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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Etiquette Expectations: Should our kids bring us gifts when they come home for a holiday dinner?

04/25/2019

An email from a friend arrived in my inbox this week. He was soliciting advice. Here's his question.

Our older son notified us by text that he and his wife could come over for Easter Sunday dinner. We dutifully dropped $50 on primo lamb chops, wild rice, asparagus, a freshly baked pie, and a six-pack of craft beer. Our son arrived empty handed, though he quickly filled one by grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, handing a sparkling water to his wife. The fact that the pair brought nothing cast a pall of entitlement over the holiday dinner. Was I wrong to feel this way? Could this have been my own fault for subsidizing him for so long? I look forward to your sage guidance.

Readers, what would you tell hm? Here's the stab I made at handing out sage guidance on life's little and big inter-personal problems.

We feel what we feel and you feel lousy about your son not acknowledging the effort you made. It might have helped if he had thanked you for making such a great dinner.

But this may not be an entitlement issue. Adult kids are still kids and when they come home for a "special" dinner they don't see themselves as guests but as your son, and sons or daughters don't usually think to bring "guest gifts" or "chip in" offerings to their parents. Also it may be a generational thing. Every year we are invited to a neighbor's house for Passover dinner along with their two adult kids and their families as well as cousins and the cousins' kids. I always call to see what I can bring (usually dessert). But it turns out that I am almost alone in that. My neighbor tells me that I and an "older" cousin are the only ones who offer to bring anything. The grown kids and cousins never do.

If these kids were invited to a friend's house for a big get-together, would they bring a six pack or a bottle of wine? Probably. But parents seem to be another story.

I checked in with Paterfamilias. He leaned toward letting it slide. His rationale: The relationship with adult children is so important and delicately balanced, why let something relatively minor become an issue.

Any of you readers want to take a crack at this?
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Money Matters: We’re still supporting our kids into their 30s and 40s

04/08/2019

If we can afford to do it, a number of us are the financial backers of our grown kids. We're not just helping our recent college graduates with rent or a cell phone bill. We're doing the same and more for our kids in their 30s and 40s–kids who are established on their career tracks but moving into the "expensive" part of their lives, the time when they marry, have children, buy homes. (The percent of kids getting help, according to a 2018 report, is more than half adult kids between the ages of 21 and 37.)

The reason, per this NYTimes story: Millennial incomes today are lower than they were for Gen Xers and boomers at the same point in their lives. Many of today's millennials graduated from college into the recession, and that put them behind in terms of salaries and savings. Add to that today's real estate market: In many of the big cities where our grown kids live, the cost of simple housing is out of their affordability range–if not for our help with a down payment assist here or a co-sign there.

Beyond cash outlays, some of us provide services that add up. A recently retired friend of mine babysits her eight month old grandson three days a week. The other grannie sits the other two days so that the mom could go back to work full time. The value–apart from the irreplaceable loving care–is upwards of $25,000 a year.

While our kids may need the help, researchers found they don't feel great about taking it. Accepting help from the bank of mom and dad when you're in your 30s or 40s is evidently "the last taboo of finance that people don’t want to admit."

Shame or not, our largesse gives our kids an edge. While families with means have always helped their children, what’s different today, the Times reports, is that the economy has more extreme gyrations, which tends to flatten wages. That's when family wealth plays an outsize role in helping people get ahead. Those who don't get that parental financial boost are grappling with paying off student-loan debt, which effects their ability to save to buy a house–a key way to financial stability and the building of wealth. (Nationally, homeownership rates are falling for millennials; only two in 10 have a mortgage or home loan.)

A Boston real estate agent who works primarily with first-home buyers told a Times reporter that in the 20 years she's been an agent she has rarely seen anyone in their 30s who did not have family help or an inheritance for their down payment. (In the Boston market, a 20 percent down payment is between $80,000 and $100,000.) In even pricier New York City, a real estate agent estimates that a quarter of his 30-something clients who are buying larger, family-size apartments receive money from their parents, whether it’s in the form of a gift, a low-interest loan or co-purchasing.

It's a good thing we're around for them, as, evidently, more and more of us are.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The bitter and sweet of living far from our grown children

03/28/2019

We who live far from our grown kids take solace in the "up" side of distance. When we visit them it is usually for a few days or even longer and those visits can be festive, busy and intense. For a few fleeting days we are part of their everyday lives: We see up close and personally how they live. We pick up on quotidian minutia that they don't discuss with us on Face Time or in texts. It's more intimate and revealing than having children live nearby and dropping by for an hour here and a dinner there.

But there's a trade-off. They're here today and gone in another day or two. A friend whose daughter flew in for a two-day visit, texted me in mid-visit: "My apartment is full of life! Today I know what I am missing."

