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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I mean, sort of. My FIL and DH are both lawyers. My DH at 45 doesn’t yet make as much as his father makes at 67, but I’m sure he will one day!

My FIL graciously pays. He would be insulted if we paid.

[Anonymous]

My mom pays, but she is the one who does the inviting. Occasionally we have asked her to tag along on a low key trip we are already planning and in that case we just pay for her (although she will then insist on paying for some meals/experiences). But she likes to take the kids/grandkids on a big trip every year. DH parents also wanted to take all the grandkids to Disney one year, which they paid for.

[Anonymous]

They pay. We typically do cruises and they book most of it through their travel agent. Sometimes we pay for our own airfare but sometimes they insist. If we do an excursion without them we pay for ourselves and we try to book a specialty restaurant on the boat for one night for everyone. They are very well off and struggling to use all their retirement distributions so in some ways its part of their estate planning.

[Anonymous]

The parents should pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The parents should pay.

If they do the inviting, sure. My neither my parents nor in-laws would invite us because they can't afford to pay. So we invite them so that we actually go on vacation together so we pay. Are people here talking about some situation where their parents did the inviting then expected someone else to pay?

[Anonymous]

My parents finally started paying for trips for all of the kids and grandkids because they are over the estate tax limit, and they finally feel secure enough to splurge.

We pay for everything for my in-laws - housing, tickets to visit us, etc. We've never vacationed with them but we used to pay for them to visit us twice a year, and now they are getting too old to travel and DH will just visit them himself once or twice a year.

[Anonymous]

Depends on finances. We pay for my parents who wouldn't afford travel otherwise but in-laws pay for us to stay at fancier places than we can afford.

[Anonymous]

We each pay our own way. We got treated once for my parents' 70th birthday, but we still paid the international airfare for ourselves. We're both UMC and money isn't an issue

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I mean, sort of. My FIL and DH are both lawyers. My DH at 45 doesn’t yet make as much as his father makes at 67, but I’m sure he will one day!

My FIL graciously pays. He would be insulted if we paid.

My dad is the opposite. He's made 7 figures since the mid-nineties, but he took pride in raising us kids to be independent and able to take him out to dinner. He only started giving away money in his seventies, when his estate-planning attorney told him that if he didn't, it'd go to the government via taxes. No hard feelings here - graduating from law school with zero debt was his biggest gift to me and by proxy my family. It's easy to set yourself up in life, starting a big law job with zero debt. Also, he recently set up trusts for my kids, which relieves me of the stress of leaving them a legacy. I can spend everything I make going forward because I know my kids have money via their grandparents that is locked up for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The parents should pay.

If they do the inviting, sure. My neither my parents nor in-laws would invite us because they can't afford to pay. So we invite them so that we actually go on vacation together so we pay. Are people here talking about some situation where their parents did the inviting then expected someone else to pay?

We would never invite parents on trip with us if it meant we had to pay for everything! Sheesh. We think we're being nice inviting them to come with us on a trip and they also are just happy to be included.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

Haha, I love you!

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't consider my parents elderly, they are late 60s, but we pay for flights, rental car and usually a meal out. They pay for lodging and most meals out.

I would agree with other posters, it’s less about age and more about financial ability. I wouldn’t want them to contribute if they couldn’t comfortably afford to but they are very secure financially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I mean, sort of. My FIL and DH are both lawyers. My DH at 45 doesn’t yet make as much as his father makes at 67, but I’m sure he will one day!

My FIL graciously pays. He would be insulted if we paid.

Typically parents have more money than their kids, so parents should pay. My spouse and I would never let our kids pay.

[Anonymous]

When my dad was alive, my parents always paid. My mom paid for me to go on a girls trip with her and our cousins. But when I rent a lake house in the summer, she's my guest.

[Anonymous]

boomers pay they are all wealthy, they can gift up to 39k a year (19k per each parent) and then 19k per each child, taking into account business class ticket, villas, food and activties that should close to cover a trip for a family of 4