If I were your parents, I would suggest she move to where she can afford her own place, and possibly help her with a down-payment. I'd also tell you to MYOB.

My best advice to OP is not to be involved in the financial relationship between OP’s parents and his sister. If OP is concerned for OP’s parents’ ability to support themselves in their old age in so far as this might impact OP then OP should talk to parents about financial planning on a larger scale.

If my daughter was a teacher living with a roommate and I had the money, I would put enough money down on a condo for her to own. I couldn’t afford that for my kids so I don’t - but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Teachers don’t make that much.

Anonymous wrote:She is a 33 year old on teacher's salary, to have a life and find a spouse, she needs to wear nice clothes and go out. As long as she isn't getting into debt, its fine to help with rent for a one bed apartment.

Man is the plan, a lot of high worth men look for nice , caring attractive sweet teachers

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thanks for the insights. I'm not posing this question here to figure out a solution for my sister and parents, but rather, see how others would approach it. I have a young child, and DH and I have talked a little bit about how we want to be a safety net for our daughter as she gets older, but also want her to be independent. Given that this situation with my sister is happening now, it's made me reflect on how to create that balance in the future.

I think, OP, that you and your husband should TEACH your current child throughout their life - in an age appropriate way - how to handle money. SO THAT you won't need to be the safety net for your child.

So when you start giving a weekly allowance (at about 5 or 6 years old), you discuss that your child will get an allowance, which is similar to income, and with that money your child needs to:
1. save some (15% for long term savings. this is to help him when he's in college, or after high school. It is a small amount, but it will grow. You open a savings account with interest and he watches that grow each year) (this is the beginning of an "emergency fund" - we should all be putting a certain amount of money away until we have a pot that we NEVER TOUCH and use only in an emergency (roof falls in, hospitalization, lose a job, car crashes and you have to buy a new one).
2. save some for short term savings (20% - this is to save up for a that costs more than $5 when you go to the store, or to use during vacations to buy some thing at the gift shop. This goes into a savings box and is kept in YOUR room, not his room, or a locked piggy bank so he won't just dip into it constantly. Eventually your child will learn you do this so you can buy a new car, go on vacation, etc - you don't survive on credit cards, you save a bit from every paycheck and then go on a fun vacation, buy a car, buy a new couch, save the down payment for the house, etc.
3. spend the rest (s/he can buy whatever s/he wants - this isn't to buy shoes, clothing, food, but rather to buy some silly thing when you are at the store, etc. Your child will learn that when s/he buys something junky, it breaks easily and often - and so will learn to save money a bit and buy a more expensive thing that will last. That's great! They will also learn they'd prefer to have a coloring book to use for weeks at grandma's house (for us it was paper dolls - we loved those stupid things!) OR spend the same amount on a candy bar that lasts 10 minutes. AGAIN - if this takes months/years to learn, that's ok, but they will learn, over time.

(of course, he can't just buy candy and gum when you are out, children must follow house rules, so if you NEVER buy candy at the grocery store, they don't get to circumvent rules by using their money - but when you are ok with him spending his money (on vacation, to buy an X at the grocery store or dollar store or Target) then you don't tell them what to buy - their choice, and their mistakes, so will learn them over the next 10-15 years. Again, he has to follow the rules of the house - no buying guns if you don't believe in gun play, etc.)

The percentages can be different, But let's say you give $8 per week now:

15% is $1.20
25% is $2.00
the rest is spending money for this week... $4.80

BUT next week if s/he didn't happen to spend any money this week, he'd have 4.80+4.80+his short term savings and s/he could buy a teeny lego thing! woo hoo! So fancy, so proud, they used their OWN money! Or can buy 2 coloring books - or whatever his/her heart desires (but you must allow them to spend their spending money how they want, that's how you learn the value of money)

Then, as she/he gets older, you will discuss what your family will buy and what they need to purchase with their own money - this is based on circumstances - we'll buy you a car but you will pay your insurance. Or you will buy all gas when you use the family car, or whatever. We will buy all books for school, but you will buy your pleasure comic books.