Say no more. I know exactly what she means.

We are disciplined about being independent. These visits–whether we go to them or they come to us–are a reminder of the price of that discipline. We're not "sweeping up the heart/and putting love away" but the reality is our grown kids live far from us and lead lives very much apart from ours. We can't meet them spontaneously for a Saturday morning coffee. Paterfamilias and I have stopped going to Chinese restaurants on Sunday evenings–they are too filled with three generations of family laughing and talking and sharing fried rice and moo shi pork. And we're not.

While the long visits we get are wonderful and "full of life," they are a reminder of how much we miss our children and their families, of how we discipline ourselves not to think about the loss and the excitement the younger generation, whose lives are on fire, bring into our lives.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Giving Advice and Good Counsel to Grown Children

03/12/2019

We here at Parenting Grown Children central–I use the editorial we since there's no one here but me–have long counseled that we can offer our grown children advice, but should do so only when asked. (See Notes to Self.) Yes, we have much life experience to share–wisdom born of experience that could help our grown children avoid mistakes. But we have to let them figure stuff out for themselves. If they want our good counsel–and sometimes they do–they'll ask for it. Otherwise, bite that lip; walk gently on those eggshells.

Not an easy direction to follow. Sometimes the temptation can be too much; the stakes too high. Carolyn Hax recently advised a dad–she was asked for her counsel. The dad was concerned about his 27-year-old son who graduated college with honors in his field but was working at a low-pressure, low-wage job and living with and off his girlfriend. The dad's wife–the stepmother–has been pressuring him to have a "serious father-son talk" with his son about the son's future. The dad is clearly of two minds. He is worried about his son but he also has faith that "he'll eventually find his direction in life. And not everyone needs to be a CEO, right?" And so he turns to Hax to ask, "Should I talk with him or not?"

Hax's answer wasted no words: "Not. Not your business."

So hard to step back and take Hax's advice. And yet, needs must. If we brought them up right, they will find their true north–though it may not be the one we would choose for them. Cheers and show the love of support, dad.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Financial Aid of the Administrative Kind: Are you still helping your adult kids do their taxes?

02/26/2019

There's lot of tax news–about lower-than-anticipated refunds; about caps on write offs of state and local taxes. Will adjustments never cease?

What there is less talk about is this: Some of us our still helping our grown children with their taxes. One dad I know has his tax accountant text his 38-year-old daughter to remind her to send him (the CPA) her W2 and other tax information. The dad then pays his accountant to fill out his daughter's tax forms and send her the package, complete with pre-addressed envelopes. All she has to do is sign and send.

A Wall Street Journal article last year detailed other ways in which mums and dads helped out their kids at tax time–even though some of the kids were well into their 40s. In one instance, the dad was filling out forms for an adult grandchild as well.

Yes, the kids should have learned the skill by now. But some of us worry that our kids don't have time to do it–their careers are hectic plus they're bringing up kids, cooking meals and making sure the laundry is done. What greater gift than saving them time.

Other moms and dads see it as a bonding experience. It is certainly an informative one: We know how much they're earning, how big their raise was or bonus wasn't. If our child or our child's spouse has a home office, we know if that business is flourishing and we make sure all possible deductions are taken.

For some parents, there's a more benign reason: It gives us a way to hang around in an advisory capacity and to feel relevant by providing an important service. They still need us!

We can only hope that if there's money due the IRS, we're not asked to help–or tempted to offer assistance– with that, too.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Money Matters: What If They Ask Us for an Advance on Their Inheritance?

02/12/2019

Many of us–well, those of us with the wherewithal–are inclined to help out our grown kids in the here and now, rather than have them wait till our last will and testament is read. The down payment on a car or a house; the tab for day care for a grandchild–these are some of the things we may offer to help with–by gift or loan–and that give us a measure of pleasure to underwrite.

But what if it's not us offering the assist but them asking for an "advance" on the money we'll be leaving them? Does it matter what the ask is for? Does their asking, rather than our offering, put a different cast on the "feel good" moment? Are they presumptuous in their expectations?

It's complicated. A woman who wrote to Social Qs for advice on whether or not to ask her elderly parents for an "advance" to make it easier for her to buy a house, be able to underwrite family gatherings and otherwise "enjoy some of it while they're alive." The letter writer also noted that her parents had willingly paid for the education of her sister's children and that an "advance" would more or less even the financial-legacy scales.

Philip Galanes advice to the daughter in question is one we might take into account if such a request comes our way.

If you are sure that [your parents] are still competent to make this decision and can afford it, ask for a loan. Let them decide whether to make it a gift. And drop the tit-for-tat with your sister over her children’s education. That help was given at another time and probably long planned.

