If you go on vacation with your elderly parents, who pays?

Anonymous
Do they pay, do you split it, do you pay?
Anonymous
Like anything, you discuss this ahead of time before anything is booked. There are no different rules because someone is elderly or your parent, if that is what you’re asking about. If
Anonymous
It depends on everyone's finances, not seniority or age.

There was a time when my father paid for my young adult self on vacations. And then we each paid our own way on joint vacations for decades. Now he and my mother are frail and elderly, and we would love to pay for everyone, not because they're poor, but because we want to organize the whole trip to save them the burden of planning and thinking about logistics, and it's easy to pay for everything when you're organizing.

Anonymous
^ so I guess I just contradicted myself a little When everyone can afford the vacation, I think it's a nice gesture to pay for our elders if it also means they don't need to lift a finger to plan for the trip.
Anonymous
My parents insist on paying, although at this point it's just my Mom and she's not up for much travel anymore. Finances are not an issue for her and she likes to do this for my siblings and I.

I'm divorced now, but when I was married we paid for my in-laws if they joined us on something we had planned. They often rented a beach house and invited us to join them (which would have been them paying) but they never checked with us on dates before renting and always chose dates that weren't workable for us.
Anonymous
My DH covers everything for his parents. I just pay for my mom’s hotel and meals. They are all retired professionals.
Anonymous
We pay. They paid enough growing up.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:We pay. They paid enough growing up.


❤️
Anonymous
Like others said, it just depends. When we go on vacations with DH's family, his parents generally pay, but the trip is usually spearheaded by them and they're very comfrotable financially. With my family, everyone pays their own way although we pay for my parents more these days (when they let us).
Anonymous
I've only been on one trip with my parents. We chauferred them around Scotland and Ireland. Everyone paid for their own but they paid for the rental car, and my husband drove a manual transmission, on the wrong side of the road, with them in the back asking what was for dinner and have we seen their passports. I thought it was kinda fun - they had never been before - but later mom said she knew we only asked them along because we needed someone to rent the car. Not true. I just thought it was a nice thing to do because DH drove them all over. A very hurtful remark and we've limited contact since (from other things but this was icing on the cake).

We have family trips with our own children and we pay. About one big one every other year, and they come to the lake with us for the three big summer holidays. I buy all the food for meals and boat gas. They buy the snacks, water, tougher chores around the cabin, etc.
--a much better experience.
Anonymous
Parents pay. It's more tax efficient and the natural order of things.

Obviously, if they ran out of money, I'd pay.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:My parents insist on paying, although at this point it's just my Mom and she's not up for much travel anymore. Finances are not an issue for her and she likes to do this for my siblings and I.



She likes to do this for your siblings, and you do what?
Anonymous
We typically do one meal where they pay, one where we pay, and the rest we each pay our own way. Which is so stupid because in the end, we end up at the exact same place anyway.
Anonymous
We pay. We have more money and have more expensive tastes. In the natural order kids should be more successful than their parents. Each generation should do better than the last so it makes sense for well to do kids to pay after all the parents' sacrifices.
Anonymous
We pay for dad but only because he is poor. I’d have him pay if he has the money
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