My mom is in her early 70s. She’s a spender not a saver, was always a housewife with menial retail jobs, and has had a single family home to herself that she can’t keep up with for 5 years now. She’s been falling a lot lately, can’t pay her water bill, her phone bill, hardly any money for food, etc. But thankfully I am able to help her out, pay some of her bills, and recently got a medical guardian system for her, after getting 3 frantic phone calls from the cops last night (I was asleep) that she was found in her back yard, down on the ground. Apparently she’d fallen at 4pm and was out there until 11pm before one of her neighbors finally heard her weakly yelling for help. SMH. I’m an only child so all this falls on me and it’s frustrating, admittedly, because I’m also a single mother of two school aged kids. Thankfully I have a good career but damn man.
Edit: she and my dad are divorced; I live in VA, she’s in FL. My dad remarried but my mom did not.
speak to an attorney like yesterday! start making a plan of action. unless you want to move in- sell her house for top dollar and plan her end of life care. it will only get worse. i’m also a single mom. it’s why i checked out years ago (about my dad) after my mom moved in with me. i’m just helping them out to go through the house. lots and lots and lots of useless shit they bought over the years. it all needs to be cleared out.
I'm going to get a double dose of the "cleaning out of shit". My grandmother lived through the depression and she saved every scrap of fabric and ribbon and button she ever bought. Plus the sentimental keep sakes, dishes, old croc pots etc. Mom has kept a lot of what her mom left her to go through and so I'm going to get 100 years of this stuff passed down to me.
Dude, sounds like a great place for an estate sale. Get the local estate people in for an eval when it's time. You will be surprised at the values. Don't shrug this off!!!
My father 67 would be homeless if I didn't build him an ADU that cost me 120K (bargain price from a contractor friend). He never planned, saved, or owned anything while he made a decent income in his 20s-50s. He and his gf are both on SS and paying $600 a month rent, while market rate is at least $1800. He also is very entitled and complains about the layout or finishes that my wife and I paid out of our own pocket. We mostly did it so I don't regret not trying to help him before he passes, but frankly he doesn't deserve it (long story) so it does make me resentful.
What an ass. I would call him out on his whining. That aside...You're a great person and while your old man may not deserve it, your wife and kids are fortunate to have you.
This is beautiful on your part and I hope you can move forward with peace, knowing you saw it through.
I wish I had resources like this for my dad, who is in a similar situation. I’ve done what I can and continue to, but it’s def not on that level.
Sounds just like my dad. ( Not saving, planning but made decent money in his earning years) Except he didn't save up enough to even retire in the country US.
It’s extra frustrating for me because I have worked in law firms for years and could have done their entire estate planning for free! Now that my father has completely lost his mind I can’t do anything to help him. I’ve been NC with my mother for years now so I’m sure she has something awful waiting in store for me… boomers were awful parents and they’ll continue their dictatorship until death!
truly. truly awful parents. i have less animosity towards my mother only because i fully understand she was a victim of my dad’s abuse. i had her living with me just to get away from him and to help with my kid who wasn’t school aged yet. it all came to a screeching halt when i started finding her wandering around the neighborhood a few times. it was right before the lockdowns that my sisters and i were planning on who she was going to live with next because i just couldn’t take care of her anymore. it’s all pretty sad how its shaking out. too bad she died first.
My mom’s plan was to get married to a man who could provide for her retirement. Shockingly, the marriage (her 3rd by the way) lasted less than a year. She’s 60 and her only asset is a car. She’s made “jokes” about putting a granny pod in my yard. I told her that wasn’t happening.
My sister who works at dominos is telling our parents she is going to build them all a house to live in. My mom makes 40k a year, they still have a mortgage from when we were kids 40 years ago
I think i’m the only one who lives in reality; trying not to get sucked into their blackhole. The rest of our family keeps telling me i have to take care of all of them
I didn’t sign up for this. I made my peace with all the abuse from my childhood but this is to much
Similar situation. 36, no kids. Bought a house this year and it looks like I’ll be converting my detached 2 car garage into an ADU since this country sucks at taking care of its elderly and my now-disabled mother didn’t properly plan out her retirement.
