If you’ve ever wondered that, you should read this MSN article (via Escape Brooklyn).
I think I got lucky. My mom is a pretty savvy lady when it comes to money. Though my parents had a relatively late start to retirement planning and investing, they’ve done okay for themselves and are continuing to amass a little nest egg.
Sometimes I’m surprised at how progressive Mom is – she has never said “promise you won’t put us in a home,” instead, it’s “we want to prepare financially so that if/when we have to go to a retirement community, we can go to a nice one, or we can hire in-home aid.”
When family friends and relatives joke that when I become financially stable I will take care of my parents, Mom always interject, “the responsibility of children, when they grow up, is first to their family and kids.” She also said to me many times that the greatest gift she can leave me is peace of mind.
After reading this article, I come away with greater gratitude for Mom’s wise choices. I hope that if/when I become a mom, I can be as wise as she is.
To my readers:
Do you think you will have to support your parents in their retirement?
If you are a parent, would you expect your children to support you in your retirement? Either way, (how) do you make your expectations known?
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Man I guess I’m off to a bad start.. I’m already helping support my parents thanks to this recession!
I’m with Matt. I am already having to help out financially and my mom is a few years from retirement. I know when it comes time for her to retire, there’s not going to be anything there.
I’m not sure. Luckily my dad has some sort of pension, and they’ll have a paid off home. But they might need something. And I have two sisters, so there will be 3 of us to help if needed.
My parents will be fine. If anything, I can still see them helping my two brothers and I out even if we don’t need/want it. And if something drastic were to happen…well, they have three kids, and i’d do anything for them because of everything they’ve done for me.
I will definitely have to support my parents financially. The question is “when?” I don’t think they’re going to retire as soon as they reach that age since we’ve always had to struggle financially (somewhat), but eventually they won’t be able to work anymore. When that time comes I hope to be well established financially and help as best I can. Luckily I also have a sister that can help out as well….so I’m hoping she’s thought ahead too.
I don’t think I’ll have to take care of them, but you never know. When they were married I definitely wasn’t worried about it. Now that they are divorced I worry the strain of two households is more than their funds can bear. My mom is more money savvy and always saved 25% of her income, plus she gets alimony and half his retirement accounts
My dad is a financial idiot, has to pay my mom $2k for life plus give her half of his retirement. I worry about him more. He loves to work and is a tenured professor so he’ll probably work as long as he is able. That’s when it gets rough, he has juvenile diabetes. He’ll need a caretaker. I admit sometimes I hope he remarries just so he has a wife to take care of him, we don’t get along that well and I’m an only child.
I hope not. I have a feeling that my mom and stepdad have been planning and saving for retirement and they will probably be fine. They’re pretty frugal. My dad and stepmom however…well, my dad always has to have a brand new car, and I know he’s been stressed about money sometimes the last few years. I am not close enough to talk to him about his situation (which is pretty ironic if I’m expected to help out!).
I suspect I will help my parents out at least somewhat. They aren’t financially irresponsible; they’ve got money saved, but not much. They like buying things, but they aren’t the type to buy completely recklessly. They are good people who struggled some and tried to give me and my sister everything we needed and most things we wanted.
They’ve given me a lot of opportunities in life, so if the time comes that they need help, I’ll be there. I don’t know if I’ll be able to subsidize a lavish retirement, but helping with bills, making sure they take the occasional trip to Atlantic City or farm country…that I can do. And really, I don’t think they expect much more. If they even expect that.
I think my mom will be ok, or if she needed help, it would be reasonable. My dad basically lost his entire net worth after Hurricane Katrina in trying to keep his law practice open. He was just a few years away from retirement then, and now, I think he’ll work the rest of his life.
He loves his job, so that’s not bad, but it’s just a really stressful job. I worry about his health more than anything. It’s horrible to see him work his entire life to build his business from the ground up and then have it all wiped out. He wasn’t (and still isn’t) always the smartest person with his money, but he didn’t deserve to lose so much.
Even so, I know he will probably never ask for help. Plus, he and my stepmom continue to live a more extravagant lifestyle than two people who lost most of their fortune. I couldn’t provide for them what they would need to live.
