Where can you get all you can eat lobster for $60?
I’m in the middle of planning our spring break trip for us and the boys. EAch will bring a friend – either SO or just friend.
We’ll be paying for everything – although I know the kids will pick up their personal incidentals like SBUX runs. (After all the angst about Florida – it appears we’ll be going to the California desert! S1 is having knee surgery in Feb, so we want to make the March trip easy for him.) S1 and his gf will drive in … and the rest of us will fly.
We really love having this family time – and we don’t get enough of it – so it is our pleasure to pay for it as a gift to us all. This year I am also going to book a family photographer and get some great family photos!
When we go out to eat – everyone has whatever they want. If it’s not eaten, it gets boxed and someone will eat it later!
I’m happy that we can afford to do this – and I expect that we’ll continue to do it.
I think this is more important than anything we are discussing here.
I like all you can eat marland crabs.
I went to Disney World last month with my daughter and she paid for the entire trip except for one breakfast and a few snacks. Same with our April trip to WDW. Her income far exceeds mine. I do still have her on my cell plan and she just purchased a phone through it so we joke that I’m paying for part of my trip that way. I need some sense of dignity.
Older daughter is paying for her father to visit her in AK in March so he can watch the Iditarod from her front porch.
Last summer we all vacationed at younger daughters home as she lives on a private lake in the Adirondacks. We all bought some groceries and the “kids” paid for their own kayak rentals and we paid for ours.
Older daughter and her husband and I traveled to Baltimore for some baseball games. I paid for the tickets and they sprang for the hotel room. While they were at our house much of the summer we bought most of the groceries but they bought snacks and local baseball game tickets. And used our spare car for a drive to his parents out west after paying a large repair bill.
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When DS and his GF were visiting her brother’s family for 5 days, I heard he took everyone in that family of four out for a dinner and paid for it. Do not know it is his idea or her idea of doing so. (One time only.) i think he likely did not bring a gift to them when they visited them (an often expected manner/etiquette - we forgot to teach him this. He would not know this unless his GF “teaches” him this. Ha…her GF once suggested that it is better for him to bow “a little bit” when he meets an elder. We did not teach him this as well.) I think that, for his GF, visiting her brother’s family is almost like going “home” for her even though her parents did not live there. Their family seems to be a very close-knit one. She almost always goes home (either the “satellite one” (her brother’s) or the “real one” (her parents’s)) during every slightly longer break.
He had never baby-sat young children (5 and 7 yo) for so much time in his whole life. When he called us the next time, he said he did not know it would take so much time to take care of young children. They “glued” to you every minute when they were awake. We told him: You were like that when you were in that age. Heard that they had to sneak out while the kids fell asleep after an all day trip to Legoland (their parents also paid for this) but when they woke up and found that their aunt and her BF were gone, they were crying. Lovely children!
^I could probably do that for guests by buying lobster at our local grocery store - they will even steam it for me.
I agree with this. If we expected our kids to pay for their share, we probably wouldn’t get to take family vacations at all, or certainly not to the locations we like to go to. D1 is extremely frugal (grad student), and I would not want to travel like she does. So we do it every bit as much for ourselves as for her. This way, we pay and travel the way we enjoy. D2 is still in college, so it’s expected that we pay. Both girls are very appreciative of this, and I know someday when they are able, they will start to chip in.
Joe’s Crab Shack, if you have that, has all you can eat lobster for much less than $60–maybe half–on a weeknight…but I prefer the Tuesday night all you can eat snow crab for approx. $32.
/My important contribution.
For me, “adult kids” refers to kids who have finished school and are gainfully employed (hopefully!) - grad students, etc. are certainly still adults but perhaps not financially “adult”.
BTW, I really like the tone of this whole thread: we all accept the fact that “every family is different” especially when it comes to finances. I haven’t seen any judgment here (well, perhaps in response to the ‘clean your plate’ comment) or I-know-better. Nice thread.
Our kids are 21,17 &14. The 21 year old is a junior in college. When we go on vacation we pay for basic things. However if he wants to go out to Starbucks or something like that he pays for it.(he has a co-op and so he does have money.) When we go out to eat there are times I will tell my 17 year old what his dinner $ limit is…I have to otherwise he would always order steak. We have not gone on vacation with DS’s GF yet. But he has been on vacation with them a number of times. They always pay for everything. I assume if she went with us we would do the same. Once my kids are out of college and making money I expect them to pay their own way and I joke with them that we are going to rotate living with each one of them for part of the year!