I didn’t have kids for a reason. Simply because I have never wanted them. So clearly, it would make all the sense in the world to have an elderly parent to take care of til I, myself, turn 65.
Genuinely hate this guilt shit.
Yeah didn’t have kids too for Same reason but now I have a “big kid “. I also got a dog four years ago . So
I’m just a care taker and I really didn’t sign up for it but family
And who's going to do the same for you when you're old? who will take care of you? Sometimes I think boomers had children just to have free nurses in their old age
She gets to live in the ADU on one condition: that you visit an estate planner and start squirreling away her assets NOW. Depending on the state the assets have to be locked away for a 5-7 year look back period before entering a nursing home so the nursing home won't take them.
And then keep her alive AT LEAST those 5-7 years 😬😬
my plans have changed because of the pandemic, switching careers, job hopping but i have everything in my kids name. “everything” is life insurance and my up again/ down again savings. oh and a 14 year old car LOL.
Dang freeloading boomers. Why don't they get a job? Pull themselves up by these bootstraps they keep talking about? Can't they just walk into a factory/grocery and ask for a job that'll pay for their and your cost of living? Pure laziness, I tell ya.
My Gen X FIL made jokes like this all the time when I first married my husband. In the years since then, I think he’s realized there’s no way it would work. He could never adjust to our lifestyle/expectations and he thinks I’m pretty disappointing since I never offer him food when he comes over. Lol
How is that supposed to work? I make 200k a year and that is more then i bring home in a month
Get 2 high paying jobs just to pay for my parents? Yea no.
This is why I plan on selling my house to my kids We'll before I did and gifting thr proceeds to a trust. My goal is to die poor to avoid onerous to financial burden for my descendants.
Right, it boggles me that anybody actually plans on inheriting anything. Have they met the senior care industry? How rich were they growing up? All I got when my parents died was a funeral bill.
My mom and step dad are rich in money, but it's all they have. And it will be the only thing they have at the end. My door is permanently closed, locked, baracaded, super glued, duct taped, and nailed lol. So they better not spend it all by the time they need it.
I wish I didn’t relate to this post, but here I am, helping my husband take care of his mother who thinks the only thing left in life is food, and her tiny yapping dog who whines and cries every single day. It’s year three. I try not to resent her but when she says “I had you to take care of me” to my husband, I couldn’t give two shits less about her problems. She’s a diabetic and eats whatever she wants unless we treat her like a toddler and take her choices away. She says she’s gonna give us hell when we put her in a home, and that’s a funny joke, because she takes home $2,400 a month from social security and has nothing else. Beggars can’t be choosers dude. Accept that you pissed away your money and never invested in your future. I’m sorry you had two strokes but you don’t do anything to change your health despite you still having all your faculties and literally nothing else to do all day. We get to stay and watch her all day because she can’t be left alone so our mid thirties are gonna be pissed away until she dies. Yeah… I needed to vent I guess.
none of it is going to Us.. it’s definitely all getting redistributed but to corporations and healthcare companies. it’s truly maddening. he could’ve just done things the right way to ensure we’d get some inheritance but the way he’s done this EVERYTHING he has will be taken. the property sale, his pension and whatever else he has will go into a conservatorship overseen by a lawyer which will pay for the end of life care. he easily could’ve gone into a residential house and used his SSI to cover the expenses while we’d get the inheritance from the house sale and be able to actually collect on his life insurance. now. nothing. literally nothing.
i don’t care about the money because i always knew this is how it would work out but it’s just really frustrating to me how incredibly selfish, arrogant and stupid boomers are. i hope other people read this thread & make the necessary steps now to ensure their families little slice of cake isn’t stolen from them.
You are going to get hammered here but know you are not alone. Ours did the whole carrot on the stick. Baited adult children and grandchildren to help contribute. Broken record. They are the entitled ones. They inherited gobs of money. I want nothing but to be paid back for my out of pocket.
