PenPenWrites

parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more

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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

recent posts

© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

Category: loans to adult children

  • Money Matters: Can we still help our kids if the 401k melts?

    A friend says she was only joking when she told her grown children she might have to borrow back the money she and their father had "lent" them to pay for college and graduate school.These are friends with a small apartment in New York City and a sizeable vacation spread in Vermont. But came the…

  • Money Matters: The Brits are just like us.

    The Brits are not just our friends across the pond: They seem to be very much like us when it comes to giving their adult children a financial boost. A recent survey by the insurance company Liverpool Victoria had these findings: 94  percent of parents surveyed still make financial contributions to their children's education and…

  • Money Matters: How much of a helping hand do we owe our children

    A recent blog on Tellinitlikeitis, looks at the issue of what we owe our adult children. Grown children who demand help buying a house or regular babysitting or loans that are really gifts–that can feel like parental failure, and parents may be culpable for being enablers when this happens. Many of us get much joy…

  • Money Matters: Helping support a grown child

    At last, a financial planner who isn’t all bean-counter and estate-protector. There is, says Aaron Katsman, more to having an adult child move back home than rental agreements or fees for food. And more to providing them with a temporary stipend than a loan contract. Keying in on the recent, economy-based phenomenon of older adult…

  • Re-Nesting: To have or have not a contract with your adult children

    Parents of 20-somethings–especially recent college graduates–are experiencing a steady march of children returning to the nest. It’s a hostile economy out there: difficult job market; horrendous credit crunch; rising prices for everything. And it’s not just the 20-somethings, as the reports noted in earlier blog entries make clear. But all that raises the question of…

  • Money Matters: Setting limits when you make a loan

    When you lend your grown kids money–and it's a loan, not a gift–you may be risking a whole new set of pressures on your relationship. "What seems straightforward can become a straitjacket if families aren't careful," a recent news story reports. It asks the key questions:  How do you keep family harmony when money is…