S/O Are wealthy parents are obligated to support...

amother

↑ Latte ↓

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 4:18 am

amother Electricblue wrote:

but why dont they want to help
I cant understand why my inlaws who have money and arent obligated to help dont want to make thier children and grandchildrens life easier.
I am not talking about paying for fancy things, fancy vacays and the like...
they come to the house and see how we live in such modesty
so many things we cant afford and need
למה לא?
I am davening that I will ave to give to my kids.

Because they want their kids to work hard and live responsibly. My in laws who bought us a home were smart, they didn’t give us cash to be used however we wanted. They bought us a home so we had to use it responsible. (We then took out a loan on our home to start a business, paid back the loan and sold the business a few years later for decent profit.)

They pay for us to come to them for yom tov if they are in Florida but they don’t support us during the year nor should they! Nor do we expect them to.

One thing though if we ever needed a top doctor who wasn’t covered by insurance, we know we could ask them.

Kids who grow up never learning the value of hard work and the value of a dollar end up being entitled and that does not serve them well down the line.

Btw I’m not saying this is the case with you- maybe you do work very ahrd! I’m explaining in general.

thesoundofmusic ↓

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 4:44 am

both my husband and I work very hard
we both grew up with hard working extremely responsible parents.
this is exactly what I am talking about
I agree that parents shouldnt raise kids who can expect their parents to pay for it all
but if they see how hard we work I cant understand why they wouldnt want to give a bit to make it easier....
or you know what not even to us - to their grandkids.

amother

DarkCyan ↓

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 5:12 am

amother Apple wrote:

Not obligated but if I'd be wealthy it would be my pleasure to help my kids with whatever they need.

Just noting that you said what they need not what they want. Thank God we’re pretty comfortable. We weren’t always only the past few years. We’re not wealthy, but we have helped our kids each buy a car maybe paid for a third of it. We did not help them with a down payment of a house. We might in the future, but they are fairly newly married and I don’t even think that they know exactly where they want to live. I think helping kids needs like food and things is very different than helping them with the vacation that are used to.

amother

Butterscotch

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 5:28 am

Not obligated. But I never understand why there are parents who prefer their children to struggle until they die and then get a large inheritance after having a hard time for so many years. Let them be more comfortable already years earlier. And giving them financial help at the beginning will help them build equity for life, why wait until they've had to pinch pennies for years. (Obviously this is only referring to parents who HAVE the money to give.)

amother

Jetblack

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 5:30 am

My parents raised us very spoiled , my mother never worked and I had no clue about prices or anything , now my husband works very very hard but we are just making it , I was never smart in school but my parent’s attitude was I’ll be fine ur husband will support u like daddy does , but it’s a diff world out there so now they never gave me a skill and feel like I’m not smart enough for certain jobs , oh and if I ever babysat for kids my parents would give me a list of things to be nervous about liability and insurance and if something goes wrong etc, I feel like they handicapped me by raising me with every convenience and now just expecting me to figure it out, it’s hard for me to work when my husband completely not available he travels a lot , I feel I need to be there for my kids, so I cut out as much as I can instead of making $15 an hour being an assistant teacher ,
They def don’t need to support me but I can’t say It’s not challenging when they flaunt their wealth at me all day and tell me how much they give and do for others

amother

Blushpink ↓

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 5:36 am

amother Butterscotch wrote:

This is my parents. I grew up with wealthy grandparents who didn't help my parents financially when they struggled. My parents had a large family (which my grandparents disapproved of) and some SN kids (whom they ignored, it was embarrassing for them). It's sad to me that my father now has a comfortable retirement (inheritance) but my mother AH never got to enjoy that, and she worked so hard all the years.

Also, we kids did not have a very positive relationship with my grandparents. My parents always tried to encourage us to be nice to them (they were holocaust survivors and probably had unhealthy attachment to money) but it's hard when they aren't really interested in you and never were.

We aren't wealthy, but we give and give and give as much as we can to our kids (married and single).
We don't spoil them - they are hardworking, know how to take care of themselves) but we do what we can to give them a break where we can.....

amother

↑ Latte

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 6:19 am

So my in laws are worth approx 15 million. If they were to start doling out money to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars yearly to all their kids, they’d have tax repercussions, if at any point they were to need a live in aid or medical care they might not have what they need when they need it, etc.

So they gave a one time generous gift of a home (which is a huge gift, I am not denying that and I appreciate that immensely- it’s a gift that keeps on giving), and they pay for pesach if the kids would like to fly in, and that’s really it. And you know what? To me that makes sense. (They’re also teaching all of us financial responsibility and thinking ahead to the future.) they also pay for college and grad school for their kids (not grandchildren or in laws).