The person I have to worry about taking care of in the future is my brother. He’s had some problems over the year, and we’re all worried he’ll just work one minimum wage job after another. He’s 3 years older than me, but constantly has to ask my parents for help with rent and other bills. When they finally realize they can’t help him anymore, I know he’s going to turn to me.
My parents hope is that they won’t have to depend on me and my sisters, so I think they’re doing OK with savings and investments.
I wouldn’t mind helping, though, if I’m financially able to do so. I wouldn’t even be able to consider it if they hadn’t helped me through college, after all.
My dad has some sort of pension type thing, but my mom has also indicated to me they haven’t saved much. They both should be able to take advantage of Social Security, so I’m HOPING they’ll be ok once my dad retires. They gave up a lot for me, so if they needed it, I would be there to help them. I’m not so sure about my younger brother. He’s 24 and despite my harping, he hasn’t even opened a retirement account. He’s notoriously bad with money, so I’m hoping he gets his act together before we’re both retired. Thankfully he has plenty of time.
i’m with some of the other commenters – already doing this. i remember starting to pay some of the household bills when i was like 12 or 13 and have been helping my family out since then. throughout highschool it wasn’t as much, b/c i was paying for my own stuff and education, by college, it became bigger amounts as my mom needed them, and now it’s a monthly check. which will probably get bigger as i start to earn more (whenever that might be). there’s also the “aid” to my siblings when they might need some money -they’re all putting themselves through school and i’m in a position where i can give when it’s a true need. all of this giving is a given (ha!) considering my family’s circumstances, and i try to do it with joy and cheer instead of lamenting over how every other girl my age seems to have the latest cute boots or jeans. it helps when i look back on what my family’s been through and what it’s taken my mother to get us here in the first place. then the materialistic stuff flies out the window!
We’ll definitely end up supporting my husband’s parents. His mom is already on disability, as of about a year ago. Before that, she could only work part-time. They have no retirement savings.
Let me just repeat that: No retirement savings.
Oh, they had some. His dad took early retirement at his old job (of 20 years) when he moved to the competition. It was a profit-sharing plan. After taxes (but not paying 10% tax penalty) they had $80,000. They loaned out about $15,000 to some family members (including $3,500 to us, which we’re slowly paying back). Then his dad got fired from the competition after 6 months.
About 4 months later, they were out of money. They spent it. All of it.
Then they went into debt. (Because, of course, there was things like that 10% tax penalty on $100,000.)
Oh, and they didn’t pay off their home mortgage. They did, however, pay off their timeshare mortgage. Which they then had to sell at a huge loss when they couldn’t make ends meet.
Now, his dad’s working contract work (went back to school and trained as a computer technician) so no insurance and generally we have no idea how much longer he’ll be able to work. (He’s 54 right now, I believe, but has health problems of his own, and these companies often have him working 60 hour weeks.)
Meanwhile, his dad still hasn’t asked his sister for the $10,000 he lent her to cover up a gambling loss from her husband. Did I mention his sister and her husband bought a new car awhile ago, because one of their daughters had a car die, so she got her mom’s old car (which still has payments left on it… not that the daughter has to make them) and mom got a new car.
I’m off to sob in a corner…
I help my mom out right now not with a lot but I do. But I hope that once she reaches retirement age that I will be able to help her even more. I look forward to giving back to her.
I know I’ll have to support my mother when she retires and I’m okay with that. My entire life I’ve watched her make horrible decisions with money. No matter how many times I interject (i’m a personal finance freak lol) I’m met with “you only live once”. It’s a part of her that i have just learned to accept.
I’m in the processes of changing career fields and one of the reasons (though small) for choosing my new field is because I know I won’t be supporting just me and my future immediate family. So the less financial strain on me the better.
I know that my mother could have and should be more selective and wise with her money but I’m going to judge her. I’m here to support her till the end.
For those who haven’t, be sure to sit down and have an open and honest conversation with your parents about their anticipated financial situation in retirement. My advice is for all the siblings to be involved.
My mother had lived alone for 20 years after my father’s death.I live 600 miles away but my brother said not to worry, he would oversee her financial situation. I found out last year he was merely shuffling papers. Neither he nor Mom had any idea how much money she had left!