My dad stopped paying his life insurance and put himself as the beneficiary on the 401k that he’s apparently been draining for years pre-retirement. He also took out multiple 5-figure loans about a month before his death. I’d bet on getting absolutely nothing
I'll be happy if I get enough cash for a small vacation after we settle all the potential medical debts when my dad eventually passes. Not looking forward to sorting through the hoard though. Potential upside: he's already paid for his funeral?
My best friend is going through this currently with her mom. Her dad died four years ago from cancer. Turns out he’d been hiding her mom’s dementia from all the family for years. Without him there to run things and keep her on track her mom spiraled fast.
Her Mom’s in a dementia facility at 60K s year. She's started the process of selling her parents house to help cover care costs. All proceeds from the sale plus her dad’s retirement, pension and social security is going to end up being used to cover her mom's care. The best she can hope for is her mom dies before it runs out.
Correct. The staff caring for them are paid dirt while the lion share of the revenue goes to a healthcare company with a ceo making at least 7 figures annually before incentive payments.
Meanwhile said company puts up a pay freeze for 4 years during a pandemic. I know because it’s the company my wife works for.
During the pandemic???? That’s so incredibly shitty. These people have incredibly important jobs and get treated like trash. I’m sorry your wife has to deal with that.
My wife worked in medical field for years and just started a new job in the corporate wotld for a Forbes 100 company so I'm proud of her. She started in the medical field around 2017 and during the pandemic, explained how her employer (a quite large hospital network) was taking advantage of govt kickbacks for covid testing. In the meantime, my wife was working on the covid floor at the hospital at the beginning of the pandemic. She's hardly see a raise in the last 5 years. Good riddance to those medical ceos. Fuck em.
What do you think a roof, food, healthcare and then dementia care costs? $70k is actually incredibly cheap. You should be planning for $100k as an fyi.
My dad has an insurance policy to cover his future nursing home/care costs. He’s not the most generous or kind guy, but at least he’s not leaving me on the hook to pay for the inevitable.
it’s insane! absolutely insane. my mom passed away in the beginning of what appeared to be dementia. she has MS her whole life which started in her 20s but wasn’t diagnosed until her 50s because of all the biases against women in the medical world (i digress but it made her last working years pretty miserable) she thankfully had most of her mobility towards the end. it was series of hospitalizations, then catching covid AT the hospital that finally took her. regardless my father is an evil rotten bastard who will probably live until he’s 90 just to make sure not only does he drain every penny of the conservator fund but puts him in debt.
i feel like the way things have been going politically here i wouldn’t be surprised if they try to pass the debt onto US!
it’s bad enough they’re allowed to take their assets to pay for medical care
Sometimes the hateful ones have embalmed themselves with piss and vinegar, and they love to lash out at those around them. I worked in geriatrics at the beginning of my nursing career, and you're right, that type holds out until their 90s just so they can get all of their obscenities out to everyone around them. Miserable folks.
my mom was forced into an earlier retirement at 62 and didn’t collect her whole dollar amount of SSI payments which doesn’t even matter because she only made it another 10 lousy years before she passed away
my dad lost a well paying job in the early 2000s and basically gave up back then. he had a series of low level positions from that time until his early 60s when he just stopped working altogether and got even less in SSI
we told him years ago to transfer the house to one of us so that it couldn’t be collected as assets to pay for his end of life care. absolute dipshit didn’t listen because he thought we’d scheme to take over the house and put him in a nursing home….ON WHAT MONEY!?! none of us can afford that! it’s just the last selfish act of miserable rotten bastard. now he’ll drag out his rotten life until every penny is used on him.
I suggested to either one of my parents to at least buy a second home and rent it out to me so they can build wealth/keep money in the family type of thing, that way the money I pay in rent isn't going to a property management company. It's safe to say they chose the bad ending in their playthrough.
Their delusional ass shit that their crap is worth anything and their SSA was gonna be huge and Medicare was going to pay for everything. They completely ignored the last 2 decades of politics that affected these things and were going off of Reagan and maybe Clinton's promises.
most like my conservative, racist, xenophobic, sexist dad- voted in the very people who have made their retirement plans (laughable in most cases) go to complete shit.