And, when they start having a job where they make money, they will do the same as above (yes, there are taxes as an adult but I wouldn't deal with that horror for a child) - so babysitting, pet sitting or cutting grass all counts - they have to split it 3 ways using percentages above.

And you increase their allowance every year or so, obviously, because older kids need more $ and due to inflation. We stopped getting an allowance by 7th or 8th grade when we were both working babysitting, delivering newspapers, etc. but you can decide that in the future.

The hope is that your child will learn how to manage money now and into their future, forever.

My parents did much of the above. They did give my husband and I some money towards the down payment on our house as a gift, and they did the same for my sister and her husband. BUT they had plenty of money by that time - not when we were growing up, but when we were adults. But they WERE NOT our money saviors. I had a very low paying job (early childhood teacher in the 80s and 90s and it was very low-paying), but I knew how to save money, (such as I had), etc.
AND I lived with 2 roommates for YEARS until my later 20s when I went to just 1 roommate, and THEN when I got tired of that, at 31 I moved to a suburban apartment very far away from the cool city. (but I had a larger apartment, and a garden, so that was an offset) In short, I lived within my means. And I bought my own car - and not on credit. (it was not fancy, trust me) That's what I imagine is what you want for your children.

Can your parents truly afford to help her out? Is this like $300/month or 1K/month.

If your parents have a lot of money I would set up accounts for both of my kids. For everything they pay for sister, they put in an account for you.

As long as parents truly don't need the money for their own retirement and eldercare.

I should add that, like PP upthread, student loans were a part of the picture for us. It sounds like that is not the case for your kids. I think that makes a different. For us, having student loans further added to the feeling that we didn’t need to dig deep to pay for visits. Getting out of debt and establishing ourselves financially needed to be the priority.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


I am curious. Why did you expect your parents to pay for your plane tickets home for holidays if you were choosing to live so far away? I am willing to help our 20 something with things like emergency dental care (and we fully paid for college) but I am not inclined to subsidize plane tickets home since DC has chosen to live across the country. That's part of owning your adult choices. We also have 4 kids, so it is not a precedent I want to set---we will fly home anyone who is in school but I'm not going to shell out $2K in plane tickets every thanksgiving and Christmas for those in the work world.


NP. I had a different situation than OP, but we moved away from our hometowns after college. One set of parents are a plane ride away, the other are a long drive.

Parents who were a plane ride away took a similar perspective, that they were never going to subsidize our travel home, kind of believing that it was a poor choice for us to move away. The reality is that we lived where we needed to in order to launch our careers.

You couple that attitude with the fact that we had absolutely no money in our early years, partially due to some uncovered medical expenses they didn’t know about, and it really left us in a place where we didn’t feel responsibility to go into debt in order to see them. So we didn’t. Overtime, the relationship grew more distant. We’re 20 years into our relationship now and we go home about once every 5 years.

So, you’re free to take the attitude you want, but keep in mind that might mean your kids stop coming home. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you if you have 4 kids?

I would be more willing to help out with plane tix if I felt like DC was choosing to live where they are for career reasons. But DC hasn't been responsible post-college in terms of delaying any self-gratification in order to build a stable adult foundation. Extremely picky about looking for jobs in their field of study; unwilling to relocate in order to get a good starter job. Instead, it's all about living in a party location, drinking a lot and smoking a ton of weed, and a series of minimum wage jobs. And being resentful that their parents won't just subsidize their living expenses, even though we've been clear that we would subsidize further education/training. As opposed to DC's younger sib, who just graduated and got a good "starter" job in their field of study, albeit not a particularly high paying one. I am much more inclined to offer holiday plane tix to younger child, who appears to be wisely using the advantages they received (fully paid for education, car) because I don't want to subsidize what I view as imprudent choices by elder DC. I also don't want to feel like I have to bribe our kids to come see us. I chose to live a plane ride (or 9 hour drive) from my parents, also for career reasons, and I paid for my own travel home to see them, because I loved them and realized that they had already spent a lot in getting me to adulthood. Part of having 4 kids is evaluating the precedential value of each parenting decision. As this board frequently demonstrates, subsidizing the financially irresponsible just eventually leads to resentment by the adult kids who make responsible choices.

