Do you worry about your kids being able to maintain your current lifestyle?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up upper middle class in a LCOL area. Parents did very well and owned multiple businesses.

I went to college with no debt, married husband and we also do well. HHI is around $700-800k a year. Sister is also doing very well and her HHI is around $1-1.2 million a year.

I worry our kids will get used to this lifestyle and never be able to replicate it. They are used to living in large houses, traveling to summer houses, flying on nice vacations (first class many times), etc. they aren’t spoiled at all and seem appreciative as much as kids can be but this is just the life they are used to. DH and I work hard and want to enjoy our life as well.

Do you also worry about your kids being able to maintain their lifestyle as they grow up? Of course DH and I do not want to or expect to fund our kids into adulthood and expect them to find careers and support themselves.

yes- this is why people worry about building generational wealth. I come from a large, old family hat has weathered all sorts of historical downturns, the best way to "Give them the freedom to do anything but not nothing" is to fund retirement- buy income generating property or help them buy a property and hand over a seeded Roth when they are 21, put money in 529s for grandkids as well , they can keep socking away money when they have it throughout their life but the 40 years of growth is what creates wealth. not having to worry about saving for retirement & kids college costs really really helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:no. Statistically they most likely won’t be as wealthy as us, but they certainly will never need to worry. we have planned well:

This is my take as well.

[Anonymous]

I have an adult child living on his own. He is quite independent. He's making over $100K now and seems to be well liked at his place of employment. He shares an apartment with two other young men in DC.

He in no way is replicating our current life style, and I am 100% fine with that. He does travel, but on a budget. Both my husband and I had no generational wealth and he made all our money on his own. True, my DS has no college debt, and we still pay for his phone, youtube tv subscription, and tolls because those subscriptions are part of our family subscription. We don't supplement his rent or anything like that. He needs to figure out budgeting and go back to graduate school if he wants to excel, and that's what he is doing.

That said, I am very aware of other parents supplementing their kids' rent because there is no way some of these kids could never afford their apartments with no roommates in some of the best sections of DC. My son has a couple of friends like this, but he doesn't expect that from us thankfully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up upper middle class in a LCOL area. Parents did very well and owned multiple businesses.

I went to college with no debt, married husband and we also do well. HHI is around $700-800k a year. Sister is also doing very well and her HHI is around $1-1.2 million a year.

I worry our kids will get used to this lifestyle and never be able to replicate it. They are used to living in large houses, traveling to summer houses, flying on nice vacations (first class many times), etc. they aren’t spoiled at all and seem appreciative as much as kids can be but this is just the life they are used to. DH and I work hard and want to enjoy our life as well.

Do you also worry about your kids being able to maintain their lifestyle as they grow up? Of course DH and I do not want to or expect to fund our kids into adulthood and expect them to find careers and support themselves.

Sounds like a humble brag to me. Pat yourself on the back. Why do you need summer houses and if you do travel overseas, why does it have to be first class? You know exactly what you are doing and why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trump will burn the country to the grow. If you don’t know this already you have not paid attention

We are headed to a very dark time

Peter Theil and Opus day will own you. It is going to be horrifying.

People think they are immune they are not this will affect 99 percent of this country.

If you are kid the 1 percent now good luck

Ma'am, this is a Wendy's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump will burn the country to the grow. If you don’t know this already you have not paid attention

We are headed to a very dark time

Peter Theil and Opus day will own you. It is going to be horrifying.

People think they are immune they are not this will affect 99 percent of this country.

If you are kid the 1 percent now good luck

Ma'am, this is a Wendy's.

Disagree re Wendys. Agree that we’re headed to a dark time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have an adult child living on his own. He is quite independent. He's making over $100K now and seems to be well liked at his place of employment. He shares an apartment with two other young men in DC.

