My mother helped me financially t0 immigrate to Canada
Throughout my life, my mother has helped me financially, a couple of times.
When I was 30 years old, my life was in disarray. I was a looser. I was involved in drugs and alcohol and I was spending time with other losers like me.
Eventually, decided to change my life. I decided to go back to university, graduate, get a regular job, and become a better person. It was at that moment that I asked my mother for financial help.
My mother came to the rescue. She took money from her retirement savings and paid for my airplane ticket and my first year of education in Canada.
A few years later, after I graduated from college and started my first year of work, my mother decided to help me out again by contributing to the down payment of my first condo.
I am eternally grateful for the financial help my mother gave me long after I was no longer a child. I am so much better off because of her help.
This begs the question:
How much financial help should a parent give to their grown up children?
Most parents want to help their grown up children, but there is a thin line between helping their kids and handicapping them with too much help.
These are the nagging questions:
- How much money should a parent give to their grown up children when they come asking for help?
- Does it make any difference if the child has a steady job or if the child is the kind that is always struggling to keep a job?
- How long should the financial help last?
- Should it be a gif? A loan? An advance on an inheritance?
The consensus is this:
If money is needed for an unexpected emergency, like a sudden sickens, the loss of a job, a litigious divorce, then it is totally normal to help out your adult children, as long as you don’t jeopardize your own retirement goals.
They idea is that you help your children temporally, while they are facing an unusual difficult situation.
What you don’t want to do, is to make your kids dependent on your help. You want them to grow their own wings and fly on their own.
In previous posts, I have argued that if a parent is facing the situation of paying for a child’s education or saving for retirement, the parent should prioritize their own retirement.
But if a parent can afford it, education is one of the most important gifts a parent can give to a child. And as a young adult, not to be saddled with student loans is a great advantage in life.
How to treat a child who comes back home after graduation?
Traditionally, after a child graduates from college, they find a job and an apartment and thy start life on their own.
However, there are many cases when a child never leaves, for comes back home after finishing college. In this case, what should parents do? Should they ask for rent? Should they ask for a redistribution of duties around the house?
At times, the economy can be bad, and a child can’t seem to find a job. This could be normal especially now, with COVID-19. But what about a child who stays at home way past his welcome time?
I know a woman who stayed at home with her mother until she was in her 40s.
There are thousands of grown up children who come back home, stay rent-free, rely on their parents for phone, internet, car insurance, and food.
I don’t think grown up children should stay with their parents indefinitely. There should be some kind of deadline. Also, kids should not receive an allowance without any strings attached.
Some parents are cash cows others are hoarders
When it comes to parenting and money, the two most problematic personalities are the hoarders and the cash cows.
The hoarders:
Imagine that parent how hardly ever shows any generosity towards their kids.
- They avoid paying for any education or extracurricular activity,
- Are not generous with the child’s wedding
- Never help out with any financial difficulty
Then one day, the parents die and leave a big fortune to the child.
Imagine you are already 65 when your parents die. You get a big chunk of money, but isn’t it a little too late? That money could have helped out in some difficult circumstances. Or it could have created so much joy at a time when you were in a better position to enjoy it.
The cash cow
These are parents who continue throwing money at their children. The child never develops the skills necessary to earn money on their own. These adult children are handicapped with too much help and some of them never develop their full potential.
The right way
The best parents are those who give money in case of emergencies, or from time to time pay for an experience with the whole family, a trip together to a different country. These parents are always there as a backstop for financial troubles, but the kids are financially independent of their parents.
A potential financial trap for parents
Imagine that you have two adult daughters and you are consistently more generous towards one than the other. This could create resentment against the parents and against the siblings.
Imagine one daughter gets married (she get a big chunk of money for her wedding), then she buys a house (and gets more help with the down payment of the house), then has a child (and gets help for the child’s education every birthday).
Meanwhile, the other daughter who didn’t get married, didn’t buy a house, didn’t have kids, she didn’t get anything. She didn’t have any of those big life stone moment that justified giving her money, but the result is the same, while her sister got thousands of dollars from her parents, she got nothing.
This situation could create resentment towards her parents and towards the sister.
Parents can avoid falling into this situation by having a conversation. It could go like this: “Sarah, I am giving your sister money for her wedding, but for you, I will give you X.”
Often times is not about the money, but about the illusion of giving preference to one child over the other one.
A bizarre case
I know of a bizarre case. There were a brother and a sister. The brother had a regular office job and he was the “responsible” of the family.
The sister was more of the hippy type. She always had a hard time holding a regular job and her life was more focused towards the latest spirituality trends. She was a free-spirit.
Both of them were in their mid fifties when their father died.
The father left his whole fortune of 2 million dollars to his son, and no one single dollar to the daughter.
Related Posts