Our story has a happy ending. I sat down with my mother and nailed down her situation. She found she could afford to move into a CCRC retirement community and 9 months later after moving, she is happy and healthy.
Things could have turned out much differently. Please have your financial conversation early and often with you parents. If done with respect, your parents will appreciate your involvement.
I will definitely have to support my parents in their retirement. I don’t come from a wealthy family and all the money lessons I’ve learned tend to come from watching my parents mistakes. It’s expected that when they get old they’ll just live with one of the children unless they’re terminally ill in which case they’ll be put in a home that’s closest the the home of the most responsible child (which, to date, is me).
I don’t think it’s a burden, but it’s definitely something to think about as you plan your own retirement. It’s also important to know what your spouse’s parents expect of him or her. You could think I don’t have to support my parents, then all of a sudden you have to support his or hers.
Great topic!
I have already been sending my parents money for almost two years now as they got caught up in the housing bubble. They’re my parents and I love them and will help them, but I really wish they’d read the fine print before they speculated a few years ago. Otherwise, their first home would be close to paid off already and even though my mom is on disability, they could get by on my dad’s pension and the income from his current job. At this rate, I think I’ll always be sending them money for the rest of their lives.
Also, I can’t imagine sending my parents to a retirement home. In my culture, the kids always take in their parents when they get old and can’t take care of themselves anymore.
ohhh, a very good subject, and a touchy one at that. My parents are divorced. I don’t worry about my dad, as he has a teacher’s pension and lives with his longtime girlfriend. My mother, on the other hand, i worry about. She chose to become an artist so she doesn’t have much work experience and never built up much in the way of savings. If it wasn’t for her inheritance from her parents, she would have nothing.
I worry about my future responsibilities with her; as a single woman, i’m working very, very hard to secure my own retirement. My sister doesn’t have much and on top of that, doesn’t have a good relationship with my mother. (Truth be told, I can’t imagine living with my mother, it would tear us apart.)
This is a very worrisome topic for me.
Unfortunately yes. We hope to not support my husband’s father. My parents have no retirement and they are close to retirement age and I am just 25 yrs old, its going to be a very difficult financial start for my husband and I.
I’ve joked to my dad that he’d better be saving because I’m not changing his diaper in 30 years. He incredulously replies “What do you think we had four of you for?!?”
Kids have been had for centuries for purposes of additional labor (especially on farms), and also a sort of long term care insurance, disability insurance, and a retirement plan.
I don’t expect to have to take care of my parents since each should receive a significant inheritance (maybe even enough that there’ll be some left for me when they are gone), but I would gladly have one or both of my parents move in with me in their old age – or I’d chip in with my other 3 sisses for a top rate nursing home if or in-home care, if we could afford it.
I mean it’s the circle of life. How can you not be willing to take care of your parents, assuming they didn’t treat you badly when you needed care as a child?
I found ur blog recently and financial responsibility for one’s parents is something i would to read about more in PF blogs.
I have known i would have to bear this duty/burden/resp./whatever forever, and no matter what I have done so far things never seem easy. My husband’s parents (thankfully) don’t require financial help, but you never know how things will turn out as they approach 70s. My parents were just stupid with their money, so I have been considering ways to live in a place where they can live either with me or in a close by establishment. Old ppl homes will kill my mother…so i don’t know what to do really. If I ask them to live with me, my husband might kill me! Things would have been a lot easier if my dad had planned better.
I agree with ur mom that one of the best gifts parents can leave kids is peace of mind. I would have taken care of my parents even if they didn’t need the financial help. But the guilt and pressure that comes with the task becoming an obligation can be overwhelming sometimes.
I understand that this issue is a big deal for lots of people, but what about those of us that will help our parents no matter what? What are the tax concerns and other specific issues that we need to be educated on before we go and give thousands of dollars to our parents? I am going to be paying for most of my father’s expenses as he grows older – my sisters will also be involved. There has to be a smart way to handle all this. Where are the tools? Every article I have read on this topic deals with the emotion. Once you make the decision, then what? Does it impact their estate planning? Your estate? Does the money count as income to them? How do you avoid that?