Grandchildren

Supporting parents over non-parents?

~ MaryG ~ 24 Comments

Sharing financial resources is a zero sum game. Someone’s gain or increase is going to be someone else’s loss.

Do you think parents of adult children have an obligation to financially help the ones with children of their own more than the ones who do not have kids? Or do you think parents should always maintain total equality in the ways they divvy up their support to adult children?

I have been on one end of this dilemma for over 30 years. I’m the one who stayed married and raised a family. My sibling had a lavish wedding (in two locales), but quickly divorced and had no kids. She never found a career she enjoys and is frequently unemployed, despite being very highly educated.

Now I am temporarily (hopefully) on the other end of it. My son currently only has himself to take care of and my daughter is building her family.

Hypothetically, if you had 10K to share at Christmas, would you give each one 5K? Or would you take into account the selflessness and outrageously high cost of raising a child through college and tip the scale towards the parent?

I think maybe you can tell which way I lean, but I know that there are strong counter arguments.

If you’re childless and found out your parents gave your sibling more money than you in their estate plans, how would you feel? Would you feel as if they didn’t value your life as much as theirs? Or would you understand that grandchildren were factored in?

What about an opposite situation, where parents support a single, childless adult daughter more than another one who had the benefit of a husband’s income? Do singles deserve more support than those who married and raised children?

Curious for your thoughts.

Class of ‘87

~ MaryG ~ 23 Comments

I have a couple of updates for you on the college class of 1987 (high school class of 1983). Most of us were born in 1965, so we are turning 60 this year. One of my best friends from college turned 60 yesterday. She broke the ice. Now the rest of us will follow…if we’re lucky. Making it to 60 is not a given. We’ve lost people—mostly to cancer, but sudden massive heart attacks have taken down a few of the men.

I appear to be the only grandparent in my college class of about 500, which is wild. A few people still have kids in high school, so I guess we tended to have kids late, but still…it’s a vivid illustration that the birthrate actually has cratered in this country.

Another observation is that people truly do age differently. Some people look 40 at 60, and some look 80. Money seems to be a factor, but not the only one. Most people are still working, but they’re either talking about retirement or saying they will never be able to retire. “Work ‘til I die” is some people’s retirement plan.

There is both a lot of concern—and a fair bit of bragging—about adult children in their 20s. “You’re only as happy as your least happy child” seems to be true. (But if you’re posting an effusive happy birthday message, with multiple pictures, for a 27-year old who doesn’t even use Facebook, you may need to let go a bit.)

Our parents, if we still have them, are very old now. I know of only one other classmate with two living parents like me. More of our mothers are still alive than our fathers.

For the first and oldest official GenXers, the Eighties was our decade. Nobody has quite so many formative memories of those years as we do. Do not challenge us to an 80s trivia quiz, because we will win. And we will also look back on it all with slightly rose-colored glasses. We’ll forget the bad stuff and laugh about that time we ate pot brownies at school and Mr. Ullman’s physics class finally made sense.

I never did see anyone get pizza delivered to a class like Jeff Spicoli, but that would have been amazing.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out the summer before our senior year in high school.
My 1984 look
The pizza delivery scene

A Milestone Christmas

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

This year is a milestone Christmas for us—our first one as grandparents.

We know our sweet little baby granddaughter won’t remember this Christmas, but we hope to have many more where we’ll make memories she can remember.

Christmas already feels so exciting again just having this perfect little girl in the world.

Twenty years ago we were a family of four. We stuck together through good times and some not-so-good times and now we have a whole new person to love. A whole new person. Imagine that.

Merry Christmas 🎄

XOXO

Mary