My biggest reservation here is that many parents I know would go without to help their children (even deep into adulthood). If that sounds like yours, stick with your original plan to pay for the house yourself. There comes a time to put our parents first, after years of the reverse arrangement.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Supporting Grown Children: Golden Handcuffs Edition

01/30/2019

It's a wonderful feeling to be able to be financially generous to our adult children–to support them if an unexpected need arises or to indulge them so that they can do or buy something they've always wanted. If we've got that bit of extra to spare, there's a deep pleasure in seeing our children enjoy it now rather than later–when we're no longer around.

And our kids are grateful. Why shouldn't they be? We've offered them support out of love for them and respect for their ability to handle the resource well. But sometimes, there's a little less of a heartfelt thank you. There can even be resentment, especially if there are strings attached. This letter that appeared in an advice column in a local Colorado newspaper spells out the dangers of attaching those strings–even if we do so indirectly:

When I met my wife five years ago, I had no idea of her financial status. I knew that her parents had a nice home and spent a lot of time traveling but she lived frugally and worked hard. When we got married, I learned about the extent of her family's substantial resources. Admittedly, they have been very generous — helping us with the down payment on our house, taking us on family vacations and starting college funds for our kids. The issue is that they've increasingly put pressure on us to raise the kids in specific ways, build our schedules and vacations around their needs and spend money according to their values. We, and my wife in particular, have been struggling to say no because of everything they continue to give us.

The letter was signed: Locked In Golden Handcuffs

The couples coach who answered the plea from "Locked" talked about the "aging" parents and their need to feel relevant. They also focused on what was triggering the son-in-law's negative response, such as feeling a loss of empowerment, freedom or authenticity or a sense of emasculation.

Whatever it is, it's not something I would want to visit on my son or daughter or their spouses. To give is to give freely. It's their lives to live. We are not in the driver's seat–even if we bought them the car.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: The no “Thank You” issue. Again

01/21/2019

He's got an hilariously snarky point of view. Choire Sicha, the NYTimes Styles desk editor who is working his way through a three-month stint as the newspaper's "Work Friend," columnist, admits that he has only two to four ideas about life and that none of them are particularly original. That said, he notes that "Somehow long-running advice columnists, or really any kind of regular columnist or other Pez dispenser of thoughts, can reiterate their ideas for months or decades."

I thought about that commentary as I was reminded, yet again, of my replies to a sore that wont seem to heal for many grandparents: When they give their grandchildren gifts, they do not receive appropriate thank you notes from them. By "appropriate," most of the complainants seem to mean that a text or email will not do. They want a written note. I have posted my two-to-four thoughts on this issue here and here and a few other places.

And now I get to do it again, backed this time by the reliable Philip Galanes, the light-touch behind Social Q's.

Here's what his complainant had to say:

My teenage grandchildren have never sent us a thank-you note for any present we’ve given them. My husband and I are thinking of teaching them a lesson by skipping Christmas gifts this year. Thoughts?

Galane's thought:

Unless you believe your grandchildren can read minds, wouldn’t it be a more useful lesson to ask them for thank-you notes? I’m sorry that you and your husband feel underappreciated. But if the kids’ parents never insisted they write notes, and you never asked for them, how were your grandchildren to know?

If you expect thank-you notes, or if they are the price of admission for future gifts, tell your grandchildren. And you may as well specify whether email or text messages will suffice.

I couldn't say it any better and have tried. We live in a digital world, and it's a lot less formal than the good old days of personalized note cards and prized penmanship. Thank you notes–verbal, digital or hand crafted–are all welcome at our household.

If your grandkids don't respond to the request for a Thanks and you've set your priorities, well, then let the withholding begin. But remember this line from Dorothy Parker: "And if that makes you happy kid/You'll be the first it ever did."
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: Ecstacy, agony and the mixed emotions of being a Nana or PopPop

01/11/2019

The feelings we have on becoming a grandparent aren't exactly oversold. Let's just say they're more complicated than the treacly bliss a Hallmark card might portray.

There's always been this joke about the up side of a day of grand parenting: The good news is that at the end of the day, your grandchild goes home.

There are other, more complicated feelings about being a grandparent. Yes, there is the unalloyed thrill of falling in love with a precious new life. But there is also the feeling of being an outsider. A friend–a single mother whose daughter had a baby a few weeks ago–finds her relationship with her daughter has turned upside down. Where mother and daughter had shared shopping and movies and friendships, the daughter's focus is now exclusively (and rightly so) on her newborn; the future of the family is the baby. There's hardly a murmur about the well-being of my friend, who has been asked to babysit three days a week now that the new mom is going back to work.

