Parents Serving as Emergency Support for Adult Kids

Parent Cafe
21

<p>They start at 100 but people who are set on that number have missed this part.</p>

<p>“The average gift was $6,500. Better-educated parents were more likely to give: Nearly 37% of adults with college-educated parents received assistance.”</p>

22

<p>That $100 level makes this silly. I’m surprised that 75% of adults 25 and over don’t receive as much as a hundred bucks from their parents in a year.</p>

<p>It would be much more interesting to hear what percentage “received financial assistance to pay bills” or something like that.</p>

<p>Heck, rich people following good estate planning advice give their kids $12,000 a year (or whatever the max is now).</p>

23

<p>If you aren’t gifting 13000 a year you are just wasting money on taxes if you are even only upper middle class. That’s a loophole for the middle classes. The wealthy do other things</p>

24

<p>What are the other things they do?</p>

<p>What is upper middle class, about $200K/yr? I am not sure how easy it is to gift the max on upper middle class income. It is $14,000 now BTW.</p>

25

<p>Personally, I think anybody who can afford to gift 14 grand a year to his kids is “wealthy,” but obviously there are degrees of wealthy.</p>

<p>In the US, “middle class” means “people who make more or less the amount of money I do” and “wealthy” means “people who make more money than I do.”</p>

26

<p>To me, it does make more sense to research those who REQUIRE (and receive) financial help from relatives or loved ones to pay basic bills like room/board/utilities. These would obviously include folks who have no current job and hopefully are hunting for a job or an internship that may lead to a job. </p>

<p>We gift our kids $100+ several times/year but S is otherwise fully self-supporting. D on the other hand does not have a job yet and we are happy to support her while she’s working on rebuilding her health and searching for internships and job opportunities in her field. Heck our loved ones regularly gift $100 or more, so we would all be “supporting” one another otherwise.</p>

27

<p>My parents have been very generous over the years. Tuition assistance, birthday and Xmas checks to both H and I and to the grand kiddles. These have been appreciated gifts. The funds were never ‘needed’. It seems the article doesn’t distinguish between needed support and graciously given gifts.</p>