I agree with #67. If I required my kids and their SOs to pay their own airfare they would not choose to come. After all, they don’t have the sense of time flying by that I have; they probably figure they have all the time in the world to go on vacations. And they have work and school schedules to figure out. It’s like herding cats even if I do pay. Take that out of the equation and it just won’t happen.
I would like to add a twist into this about parents and kids: both my brother and I regularly invite our mom (single mom) to travel with our families. She does pay her own airfare usually but we almost always pay for meals and hotel rooms. If she asks to contribute (it’s kind of a pride thing for her), I will toss out a very minimal amount (I told her $300 for 9 days of travel through Boston, Bar Harbor, Vermont and Cape Cod for her part of the hotels and food…so definitely not full price! ) so she feels she is contributing and I don’t feel I am breaking her bank. We both make way more than she ever did and totally enjoy treating her a bit.
If D grows up and has a fantastic career and job I like to think she will include me/us with her family travel and will likely do the same although I would never expect it.
@abasket, According to your definition of “adult kids”, I think DS is not an adult yet (in term of finance.) It is therefore natural for us to continue paying.
We had a “vacation” in Southern California a year ago. We were in a cab and he sat on the front and we sat on the back. We passed the money to him for him to pay for us. We forgot to pass him the money well in advance. (The fare was quite high because we missed the last bus that day.)
With my folks, family vacations ended after we graduated from High School. Which is really too bad. .Ten years ago I took them both on a cruise to Alaska. My mom was having mobility issues and they felt that their travel days were over. I suggested that we all go together (H , D and my folks) so that we could ease her worries and assist them both. I am not into cruising but it seemed the perfect solution. I also footed the bill for their airfare. They insisted on paying for their cabin. And, as it is with cruises, there was no contention over who pays for the restaurant bill.With the two of them, that would have been a constant argument.
It was so much fun.My now"90 something" folks really regret that it was really the only time we were on vacation together as adults.
We went with my folks on a trip to national parks. Everyone paid their own travel but dad insisted on paying most meals. We also went with my folks to SF opera and had a similar division of expenses. It was ok for everyone and safer than them traveling without us. We all had a nice time.
My oldest lives out of the country and we paid his airfare to meet us out west for vacation and a family wedding, but i we called it a holiday and birthday present (even though it cost more then we would typically spend). He is 26 and that was the first time he paid his own airfare. We paid for all hotels, food, (unless they were out or wanted something extra). The other two (22 and 17 at the time), we paid for everything. My kids are pretty respectful and would not order the most expensive thing on the menu or would ask if it is OK if they do. They would only order a single drink.
We then had to fly across country for a family event 6 months later. We told middle son (who has a good job) we would pay for everything but air fare since it was the second vacation of the year. We actually bought the ticket and I think we will only end up making him pay for part of it. Oldest didn’t fly back this time.
Going forward, what we pay for will depend on what we can afford. I hope to able to continue to offer vacations to my kids, especially once tuition payments are done. But we shall see. My parents never took us on vacation as adults, but they were not in a financial position to do so. Husband’s parents paid for one long weekend trip for all kids and grandkids and booked some rooms for everyone and had a meal for a different long weekend (but we paid our own airfare, car rental, etc.).
When we travel with my parents (or just my mother now) - we split costs. Often, we pay for the hotel or rental house and mom pays for all of our food. We alternate paying for activities. But, she is more than able to pay for these expenses.
Both of my kids are still in school and unmarried. If we invited them on a vacation with us, we would probably pay. Over Christmas, my D (in grad school with a paid TA gig) took us out for drinks and paid. That was nice of her but not expected. However, once my kids are out of school, I will expect them to pay for their own flights and share expenses for hotel rooms/rental houses and food. Obviously, we will pay the lion’s share until their incomes are as high as ours.
As a family, we are not shy about talking about money and finances. They know how much we make and, roughly what our expenses are and vice versa. When I take them shopping, I tell them exactly how much I will spend on them ($50 or $100) and anything over that, they have to pay for.
Right now my kids are in college so we still pay for everything. I hope we are lucky enough as others here to enjoy traveling with them even once they are on their own. Assuming we can afford it, I could see us treating them either in whole or in part depending on the circumstances.