Context:
- I just found out that the student loans I’ve been saddled with for the past 19 years were completely avoidable because my parents are wealthier than they ever let on
- Something is wrong with my boomer parents—I don’t understand their relationship with money (or life in general). I think they may be seriously mentally ill
What happened
In 2014, my girlfriend and I moved into a rental home in a big city for about $1,500/month.
She later lost her job and it became unaffordable. The stress ended our relationship.
I struggled to stay in my home for the next seven years, until I finally declared bankruptcy and moved out in 2020.
I spent at least $120,000 on my rental home through those years. All down the drain. I liquidated all $30,000 of my retirement savings to try and stay afloat.
What could have been
2014 was a low point in the housing market. There were HUNDREDS of houses available in the ~$150k range, many of them nicer than the one I rented. All I needed was ~$10k for a down payment, and I could have been paying $800 for a mortgage instead of $1,500 on rent, and all of that money spent would be retained in the form of equity even if I still had to move out. It probably would have saved my relationship too (my parents complain about not having any grandkids, BTW).
What my parents say
When I mentioned this to my parents recently, they just said “we had no idea you wanted to buy a house”. NO, I JUST LOVED PAYING MONEY TO A LAND LEECH! I never even thought to ask for help with a down payment, because we were “broke”. My dad gave us grief over every dollar we spent. We never ONCE took a family vacation.
The truth
Today, my parents have $2 million in retirement savings, and no mortgage or car payments. They live in a rural area with a rock bottom cost-of-living. In 2003, they had HALF A MILLION dollars in cash, entirely separate from their retirement plans.
I am in a VERY similar situation. Looking at the past posts, your dad sounds A LOT like me, actually, on the “it’s not that big of a problem” front. These brain worms can be inherited.
I am not a medical professional, at all, but, does ADHD/autism run in your family? That seems to be the “nature” side of why mine are they way they are. Dad got a late-in-life diagnosis, tried meds for a couple weeks, got an immediate promotion, started doing all those “I’ll get to it” tasks, then decided the pressure was way too much and stopped taking them. Back to business as usual.
Yes! My dad is very ADHD. I forced him to ask his doctor for a prescription this year. His first week on Ritalin was the very first time he was able to grade an entire exam without taking a break, he said.
I have the feeling that there are a lot of parents in the US who get pleasure from watching their children struggle. I see right wing media talk frequently about children cutting contact with their parents.
If they ask for grandchildren again, tell them that you don’t want to have grandchildren because you don’t want to make another human suffer being related to your parents. “You had a negative impact on my life as parents. You would have a negative impact on the lives of my children. You don’t deserve grandchildren.”
I think that you have to accept that your parents are unwilling to change. You may have been dealt a bad hand by being born to them. If it makes you feel better, then cut them off. It doesn’t make sense to keep dwelling on the past. You have to figure out a way to exist on your own terms.
My fringe theory is that leaded gasoline destroyed the brains of Boomers and Gen X. They behave angrily and irrationally because they spent decades inhaling lead before leaded gasoline was phased out in the 90s.
Honestly, just be nice and ride it out until inheritance time. They don’t want to be told what to do, they just want to Boomer out until popping a heart attack and dying on the front porch. Maybe when the time comes they won’t have any money, but still, there’ll be something, and one day they’ll be gone and you’ll miss them, even if they were a pain. You don’t have to be the best kid in the world, but don’t cut contact. Just accept that they’re going to live their life how they want.
About 5 years ago everyone in my mother’s life cut her out, apart from me - because she’s mentally unwell. For me, I just see it as something of a care obligation. I used to think I was doing it for the money, but since then my father has just said if I get all of her inheritance (because I’m the only person who cares for her…), then he’ll just balance it out by giving my siblings more of his side of the inheritance. And, my mother is essentially just pissing hers down the drain anyway. Perhaps your parents have also fucked up financially and you just don’t know it yet. In the west we all carry a lot of financial guilt. We sit in debt for years and don’t ask for help because monetary failure is a great source of shame.
But still, just live your life. Contrary to what others in our generation think, I think there’s not much use in cutting people out (unless it’s really bad).
In the years that go by I think my siblings will all be saddled with guilt, and when my mother is near the end they’ll all say they wish they got to spend more time with her - even though they clearly didn’t - and I’ll be sitting there with first dibs on everything, a clean conscience, and a lot of built resilience. Sometimes I feel bitter like you, that this whole saga has stunted me emotionally, fucked over my 20s and so on, but I know that in the future these qualities that I’ve built up in myself will benefit plenty of other people around me too. That ok, sometimes you draw a bad hand and you just have to play it out.