Why didn't you tell your parents about the medical expenses? It doesn't seem fair to resent your parents for not helping with travel expenses if they didn't have a clear picture of what your circumstances really were.

Thank you for the follow up post. It makes sense why you won’t pay for the kid who moved away. Although it sounds like you’re dealing with a whole other set of problems vs just a kid living in a different city. I am sorry you’re dealing with that.

We didn’t tell them because that wouldn’t have changed anything. They wouldn’t have helped, or they would have twisted what was happening to fit their narrative, which was that moving away was a dumb idea.

At their core, they are unhappy and profoundly judgmental people. At a certain point, we needed to draw a line in the sand. We may have only been in our very early 20s, but were self sufficient adults, and adults deserve privacy. We were dealing with a lot at the time, and weren’t going to direct the first spare $500 we could get our hands on towards hauling ass across the country to visit them. It was time to move on from trying to please people who will never be happy.

Nothing wrong with wealthy parents subsidizing children so long as those subsidies aren't interfering with the child's goals. If I were a parent, I'd be reluctant to fund a lavish lifestyle for a single daughter because having grandchildren is important to me. If it's not important to OP's parents, then let the help flow.

Also, it'd be unfair to cut the daughter off who made a lifetime of choices based on the rational expectation she'd get support.

Anonymous wrote:


I am curious. Why did you expect your parents to pay for your plane tickets home for holidays if you were choosing to live so far away? I am willing to help our 20 something with things like emergency dental care (and we fully paid for college) but I am not inclined to subsidize plane tickets home since DC has chosen to live across the country. That's part of owning your adult choices. We also have 4 kids, so it is not a precedent I want to set---we will fly home anyone who is in school but I'm not going to shell out $2K in plane tickets every thanksgiving and Christmas for those in the work world.


NP. I had a different situation than OP, but we moved away from our hometowns after college. One set of parents are a plane ride away, the other are a long drive.

Parents who were a plane ride away took a similar perspective, that they were never going to subsidize our travel home, kind of believing that it was a poor choice for us to move away. The reality is that we lived where we needed to in order to launch our careers.

You couple that attitude with the fact that we had absolutely no money in our early years, partially due to some uncovered medical expenses they didn’t know about, and it really left us in a place where we didn’t feel responsibility to go into debt in order to see them. So we didn’t. Overtime, the relationship grew more distant. We’re 20 years into our relationship now and we go home about once every 5 years.

So, you’re free to take the attitude you want, but keep in mind that might mean your kids stop coming home. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you if you have 4 kids?

I would be more willing to help out with plane tix if I felt like DC was choosing to live where they are for career reasons. But DC hasn't been responsible post-college in terms of delaying any self-gratification in order to build a stable adult foundation. Extremely picky about looking for jobs in their field of study; unwilling to relocate in order to get a good starter job. Instead, it's all about living in a party location, drinking a lot and smoking a ton of weed, and a series of minimum wage jobs. And being resentful that their parents won't just subsidize their living expenses, even though we've been clear that we would subsidize further education/training. As opposed to DC's younger sib, who just graduated and got a good "starter" job in their field of study, albeit not a particularly high paying one. I am much more inclined to offer holiday plane tix to younger child, who appears to be wisely using the advantages they received (fully paid for education, car) because I don't want to subsidize what I view as imprudent choices by elder DC. I also don't want to feel like I have to bribe our kids to come see us. I chose to live a plane ride (or 9 hour drive) from my parents, also for career reasons, and I paid for my own travel home to see them, because I loved them and realized that they had already spent a lot in getting me to adulthood. Part of having 4 kids is evaluating the precedential value of each parenting decision. As this board frequently demonstrates, subsidizing the financially irresponsible just eventually leads to resentment by the adult kids who make responsible choices.