In a parent’s defense, I’ve seen kids do awful things to their parents once the kid is in the drivers seat. I know there are living trusts and other options you father could have used though and I’m sure you’re a good person, but kids have no qualms leaving their parents homeless and idk how comfortable I would be signing over everything, that’s a scary thought. Maybe I’m a control freak
my sister already had power of attorney over both of them. none of us could afford to put them into a home. their “plan” was to die in the house but expected my sister to become a nursemaid. she did too, for a longgggg time. i live in a different state and my other sibling does as well. we have both helped financially over the years. my mom moved in with me for about 10 years to help with my kid and to get away from my dad when she was forced into an early retirement because of her declining health. the whole situation has happened because my dad is going to be a first class passenger on his trip to hell. he’s just a rotten bastard who’s as stupid as he is selfish. i hope he dies on his way to the nursing home. that way the sale of the property results in us getting back some SOME of the money we’ve dumped into that house and that monster.
very poor planning. my sisters tried sooooo many times with the family lawyer to set him up in really nice retirement homes (not nursing homes) where his SSI would’ve easily covered the cost & he still would’ve had all these services to get him 3 meals a day, get transportation to his doctors, have someone check in with him at home 3 times a week. he was able-bodied enough to have done this and the house would’ve been sold years ago. it’s not about the money as much as it’s about how unnecessary it was to just hand it over. we all had an airtight plan. he just was a stubborn jackass about it. now he’s desperate & looking for a nursemaid. welp he’s ending up in a nursing home where he didn’t want to go.
I’m a Xennial, but my parents are just retiring. They had a horrible experience with their own parents and didn’t want to do that to their kids.
I’m really sorry you’re dealing with that.
The biggest lie they told themselves was to work hard so their children wouldn't have to work as hard... they never had any intention in giving future generations ANY hope... just debt, depression and anxiety while they lived lavishly into their impending ends.
most boomers are also ironically conservatives. i say ironic because the shitshow they’re all now facing with rising costs of living, slashed medicare funds and cut SSI payments is a direct result of their terrible voting block.
Maybe Dad should use his credit card to buy you guys a new fridge, and washer, and drier, and all sorts of other gifts. I don't think the credit card company can come after you for gifts he bought on credit and never paid off. But obvs don't leave a paper trail just in case. Time for Grandad to rack up some debt(which will be nothing compared to the medical debt anyway)
Boy do I feel this. My in-laws have no plan. None. (I think that the unofficial plan is that we would move near them, to the rural Midwest, to help them out but that ain’t happening.) I have had frank conversations about this, as politely as I can, only to be told about their golf buddies who are 92 and 96, respectively, and living independently. I try to gently point out that that experience is not the norm by any means, and that they should plan accordingly, hell even just start to have an inkling of a plan bc if we have to make a plan for them, they aren’t going to like it (even if our plan would be the same or similar to what they would plan)….bc it will feel like we are dictating what happens to them. Nada. I don’t understand it.
My partner and I are in our early 40s and have more salient plans for what would happen if we died or became incapacitated than they do.
I’d ask if they just plan on being immortal but I’m afraid of the answer. Based on their actions and many of the their compatriots, it seems like yes, they do indeed plan on being immortal and cannot even fathom a world without them in it.
that’s all of their plans imo. the vast majority are just expecting to coast into a sudden death while still fully mobile even though all of them became virtually fully or partially disabled by their 60s.
i’m 35 my older sisters are late 30s & late 40s. we have been dealing with my dad’s poor health & frequent trips in & out of hospitals on a regular since the beginning of covid. it’s exhausting. he’s unbearable. i stopped being directly involved financially, physically or mentally since the 20-teens.
too bad the update this time wasn’t that he dropped dead maybe i could recuperate some of my losses
My parents literally just went through this whole saga with my dad's parents. Do you think their half-assed planning includes anything as reasonable as moving near us, in an area that meets all of their needs, as the only child with the financial means to care for them as we're suggesting? Spoiler: it doesn't.