All this is to say, don’t bother with bitterness, just accept it and move on. Get them some nice Christmas presents and emotionally distance yourself otherwise.
I’m really confused about the rental home. Why was it so important to keep living there once your situation changed so dramatically? Do you mean you had a mortgage and were renting out a room? Or was it a place you were renting?
A couple things stick out though:
Your parents are bad with money. They have some helpful habits that have kept it from ruining them but your mom apparently day traded away almost a half a million dollars. They buy expensive things that have long running costs that they run up debt to maintain (boat, farm apparently??). They casually run 5 figures in credit card debt and have to be pushed to pay it down for some reason.
They are clearly not well mentally, you’re obviously aware of this. They suffer from delusions and both seem to be in denial about their age and the conditions they live in. They are not coping well with how life is changing and it’s affecting their reasoning.
They also are trying to be helpful, I think. They took out debt to help you and your siblings, they tried to make your education cheaper by taking some of that on themselves. That they are less helpful than they could be honestly appears to be from their own inability to fathom money and how it works/what can be done with it more than malice or disregard for you and your siblings. It is obvious to us that getting a down payment would be a smart and helpful move, but you never asked and they appear to be bad enough at finances to genuinely not have thought about it.
So I’d say they’re not selfish (look at how they live, they’re clearly not benefiting from their decisions here) but ignorant and very unwell. Your dad clearly intends to work until he dies, he could be retired now if he wanted, he either doesn’t want to or honestly doesn’t comprehend that.
Or there’s more to the story you don’t know. Your mom has blown hundreds of thousands of dollars, there is a good chance more catastrophic losses are still hiding, maybe your dad is aware of these and that’s why he can’t retire.
It was a place I was renting. I was desperate to stay there because I was settled in and didn’t want to move into an apartment. I had a piano (heirloom) and home theater (purchased when I was doing well financially). I got a series of roommates to make it more affordable after my girlfriend left. I was unemployed for a long period, which caused most of the financial trouble. If I had been able to get another job (a friend offered me a better paying job literally three months after I went bankrupt and moved out of the state), it might have worked out.
They are very bad with money. At one point they took out a second mortgage to buy more stocks. They are both living in the future and don’t communicate. My mom’s biggest financial aspiration is buying a new oven. The reason she has sacrificed so much to make her stocks go up is because she believes that God will make her rich and that windfall will force my dad accept Christ as his lord and savior, thus saving her marriage.
I had to get them both to admit to themselves that they weren’t going to move into a different home before they die, which made my mom tear up. They never planned to raise their kids in this home (it’s not big enough), and now their kids are nearly forty.
My dad has not retired yet because he doesn’t believe he can afford to (he says he’ll retire next year, but only because he’s being pushed out). He doesn’t believe he can afford anything at all. He complains that “rich people” in our college town have purchased investment homes for their kids to rent, which he could have easily done himself, at least three times over. I never thought to ask for help because he always made it seem like we were a week away from living on the streets.
fyi, depending on the arrangement 2m in retirement is ‘good’ but not ‘great’.
that said, i dont think matters what they are or were.
you can only control you. move on. be your own person. forget they exist.
2m in retirement is ‘good’ but not ‘great’
honestly horrifying
that’s crazy, no wonder everyone’s given up on the concept of retirement
their brains are warped because they grew up in a special environment (probably) post ww2 where all other industrialized nations productive capacity was destroyed and American laborers at the time (as well as capital) hugely benefited from it so they may be stuck in that mindset
2014 was a low point in the housing market. There were HUNDREDS of houses available in the ~$150k range, many of them nicer than the one I rented. All I needed was ~$10k for a down payment, and I could have been paying $800 for a mortgage instead of $1,500 on rent, and all of that money spent would be retained in the form of equity even if I still had to move out. It probably would have saved my relationship too (my parents complain about not having any grandkids, BTW).
This just seems overly selfish to me. My parents paid my college tuition and they even bought a house during covid lows for themselves to live in, and put it under my name.
are you an only child? they probably could have done a 10k downpayment at least. im not sure my parents are much different financially and they helped all 5 of us in different ways. (car,paying off loan, etc). And my grandpa paid for my parents first downpayment too(and mine too, through inheritance.) Aint it cool thats the only way we can afford shit?
