How would you handle this situation regarding helping out an AC with money?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious how others would handle this money situation between my parents and my 33 year old sister.

My sister has always been not great with money. She works as a public school teacher in a suburb of a HCOL area, so she makes good money and has a lot of job security, but spends alot of money going out, on fancy clothes, etc, and doesn't do anything to save. My parents have been helping her out here and there the entirety of her career.

Sister lives in a "cool" urban area just outside of a large city, and commutes into the suburbs for her job (think lives in Bethesda and commutes to Rockville/lives in Arlington commutes to Fairfax). My sister and her dog have lived in a two bedroom apartment with one of her friends for the past few years, but the friend is moving in with her boyfriend in a few months, so sister has to figure out a new living arrangement. Sister understandably doesn't want to deal with having a random roommate. Her building is one of the few in her area that allows dogs, so ideally, sister would move into a one bedroom in her building.

The problem is that she can't afford it. She could move to another apartment further out/closer to her work, which would be cheaper, but it wouldn't be as much fun. Based on the conversations I've had with my sister, she's pretty much banking that our parents are going to help her out to some degree so that she can get a one bedroom in her building.

However, in talking with my parents, they're very conflicted about this. On one hand, they want my sister to be happy, and they have the money to help her out. On the other hand, they're a little frustrated that she's been out of college for a decade, and still has to rely on them for financial support. They feel like she can't always have her cake and eat it too (in this case, live in a one bedroom apartment in a cool area), and at some point as an adult, you have to make difficult decisions.

Anyways, I'm curious how others with adult children would handle this situation.

Responding as a married 36 year old with three kids and a high paying job (along with DH( and a mortgage, etc. My sister is 35 and got married a second time last year after a predictably disastrous first marriage. My sister and her ex-h married in their early 20s when the recession made it difficult to get jobs and they insisted upon living in a nice apartment and relied on my parents to supplement their income. Through her divorce and up until she got married last year my sister relied on my parents to help pay rent, car insurance, vacations, for a car, etc. It’s annoying as a same-age sibling who made a lot of sacrifices in my 20s (lived with three roommates in NYC during grad school, delayed some needed dental care due to not having enough $, lived on Trader Joe’s carrots and eggs and rice for most of grad school and didn’t ever add c drink). I went without a lot because my parents said I needed to be self sufficient. It was hard to at the same time watch my year-younger married sibling be infantilized and enabled. But financially my husband and I are miles ahead and I think some of that is due to my developing more grit and self reliance (my husband also had something similar happen with his younger siblings - his parents came into a lot of money later in life and he has a large trust fund that we don’t touch while his siblings’ draw down their trusts so they can relax more and spend time on hobbies in their 20s). Knowing what I know, I would make my child seriously look at alternative buildings and picking up other forms of income/creating a budget. If my child was claiming they would be isolated if they moved and that seemed accurate to me I would ask them to create a budget and review it with me and assess spending habits and where they could cut back - and ask them to cut back where possible. I would either offer that I would supplement rent as long as needed but it would come out of inheritance or that I would do it for a year but at a year I was done. Does your sister have a boyfriend ? Is she dating?