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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]HHI of $350k in LCOL area. Nice home and domestic vacations – no vacation homes or international vacations or luxury cars. DH and I had no help from our parents, we both enlisted I the military right out of high school. We are successful based on our hard work.
Older 2 sons (early 30s) – we paid for education, first cars, gave them $10k starter at college graduation… both went for city life. Live in small apartments. One chose to go with a flexible work environment that pays less than he could be making because he values flexibility. One earns $150k/year – not bad for being early 30s, but he seems to squander it. I look at them and think where I was at their age – owning my first home and out of the tiny apartment life. But these are their choices. We mention that they can have careers in our small city (less than 100 miles from DC, so can easily get to city life on weekends)  and have a LCOL, but they don’t want small city life. We have helped them financially from time to time - $5k down for a car just a few months ago for one son, for example, and generous amounts of cash at holidays.  Third son in college now. He has a financial head on him. He sees our home (3500 sq ft, 5 bed / 3.5 bath SFH with inground pool, ½ acre lot backing to state forest) and wants that and does not like the idea of living in a tiny apartment in a big city. He chose to live at home for college, so all the money we would have spent on housing is going into a savings account for him. He will easily have a $60k nest egg when he graduates.  He plans on buying his first home soon after graduating college. He has an internship that will likely end up hiring him upon graduation with a decent starting salary.
I know financially, life is much harder for Gen Y&Z. That is why we paid for their education and gave a nice graduation cash gift for them to start their adult lives. TBH, I was not worried when they were in their 20s as tiny apartment living in big city is kind of a rite of passage and very normal. But now that they are in their 30s, and their apartments are… not very nice… I am concerned. But if our children do not have the drive & determination, there’s only so much parents can do. Or maybe they just don’t care about material things and value experiences over possessions.  I just keep my opinions to myself and ask them if they need anything.
I do worry about appearances that we are giving the third more money – but it was a tradeoff he wanted. If the other 2 had gone to commuter college close to home and lived with us, we would have done the same – but I also fully supported them going away for college and gaining independence.
 [/quote]

Don’t base everything on outward spend and appearances. We’re around their ages and make close to $1M but live in a sh*t shack because we’re pursuing FAT FIRE (plan to hit $20M by mid 40s). Lots of people our age live significantly below their means because we’ve seen 2008 as teens and previously the dot com crash as young kids. [/quote]

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