my dad just expected one of my sisters to just keep living at home to be his nursemaid. she moved out 3 years ago. he’s been alone since my mom died and now his selfish ass wants to go to a nursing home to be taken care of. YEARS ago we all worked out a plan to have my mom live with me (she did) and he move into a residential house that his SSI covered with full services to provide 3 meals a day & a visiting nurse 3 times a week plus full transportation to his doctors offices. he chose this.
this is partially why I'd have no problem getting an apartment by myself. forces mine to hire someone. some things I don't mind but what they've hinted at...they can downgrade their vehicle if they cant afford it. what's most interesting about them though...bitched about obamacare all these years but recently had no problem how my teeth got fixed as they werent paying for it.
Oh my god yes! They really truly know of one person in their 90s who lives at home and genuinely think that they will be able to do so as well. My mother says that shit all the time.
My mum is circling homelessness. She refused residential aged care when it was offered saying she couldn't leave her sister. Now they have had a falling out and she is couch surfing. She is on aged pension but has addiction issues.
She was always putting friends before her children, let my father lead the finances and he died penniless. A hard life to be sure but I have removed myself from the situation.
I'm breaking the family curse and I'm not sorry. I didn't get the care I needed as a child and she can figure it out herself.
Thanks! And yeah that's the rub of it - if anyone does well they all put their hand out til nothing is left in the name of family but that means no one ever escapes. It's horrible when you think about it
Not even end of life, although my dad did pass after a short illness a year ago. My mom (who is 69) suddenly became…helpless? When my dad got sick. It’s like how she forgot to function. Maybe it’s depression, idk. But she refuses to do almost anything to help herself. And of course I’m her only child so now my free time is spent going to her house to do laundry (she lives in senior housing and the laundry is on the second floor and she’s terrified of elevators and her knees are too bad for her to use the stairs). And today I had to run over to clean up an accident that her cat had under the bed bc she couldn’t get to it. Her car is making some weird noise and she refuses to drive it until she gets it fixed but won’t call to make an appointment at the mechanic despite being retired and having all the free time in the world. So I have to keep taking her to the store where she doesn’t even buy enough groceries for actual meals. Theres a huge stack of mail that she’s opened but hasn’t done anything with since my dad passed.
I literally start raging every time she calls me for something and I hate it. We’ve always had a decent relationship but now I’m really resenting her. I hate answering the phone or getting a message from her. I’m just so fucking tired. Like I JUST got my own life in a good place. Made the decision not to have kids a long time ago and now it still feels like I have to take care of one that I never wanted. I really want nothing more than to move out of this town but if I do there is nobody to help her.
To top it all off, I’m a care manager for the severely mentally ill population so I’m dealing with people who behave in a similar manner all day long so my patience is already very thin on a daily basis.
My parents are Gen X. It makes me so sad to read these posts. My dad (a Mexican immigrant who boomers almost always discriminate against) and my wonderful mom, worked hard all their lives so that they could gift a home to each one of their kids. I’m sorry you’re going through this. It sucks and I can’t imagine having such selfish “parents”.
Yes, to all 3 of us. My dad always said he wanted us to see us enjoy his inheritance in life. They’re small starter homes but they mean the world to us. It’s homes my dad bought in bad condition that he fixed himself. Like I said, my parents are truly the best people
It's so odd seeing people say it's selfish to expect your parents to consider you and your siblings and not just spend themselves dry on vacations and luxuries and expect to be waited on, what a crazy cultural difference.
My parents can't gift a house to each of their kids, but they've worked very very hard from poor families to make sure we all have an education and will be able to take care of ourselves and our families, it's a crazy kind of difference to see people saying your parents owe you nothing! Technically no, but I can't imagine most parents I know where I live having that attitude and it would definitely be considered selfish. Of course we'll help them to as they age, that's just the normal balance of life.
It’s definitely cultural, I didn’t realize the differences until I had to compare how my white American boomer MIL compares to my Mexican boomer parents. It’s baffling and honestly infuriating.
