo all in. D is totally independent with a good job with insurance, so we now pay none of her expenses. However, S also has “issues”, so we’ll continue to help him out until he hopefully can one day fully support himself.