He in no way is replicating our current life style, and I am 100% fine with that. He does travel, but on a budget. Both my husband and I had no generational wealth and he made all our money on his own. True, my DS has no college debt, and we still pay for his phone, youtube tv subscription, and tolls because those subscriptions are part of our family subscription. We don't supplement his rent or anything like that. He needs to figure out budgeting and go back to graduate school if he wants to excel, and that's what he is doing.

That said, I am very aware of other parents supplementing their kids' rent because there is no way some of these kids could never afford their apartments with no roommates in some of the best sections of DC. My son has a couple of friends like this, but he doesn't expect that from us thankfully.

This is very true because we are those people. Except our son lives in a property we own and he pays way under fair market value. we’ve intentionally invested knowing we might house out kids in the properties. We are of the buy borrow die mindset so this will be theirs one day anyways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump will burn the country to the grow. If you don’t know this already you have not paid attention

We are headed to a very dark time

Peter Theil and Opus day will own you. It is going to be horrifying.

People think they are immune they are not this will affect 99 percent of this country.

If you are kid the 1 percent now good luck

Ma'am, this is a Wendy's.

A Wendy's that's gonna get burnt to the ground!
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No I worry about them not being Able to afford healthcare.

Same. Healthcare and housing are brutal. Neither of us has ever made a six figure income but my wife's job has great benefits and we've talked about her hanging on to it for at least 6 more years. Besides needing the money (duh) we want to keep it going for the kids (to age 26) and so we can make it to Medicare age.

[Anonymous]

We have a $2-3m HHI. Our kids will likely not earn that. However, we are surrounded by people who come from family money. Even though they don’t have super high income jobs, they still live in beautiful homes, send their kids to private school, vacation well, etc. My kids won’t have to save up for a down payment on a house. They can continue going to our beach house. I’m not too worried about them. I do often remind them that what makes them NOT rich is that they have to work.

[Anonymous]

When you have a bunch of friends, whose parents are in the 1% and you see that they can never maintain that you realize that that’s just the way it is.

I kinda like being in the top 10% more than the one percent because the top one percent of some weird weirdness going on up there.

[Anonymous]

Yes. It's very clear to me that we are a declining nation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You should be. Most of my acquaintances in the DC area are very downwardly mobile. Yet extremely comfortable as they are subsidized by their rich and UMC families.

You should be telling the kids immediately not to expect a dime beyond schooling or whatever. Otherwise they will observe their other rich friends be supported indefinitely by their families and expect the same from you.

FWIW I grew up LMC in the rural south and knowing that my parents weren’t planning to give me any money really helped me understand that I had to make my own money in life.

+1
Getting your kids “off the books” is the best financial decision. My 16 year old knows this acutely right now. We’ve taken her allowance, because she’s been irresponsible and can’t get to school on time. She has a weekend job but it does pay for the lifestyle she wants or her friends have. We don’t subsidize or encourage irresponsibility. She’s at a very wealthy private school so she is surrounded by kids who will never have to work. We are working wealthy, not wealthy wealthy.

[Anonymous]

This is a humble brag thread.

Our HHI was the same as OP's almost twenty years ago. We never flew first class with the kids. There was no reason to. And we sent our kids to public schools because there was no reason to go private.

In short, OP is spoiling her kids and setting them up for disappointment. She's also sending the pathetic message that the things she is describing and spending money on are essential for a happy life.

We took nice vacations and enjoyed ourselves but weren't ridiculous like OP. Then we paid for college and weddings and down payments and left our kids sufficiently set up that they have never needed to make that much money. They're fine as they are and basically don't live any worse now than they did as kids.

[Anonymous]

No, not really. We've talked and are continuing to talk with DC about money and the big three things to know:

1. how to budget
2. how to build wealth
3. how to comply with regulations related to taxes and investing.

These are the three areas I desperately could have used adult guidance on when I was in my early twenties.

DS knows that we may not be able to pass much along to him but we won't pose a burden. Our contribution to DS has been to provide him with the best education our money and his brains and work ethic can buy.

My DH and I are from LMC/poverty level backgrounds and are fortunate to have done as well as we have.