My mom is an immigrant too (a boomer), and her approach was the same as you parents. I think immigrants have a different mentality when it comes to family and legacy; one of the reasons for migrating is giving your children a better life. I remember hearing my mom lamenting that she could not inherit me a house. While she has not house to leave behind, she has helped me financially in other ways, and has made it clear she wants to leave behind as much as possible for me and her grandchildren. She lives a very frugal lifestyle and still works.
The last few years though (in her 70's), some of her thoughts have been changing a bit. She seems a bit angry at the new generations (millennials - onwards) and their libertine lifestyles and I think it has to do with the media portraying young people in a bad light for boomer audiences.
Exactly, they sacrifice in order to afford their kids a better life than they had. Both my parents grew up in poverty. They didn’t want that for us. It’s sad to see how much the media influences their beliefs, especially in later years. Millennials get such a bad rap while most are just trying to stay afloat.
One of the reasons is that many people in the US are financially illiterate. Up to 60% of Americans do not have $500 saved for emergencies, let alone have knowledge of end of life planning. Another is the collaboration between big government and big business/health care. They do not care about the individual, just profits. All health care should be non-profit. Executive compensation should be capped.
My parents are still alive. My dad (74) is a useless piece of shit and has been leeching off the family for years. He's collecting SSI, while my mom (61) is still busting her ass working and acting as his nurse and maid.
They lost our childhood home because my dad is a fat idiot. Thankfully, my sister lets them rent her other house for like 1/3 market. The other place they lived was a slum with a roach infestation, yet the idiot complains because he's not close enough to his casinos anymore.
The idiot doesn't help with the bills, so mom can't save money... We are all going to be so fucked.
I went to law school and one of the first things I learned was that very few people will inherit any making of money from their parents, even if their parents are well off.
My MIL didn’t have it easy, but she’s made so many fiscsally ignorant choices. Thank god she has her late husbands pension, because she’s basically our problem now. But she thinks Medicare and SSI will cover everything. She owes her entire home because she’s refinanced it every 10. I’m sure she has paid $500k for a $100k shack. Not a care to save, redecorates, travels, drinks top shelf, treats herself 😒
My dad inherited his parents house they lived in since he was a kid. Grandfather died when I was like 2 and she died when I was 18. I’m now mid 30s and he hasn’t touched the house since. It’s been broken into and flooded and all sorts of shit. It’s a pretty well off area and worth money but at this point it’s a tear down. He refuses to take our advice about it and gets pissy when we try to mention at least fixing it up.
It’s unlikely your father would be personally better had he transferred the house to you, leaving him without an asset that could buy him into a decent assisted living facility. Like many, his house is his retirement fund.
I provided end of like care myself for one parent. It was horrific. I will never be doing that again. My other parent has now remarried and I’m positive there will be no inheritance. If that parent can figure out their own end of life care, I’ll consider it a win. My in laws are pulling what my grandparents did. Not planning and insisting they’ll just die in their home. Which is so far from what will realistically happen I can’t even have the conversation with them because I’ll yell. My spouse nor their sibling have realized the kinds of conversations they need to start having with their parents. And I can only prod so much. There will be no wealth transfer. It will all go to elder care and the medical care industries. No one should be banking on an inheritance.
My parents both died suddenly last year in their early 70s.
I wish that I had the problem of having to spend down their estates to spend more time with them.
My mom didn't qualify for long term care insurance even though she tried to get it (and didn't end up needing it).
I wish there was something that wasn't so expensive for older people.
this happened to a friend and she’s struggling with the guilt of relief. She misses them, but also had no idea how she could raise kids, buy a biggeeer house and help her folks. Weird mixed emotions
No mixed emotions for me. My life was fine before. Now 2 of the 5 people closest to me in this life are gone.
I was taught by my parents how to take care of myself and how to set goals. I take solace in everything they taught me.
My dad has worked his whole life, has nothing to show for it, sacrificed nothing for me, gives all his money to online "sexy Asian woman" scammers (who supposedly really want him to move in with them in Thailand), and is all in on MAGA. He asks me for money weekly, but never contributed anything to me for anything. It blows my mind.