Why didn't you tell your parents about the medical expenses? It doesn't seem fair to resent your parents for not helping with travel expenses if they didn't have a clear picture of what your circumstances really were.

Anonymous wrote:

It’s complicated because she is this way due to the way your parents have trained her to be.

If your parents CAN help her, it would be nice, though.

From another side, my parent (other parent died young) was well off, but would not help me at all because my step parent was so adamant that I learn to stand on my own two feet. This meant student loans for me, and when I graduated I worked my new job AND a non-paying night nanny job that gave me free board until I could save enough for down payments on an apartment. Parent would not help with dental treatment I needed in my early 20s at that time, and would not pay for plane tickets for me to come home for holidays, so I stopped going back and haven’t seen them for years. There were some other financial emergencies, for essential things, not luxuries, because I had really high student loan payments too, and parent would not help with any of those. Parent has a beach house and travels internationally with new family regularly. It has really damaged our relationship, and maybe I am ungrateful because I really did have a good childhood, I guess, but at the same time I am now planning to help my own child as much as I can, including with a nicer apartment, because I want them to live in comfort and not worry and stress all the time during a period in their life when I want them to enjoy, socialize, and meet people. So I guess I will be like your parents? It’s better than the alternative.

I am curious. Why did you expect your parents to pay for your plane tickets home for holidays if you were choosing to live so far away? I am willing to help our 20 something with things like emergency dental care (and we fully paid for college) but I am not inclined to subsidize plane tickets home since DC has chosen to live across the country. That's part of owning your adult choices. We also have 4 kids, so it is not a precedent I want to set---we will fly home anyone who is in school but I'm not going to shell out $2K in plane tickets every thanksgiving and Christmas for those in the work world.

It's called "peering". The side that wants the traffic more pays for it.

Anonymous wrote:

It’s complicated because she is this way due to the way your parents have trained her to be.

If your parents CAN help her, it would be nice, though.

From another side, my parent (other parent died young) was well off, but would not help me at all because my step parent was so adamant that I learn to stand on my own two feet. This meant student loans for me, and when I graduated I worked my new job AND a non-paying night nanny job that gave me free board until I could save enough for down payments on an apartment. Parent would not help with dental treatment I needed in my early 20s at that time, and would not pay for plane tickets for me to come home for holidays, so I stopped going back and haven’t seen them for years. There were some other financial emergencies, for essential things, not luxuries, because I had really high student loan payments too, and parent would not help with any of those. Parent has a beach house and travels internationally with new family regularly. It has really damaged our relationship, and maybe I am ungrateful because I really did have a good childhood, I guess, but at the same time I am now planning to help my own child as much as I can, including with a nicer apartment, because I want them to live in comfort and not worry and stress all the time during a period in their life when I want them to enjoy, socialize, and meet people. So I guess I will be like your parents? It’s better than the alternative.

I am curious. Why did you expect your parents to pay for your plane tickets home for holidays if you were choosing to live so far away? I am willing to help our 20 something with things like emergency dental care (and we fully paid for college) but I am not inclined to subsidize plane tickets home since DC has chosen to live across the country. That's part of owning your adult choices. We also have 4 kids, so it is not a precedent I want to set---we will fly home anyone who is in school but I'm not going to shell out $2K in plane tickets every thanksgiving and Christmas for those in the work world.

NP. I had a different situation than OP, but we moved away from our hometowns after college. One set of parents are a plane ride away, the other are a long drive.

Parents who were a plane ride away took a similar perspective, that they were never going to subsidize our travel home, kind of believing that it was a poor choice for us to move away. The reality is that we lived where we needed to in order to launch our careers.

You couple that attitude with the fact that we had absolutely no money in our early years, partially due to some uncovered medical expenses they didn’t know about, and it really left us in a place where we didn’t feel responsibility to go into debt in order to see them. So we didn’t. Overtime, the relationship grew more distant. We’re 20 years into our relationship now and we go home about once every 5 years.

So, you’re free to take the attitude you want, but keep in mind that might mean your kids stop coming home. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you if you have 4 kids?