I have two siblings
are they doing the same thing for both of them?
We’re all in different stages of life, but pretty much, yeah
It would have been nice if they offered, but 2 mill is not a lot of money for retirement nowadays. That shit can get wiped out with one bad medical issue. I was caregiver for my grandparents at the end and shit gets obscenely expensive.
I never wanted them to touch their retirement savings. FYI their total net worth is about $3 million (maybe more).
If I were them and had $500k in cash twenty years ago—inherited money which could not be invested into a 401(k) or IRA—I would have at least saved enough for my kids’ college tuition, instead of saddling them with student loans, even if I didn’t give them a cent towards a home. Instead, they bought rural land out somewhere so they could pretend to be farmers, and my mom burned at least $150k by day trading.
$2M is literally the minimum they need as a couple to retire at 65 and ALL of that money will be spent by the time they die.
They are not rich by ANY stretch of the imagination. In fact, they have just hit the bare minimum threshold to not die in cockroach ridden apartment while not being able to afford food.
Now, if your parents are 40, then you’re in luck! That means that for the next 25 years every dollar they earn is mostly discretionary (unless they have debts of course, like someone’s student loans).
If your parents are 50, maybe you’ll get a little bit of financial help.
But if your parents are 60, whelp, they can give you a few nice birthday gifts but that’s about it.
$2M is literally the minimum they need as a couple to retire at 65 and ALL of that money will be spent by the time they die.
Average lifespan in the US is 78, the math isn’t mathing, 65 to 78 is $155k per year assuming average lifespan.
You’re mathing this like they’ll live to 100 which would be quite an outlier.
Average lifespan in the US is 78
That’s life expectancy at birth. Life expectancy at 75 for men is ~87.
$2M divided by 13 is $155k/year. That’s gross. They pay income tax on that. So they net something less.
But consider costs go up, particular for medical care but also for comfort - aging is not easy.
Then also consider that couples that scrimp and save their whole lives actually want to enjoy their retirement, so they can spend a little money each year on vacations instead of living like Spartans.
And then of course there’s planning funerals and burials.
But then. That 78 years is also inaccurate.
The peak year of death for women is 88. The peak year of death for men is 87.
Those averages include men dying in their 40s and 50s.
So now instead of $2M being $155k/year gross, it’s actually somewhere between $100K/year and $80k/year.
But they also aren’t going to spread it out totally evenly because they aren’t going to let actuarial tables drive their life enjoyment. So they’ll commit to under spending their first year but by the time they get to the end of the year they’ll realize there’s just too much life to experience while they still have their health and they’ll have a nice vacation, not Bezos nice, but nice. Maybe a whole month in France!
Yeah, $2M is the minimum for a decent life in old age and there won’t be a penny left for inheritance.
Calling $80k the minimum to live comfortably is the most fucking upper middle class out of touch bourgeois nonsense I’ve heard in a while.
Especially considering their housing costs are near zero, and it’s among the cheapest places in the US to live.
I feel like I’m going crazy seeing someone even write it here. Like, absolutely no fucking way is that the minimum for comfort. That is flat out a luxurious highly comfortable amount to have. Some of the people here begging for money everyday on the mutualaid comm that I can’t afford to help would be happy with a quarter of that, something I would say is too low but those people would be so happy with it and call it an upgrade.
Again, you have to understand that these people are in their 70s. Saying that either they can live an impoverished lifestyle or they are living luxuriously is ludicrous and shows an ignorance about household finances.
Could they live on less? Absolutely! My grandparents did. And my parents are. And they have decent lives. But my grandmother is in constant pain and lives in a tiny apartment and cannot afford the mobility equipment she needs to get around so she wastes away in the darkness. Can people survive on that? Yes. Should they? I don’t think so.
We don’t live in a society where we have community housing and walkable cities and public services. The elderly have to fend for themselves and the only way to do that is with middle class salaries and no obligation to work. Some will work, but we are such fragile animals that an obligation to work or live in poverty and squalor is not a way to live.
Stop arguing that people should live mean hurried commodities lives and then die early or suffer for decades. Expect dignity for people as we age. It’s a shame what elders go through.
It’s been well documented for a while now that $72K/year in the US is the number at which people’s primary motivation for job hunting begins to shift from financial survival to living their life. And that was before COVID.