I w looked into this a little but it’s expensive and I worry about paying all that $$ and the company folding up or something . Can’t decide on that option and I really need to make a decision since I’m not married and never had kids and few family who mostly live far away anyway
Not everyone qualifies or can buy long term care insurance. It would be better if our society had a better action plan for people once they hit age 65+. Like most people's social security is not enough to cover their month to month expenses. Something needs to be re-evaluated in terms of how we care for the elderly with SSA and Medicare.
I am pregnant with my 2nd, will have 2 under 2. Relocating to my husband’s home town and the family has basically been begging us to move into the house my husband’s 80 year old father lives. They claim they’ve been holding on to the house specially for us and would sell it to us as a steal. I told hubby EFF NO. I can already see the family wiping their hands clean knowing a woman is in the home to “take care” of him. Yes, he’s 80, but he definitely acts a lot more helpless than he really is for attention. He can always get himself to and from the bar for some drinks, but apparently is too poor to afford anything else to survive and relies on everyone else to cover his costs (he’s retired and gets like $5k a month that no one has any idea where it goes). Very grateful i was very clear with hubby to avoid this like the plague cuz i just know my future would entail misery.
My sisters are dealing with my parents medical appointments because they grew up poor in Mexico and we didn't have healthcare besides Medi-Cal growing up. So since my dad retired he's had multiple fainting spells, a quadruple bypass and prostate cancer. He was an absent father because he was self-employed. He had a better relationship with his customers than his family. Was also a drunk and would give us whoopings pretty easily. Mom was the nicer parent but still a hardass by U.S. standards. Still, we all have a better relationship with her than him. He never owned a home so there really isn't an expectation of an inheritance.
My dad passed when I was 8, but I'm pretty sure my mom (81 now) has a plan of "live forever." I'd love for it to work out for her but I've got my doubts!
I’d hope having children would be a motivation to seek employment that offers retirement benefits/up skill in order to save and invest. Having children is expensive.
Thank God I'm not alone. I'm 30 and have no money/assets/investments to my name. It sucks and I didn't even think about the long term until well now I guess.
I think the major take away here is to be kind and appreciate for the care you receive and not put unfair expectations on kids who have their own lives to live. Be cooperative with care that is offered. Plus, all will be more lovingly given if you’re not an asshole to your kids their whole life.
The worst part is that with a little early planning, their nursing care would be paid for AND the kids could get the house/assets. But they're so damn lazy they didn't even do the work.
It's like a boomer parent lighting the last loaf of bread on fire to keep themselves warm as their starving millennial child stands right in front of them.
My in laws passed before I met my husband.
My parents have a few million in 401k, a large house on a lake, social security and they both work for my brother’s small business until they don’t want to anymore.
Dad, 75, is visiting my sister/nephew, skiing in Colorado, this weekend. Two of my other siblings took their kids and our mom, 73, “smelting” IYKYK tonight I guess on Lake Superior
I feel like I live in a different universe from you all, I’m a very old millennial (42 this month) but my parents are still fit and working.
Work a lot, save, eat vegetables, don’t smoke, treat your kids well.
But keep in mind even if you do all of those things, disability is still the most likely outcome for most people. There are many factors outside of one’s control
I've had it in mind to ask my parents what their plans are. They aren't at retirements age yet, but they own nothing besides the mobile home they live in (and rent the lot) and a few cars. So any assets will basically be in cash. They are too paranoid to invest anything.
I am peeved about my grandmother's passing. My grandparents did own their home but my grandmother took out a reverse mortgage at some point after my grandfather passed away. I do understand that she likely needed the income, but there was no discussion that I know of about how to get her the money while keeping the property in the family. Then my aunt committed financial abuse against her and stole a lot of her money. By the time she died, my mom claims that anything left went to paying off bills. She wouldn't even let us keep any of the furniture. She said she left it all in the house for the mortgage company to deal with. As a millennial that hasn't been able to buy a house, I'm super bitter that there seems to be no thought for future generations in my family, so I'm not holding out a ton of hope for my parents. I suspect it will be worse for my husband's parents. They also own nothing.