It's a variation on another emotion: the feeling of being a guest in your child's life rather than an insider, a sense that we're looking in no matter how inside we thought we were. As Robin Marantz Henig wrote in a NYTimes essay, on grandmothering, "Even as you get to watch them, right up close, you're always outside with your nose pressed against the glass–and increasingly aware of how much of their story will take place without you."

Henig takes that last thought one agonizing step further.

I have internalized the stinging knowledge that, beneath all the encouragement you give your children to grow and walk and speak and leave, beneath all the wonderful moments you may be lucky enough to share in and enjoy, your grandchild’s life will be a long string of birthdays you will not live to see.

She calls this the doubled-edged nature of being a grandmother:

Your thoughts turn powerfully toward the future — one that now includes the grandchildren you adore — at the very same moment you’re reminded of your own absence from that future. It’s an odd mixture of birth and death, which is what gives grandmotherhood its beauty, as well as its specific and poignant pain.

I understand what she's saying but personally,I have moments when I'm glad I won't be around to see how my precious grands cope with some of the awful changes the planet and the political world have in store. Or maybe our grands will be part of a solution. Still, it scares me just a little to think my dotage will be so prolonged I'll be here to see more than I want to see.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Money Matters: Six check-offs before you help your child buy a house

12/31/2018

Here's the home buying news from Australia: 55 percent of first time home buyers (that's our generation of kids) got help from their parents (that's us) last year.

Here in the U.S, one-third of those 37 and younger used a gift or loan from family or friends to come up with a down payment for a house.

It's a first-world universal: If we can afford it, many of us take on that down payment assistance willingly. We may see it as a part of a “living inheritance.” That is, a chance to see our kids make good use of what’s coming to them when we're not around to see how they use it. Or, we may want to see our kids living free and clear of a landlord. Or in a better neighborhood. Or to have an investment that will grow with time.

But no good deed comes without complications. Here are six big things to think about if you can afford to be a financial angel for their home purchase.

ONE: Family Dynamics.

There may be other family members–say, siblings of the future home owner–who feel the scales of parental largesse are being unbalanced, and not in their favor. It may be presumptuous and ungrateful on their part, but there it is. Communications about what you're doing and why–and whether the sibs can or should expect similar assistance–can keep everyone feeling fairness rules.

TWO: Guarantees

If an adult child doesn't qualify for financing, parents may have to act as guarantors or as “co-signors” on the mortgage itself, meaning they are shown on the title as a co-owner and on the mortgage directly. Co-signing is the more common approach, but it raises several questions such as whether the parents have an actual ownership interest. There are also questions about what happens if one of the parties passes away or, if the child is married, gets separated or divorced.

THREE: Gifts

If an adult child qualifies for a mortgage on his or her own, parents can make the purchase more affordable with a gift that boosts the amount of down payment or helps lower the interest rate. No need for co-signing or guaranteeing. Write a check for any amount you choose. That's it — no contract or ongoing commitments. But gifter beware: Lenders like to see money gifts — easily traceable checks, bank transfers or wire transfers — in a borrower's bank account three or four months before they apply for a mortgage. Givers and recipients may need to sign letters confirming that the money isn't a loan.

In addition to or in lieu of down-payment assistance, a cash gift can pay all or part of an expense such as mortgage closing costs.

Here's an additional benefit to down-payment assistance: It can help new borrowers avoid paying for private mortgage insurance, which in turn helps keep their monthly payment lower.

FOUR: Loans

If it's a loan, you can still write a check for any amount but it's best to write it all down in a contract that defines obligations. Not only does that avoid misunderstandings–especially about repayment schedules–but if the parent-lender dies or becomes incapacitated, there's more transparency. All the heirs can view the transaction and its history.

FIVE Being A Banker

If we've got enough cash, we can be the mortgage lender. We can offer easier terms, like no closing costs or no down payment. We could charge a higher rate of interest on the mortgage than our money earns in a savings or money market account and still offer our kids a lower-than-market mortgage rate. But family lenders must charge at least the Applicable Federal Rate , the minimum interest rate required to keep the assistance from being considered a gift.

It's a fairly complicated business but there are companies that can help with the set-up details and provide all the forms and documents you need to meet state, local and IRS requirements. They can also guide families through the settlement and filing process.

Personally, this is too complicated for my taste. Plus, I wouldn't want to be my child's banker. Hard enough being their parent.

SIX Taxes

Anyone can give any other person a gift up to $15,000 in value (money or, say, stocks) without filing the gift-tax return IRS Form 709 . So each parent can give each child — and the child's partner and their children — up to $15,000 each without having to complete Form 709.