$80k/year is not unreasonable as a baseline expectation for a couple that worked their entire lives and wish to finally retire in peace.
Grandma should not be working retail at Macy’s or waiting tables at Denny’s.
You and me disagree and if you said this to the face of many of the people I know they would turn violent towards you very quickly for saying it.
I think you’re very VERY far out of touch. Your perspective is built on the foundation of what is “comfortable” for a liberal who has lived well for most of their lives. My perspective is growing up in squats. Your comments make me feel like this painting.
I would not wish my grandmother, after raising multiple families and working until she was 70 to have to live in a squat. If you think that’s out of touch, perhaps consider how many people in America live in squats.
Then consider that the OP and the family in question are not people who lived in squats their whole lives but rather a family who worked to establish a middle class lifestyle which means sacrificing all of their time to make profit for the owning class. When you have spent your life doing that, you do that for a specific reason - to be able to retire and enjoy a few years of your health without being ground into dust by the machine.
That is literally what people who have been working for the past 40 years and those who came before them in the liberal world-order were striving for. They are trying to avoid being homeless and living in squats. Your argument that people living in squats don’t need 80k/year is useless in this context because living in squats in the US and Europe is not considered, by the vast majority of people, to be a healthy and enjoyable life.
Poverty is not a virtue. It does not have moral standing except in that it should be eradicated through a revolutionary movement. Just because others suffer from poverty does not mean that the entirety of the Western world isn’t individually striving for a better life.
I really don’t know why you think this worthy of debate. I wish apartments cost less than 5% of my income like they did the USSR. I wish we have and 90+% home ownership rate like they do in China and Cuba. I wish there a social safety net for the elderly like there is/was in parts of Europe.
That’s not the economy we live in here in the US. In the US you need money. And living below the poverty line is in no way. shape, or form what people are striving for when they work for 50 years straight without any real time to develop themselves as people outside of as capitalist subjects.
Blah blah blah.
The question is whether these people are being selfish impoverishing their fucking child with debt while living so comfortably.
The answer is yes the fuck they are. Fuck off.
They will never, ever take a vacation. My dad refuses to spend money. He lets my mom control all the finances and blow money needlessly on credit card interest, because they can’t communicate.
Well, I just found out that he’s 78 and still only has $2M in the account. So my guess is that he’s been working under financial anxiety for literally his whole life and has no chance of ever breaking free from the psychology of it.
Again, $2M is enough for a couple to retire on at 65. If you’re lucky, the medical system won’t bleed your parents dry and you’ll have a modest inheritance.
He’s never psychologically recovered from the poverty he experienced in childhood. I’m sympathetic, but I wish he hadn’t unnecessarily extended that trauma to us.
The median family of retirement age has just $200k in savings.
We all wish the trauma wasn’t passed down. The response to acknowledging that it was is grief. Anger is one of the stages. Acceptance and adaptation are the final stages.
A 10k loan (out of 500k liquidity the parents had at the time) for a down payment would have made no difference to the parents. OP stated the monthly payment would have gone from 1500 for rent to 800 for the mortgage. With no interest, that surplus of 700 a month would have paid back such a loan in under 15 months, long before the parents would have needed the money for anything.
Edit: a gift also would not have likely made a difference, but I’m using the loan as an example because we can know with 100% certainty that it would not have affected the parents’ financial security at all.
Exactly! Thank you.
They also could have purchased the home for themselves as an investment[1], and rented it out to me for the price of the mortgage. I know people with families who did just that. It would have been a win-win.
I’m not saying they should have become landlords (heaven forbid)
, but they could have sold it to another buyer when I moved out for a nice profit. Home prices have ~doubled since then. ↩︎
OP did provide context links
My dad is 78 years old, and my mom turns 69 this year.
from five months ago. there is also information about additional assets beyond the savings
Are his parents still working?
yes
Still working at 78 and only have $2M in the retirement account means that they have never been financially secure and just achieved it around 70.
From the perspective of my generation, having tenure at 40 is financial security. That’s a guaranteed job for life with excellent benefits. Inheriting half a million dollars soon afterwards is just a cherry on top. They’ve wasted a lot of money through their financial illiteracy.
Yeah, your parents are fucking suck.
Yeah, that’s fucked. Many such cases. I would chalk it up to ignorance personally.
When I told my mom I was making $35,000/year, she thought I was doing great, because that was their income when they started out (in 1980 when rent their rent was $200). She’s a Republican and does not believe that America is in decline.