Anonymous wrote:If my kid was in the same situation that OP described,my first question would be, "What's the plan Larla?" If Larla's only plan is ME, that's a problem.

Yup, this. Does she want to go back to school to increase income? Move to a lower cost area? I’m there to help. Ongoing help with no solution (even one in the future) doesn’t work for me.

I would not want to be on the hook for ongoing expenses. I would look at her budget with her, get her to automatically save a certain amount, and know that we are there to help if needed (car breaks down, eg, but not to pay rent every month). I would not ask for any of this from a self sufficient child, but if she’s asking me for money, I want to know the plan…

Anonymous wrote:

It’s complicated because she is this way due to the way your parents have trained her to be.

If your parents CAN help her, it would be nice, though.

From another side, my parent (other parent died young) was well off, but would not help me at all because my step parent was so adamant that I learn to stand on my own two feet. This meant student loans for me, and when I graduated I worked my new job AND a non-paying night nanny job that gave me free board until I could save enough for down payments on an apartment. Parent would not help with dental treatment I needed in my early 20s at that time, and would not pay for plane tickets for me to come home for holidays, so I stopped going back and haven’t seen them for years. There were some other financial emergencies, for essential things, not luxuries, because I had really high student loan payments too, and parent would not help with any of those. Parent has a beach house and travels internationally with new family regularly. It has really damaged our relationship, and maybe I am ungrateful because I really did have a good childhood, I guess, but at the same time I am now planning to help my own child as much as I can, including with a nicer apartment, because I want them to live in comfort and not worry and stress all the time during a period in their life when I want them to enjoy, socialize, and meet people. So I guess I will be like your parents? It’s better than the alternative.

I am curious. Why did you expect your parents to pay for your plane tickets home for holidays if you were choosing to live so far away? I am willing to help our 20 something with things like emergency dental care (and we fully paid for college) but I am not inclined to subsidize plane tickets home since DC has chosen to live across the country. That's part of owning your adult choices. We also have 4 kids, so it is not a precedent I want to set---we will fly home anyone who is in school but I'm not going to shell out $2K in plane tickets every thanksgiving and Christmas for those in the work world.

Well, they invited me to visit them for Christmas through my early and mid 20s, and knew I had huge student loan payments and was struggling a lot to just get by. I honestly could not afford the plane tickets. I didn’t have the money. I didn’t choose to live far from the parent: they had remarried and moved to another state. I told them I couldn’t afford the tickets and they said that was too bad.

It’s complicated because she is this way due to the way your parents have trained her to be.

If your parents CAN help her, it would be nice, though.

From another side, my parent (other parent died young) was well off, but would not help me at all because my step parent was so adamant that I learn to stand on my own two feet. This meant student loans for me, and when I graduated I worked my new job AND a non-paying night nanny job that gave me free board until I could save enough for down payments on an apartment. Parent would not help with dental treatment I needed in my early 20s at that time, and would not pay for plane tickets for me to come home for holidays, so I stopped going back and haven’t seen them for years. There were some other financial emergencies, for essential things, not luxuries, because I had really high student loan payments too, and parent would not help with any of those. Parent has a beach house and travels internationally with new family regularly. It has really damaged our relationship, and maybe I am ungrateful because I really did have a good childhood, I guess, but at the same time I am now planning to help my own child as much as I can, including with a nicer apartment, because I want them to live in comfort and not worry and stress all the time during a period in their life when I want them to enjoy, socialize, and meet people. So I guess I will be like your parents? It’s better than the alternative.

I am curious. Why did you expect your parents to pay for your plane tickets home for holidays if you were choosing to live so far away? I am willing to help our 20 something with things like emergency dental care (and we fully paid for college) but I am not inclined to subsidize plane tickets home since DC has chosen to live across the country. That's part of owning your adult choices. We also have 4 kids, so it is not a precedent I want to set---we will fly home anyone who is in school but I'm not going to shell out $2K in plane tickets every thanksgiving and Christmas for those in the work world.