They are entitled to retire and not have to work so hard in their old age!

amother

↑ DarkCyan

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 6:24 am

My parents were not crazy wealthy but comfortable. They never ever treated themselves never had Cleaning help. But they have always paid for my kids education and insurance. It adds up to probably $1 million. They also gave us money from our inheritance early. Not all of it because they are not crazy wealthy but if they gave us other money, they would not be able to afford, living and help when they get older. It could be that they’ll die and they will have money but they need money aside in case they need help. My mom was sick and they really did go through probably over $100,000 in a matter of month getting tons and tons of health and private doctors and things like that. It’s so easy to sit in judge when you were a kid you have no idea how much money it takes to retire. I’m grateful for every drop and they really do give much more than I think. Many parents do in their lifetime and like I said they’re not super wealthy but very generous.

amother

↑ Vanilla

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 6:39 am

My parents and in-laws are comfortable enough. Not wealthy but comfortable. They will occasional help us for yom Tov or something.
It's fine. They're retired and entitled to be.

But what does annoy me is how clueless they are and how stuck in the 80s they are financially.
They lecture us how irresponsible we are that we haven't saved enough for a down payment (5 kids, no support, dh makes around 100k. Decent in the world but low middle class).
They lecture us that I work 28 hours a week and don't stay home raising the kids like my mother and inlaws do.

Our landlord is selling the house so we're forced to move. They lecture us about choosing to live above our means. They don't realize that it's not physically possible to find something for under $2000 to live and all the explanations don't help.
They blew their stack when they heard how much we're paying for movers. (We got 3 quotes. All within $150 of each other. All around $3000.) They accused us of being spendthrift and throwing money and there's no reason to pay more than $1200-$1500 on movers.
Btw we don't ask them for money or help.

It's annoying to me that they're not living in 2024 financially.

amother

Mocha

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 7:46 am

Of course they are not obligated. But neither do you get to wash your hands of your kids on midnight of their 18th birthday. In addition to raising them with good values (so they don't get spoiled) parents do need to set their kids up for success and not live in la la land themselves. You don't get to insist on independence when it suits you but also insist on standards that contradict that. So, for example, you want your kids to marry super young, do kollel for X number of years, have a baby every 18 months, live nearby in an area that is a lot more expensive than when you first moved in, fly in for every out of town sibling/cousin's Simcha and outfit the entire family accordingly, and and and, well, something has got to give. You can't have all those things and also wash your hands of having to help if they can't do all those things without help.

I do think it's a good thing to help grown children, but it has to be done wisely. My parents (and dh and I plan to do it this way when our kids are grown) have always helped with startup/upfront costs, but never with recurring/ongoing costs. So when we first got married, they helped us with initial setup (furniture, kitchen and other homegoods, including Jewish needs, that weren't covered by wedding gifts), but we paid our rent and other bills on our on from day one. They helped us with a down-payment but we bought with a mortgage WE were comfortable covering, since that was on us. There's a difference between helping with a large, upfront cost that can be difficult to scrape together all at once, and paying for all the bills, which recur and will always be there. This is not to say my parent were obligated to do this, just that if you are going to help, it's better that it be in a one time upfront manner than recurring with no limit.

amother

↑ Blushpink

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 7:57 am

amother Vanilla wrote:

It's nuts when parents think we should be able to find the prices they spent 20 years ago or more.

I had this when we made our DD's wedding. My father couldn't believe the price of the hall - and it was one of the cheapest in town, takanah, etc...because HE spent less on my sister's wedding 10 years ago.

Lots has happened in 10 years. Prices have nearly doubled in lots of areas.

ETA and don't get me started on tuition conversations. They don't understand why I pay what I do in tuition (uh, to keep my kids in school) when they paid far less. "tuition shouldn't cost you that much". Uh, welcome to the 2020's.....

↑ giftedmom

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 8:32 am

amother Vanilla wrote:

Why on earth are you sharing all of that info?

amother

Lightgray

Tue, Sep 17 2024, 9:52 am

As others have posted, parents are generally not obligated to support their children but why in the world wouldn't they want to at least help them if they have the means to do so?

We hope to marry our kids off young, as such it would be unfair of us to expect them to support themselves from day one. How many 19 year olds have a job that can support a family? We are "lucky" in that we have a small family and were able to put away a very nice sum of money for each child to start them off.

Our oldest child just bought a house (in a cheap area; we're not talking million dollar houses - a small fraction of that, actually). They covered 10% of the cost from their savings, the mechutonim covered 10%; the highest mortgage they were able to get (don't ask!) covered another 45% of the cost and we paid the remaining 35% from the money we've been putting away all these years.

We would be thrilled if we could do the same for our other kids. And since the money we've been putting away hasn't pinched us, why shouldn't we continue putting away money to help them when necessary?