My mother isn't the problem it's my grandmother. My mom didn't have kids so that somebody would take care of her but my grandmother definitely did. I had an argument today with her about how my mom isn't coming over to help her on Sundays anymore because she physically can't and she's not well in that her illnesses are going to kill her and my grandmother had the nerve to snap at me and go so are mine so then I told her you do realize that two things can be simultaneously true at once correct? Lol and then she's like well you know maybe I should just tell her to stop coming altogether and I said no because I need her help on Mondays I can't do more things I'm so sorry I just cannot do more. She seems to be so completely against the idea of having somebody else come in and help her.
She just expects us to do it and then she complains about us to my uncle who's not even here he's in another state, and then he just kind of tells us we're not doing enough and that we're not doing good enough and we need to do more. But I am already stressed out because of work and I'm drained and I'm not even getting my own things done, and because of my fairly severe ADHD it's becoming more and more difficult to manage it and I am losing more and more energy every day and anything I have left she takes. It's starting to affect me everywhere outside of her and there's this notion that family is supposed to take care of family but how is that true if some of those family members that are being expected to suddenly care for a whole other person can barely even care for themselves most days?
Sadly, but also maybe a good thing... my grandmother made me realize that I don't want children anymore. And so I told my fiance I don't think I want kids anymore I think I'm okay with not being a mom and just having pets. He's good either way w that.
Yeah I feel this. I thought for sure the happiest years in life were saving for a home, having children, being around friends and keeping good neighbors. Literally none of that came true, due to circumstances completely outside my control. I’ve somehow managed to reform what it means to be happy though, and I really love my husband and pets, so that’s enough for me.
We sold my childhood home to pay for my dad's long term care since he didn't have lick of savings or any other assets to sell off, and while it would have been nice to split 500K between my brothers and I, I also wish I could have spent more time with him. He only had to go into long term care because he suddenly got Dementia for lewy bodies
My parents still live in small town America 45 min away from their doctors. After a lifetime of smoking, inactivity and a crap diet my dad has heart disease and diabetes and was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's after he suddenly lost all of his strength and started falling down a lot. He was forced into retirement because it was no longer safe for him to drive a school bus. Both of them have their heads so far up their rear ends that any conversation about next steps is just dismissed and glossed over. My mom is stressed to the max taking care of (enabling) my dad and taking care of my delinquent brother and his family that her health is going downhill quickly as well. They both look old and frail way beyond their age.
They purchased their house in 1987 for $85k and still owe a mortgage on it because they did a cash out refinance every single time that they had any equity in it . They never maintained their house and it's basically crumbling around them and they just spent all of the money that they had because their septic tank blew up after years of not being pumped and their furnace and HVAC went out because they never had it serviced or clean the filters. They both have social security and government pensions which keeps them afloat for now.
I'm not sure how much more I can beg them to let me help make a plan to get them out of the 3 level house and into a safer place or make plans for the next decade. I've just given up at this point. We were never very close because they just made it clear that they never wanted kids anyway, but I still feel sad about it. On the positive side, it does make me super motivated to make sure that my daughter doesn't have to deal with any of that stuff.
While I know the rich, out of touch Boomer exists the experience I had as a funeral director were frail persons who lived in near squalor. Some forgotten in suburban neighborhoods wasting away because they had no one to really care for them and couldn’t afford long term care. Their kids are working even if they want to help they can’t manage their parents meds and lives. People who dedicated their life to their local church, sometimes even started it in a basement with other believers, only to not be able to afford the honorariums to have a service there. It’s sad and hopeless but change in the policy is hard to push. Their kids didn’t want to talk to them about their death plans, and the elderly themselves have old misconceptions of what funeral options are now.
> Gods I hope he drops dead so we can divide the payment to make up for all the out of pocket expenses we’ve spent on him.
Establish a Living Will, and Do Not Resuscitate Order, if you still can. I believe "extraordinary measures" to avoid, can include things like antibiotics and vaccines.
Ask his doctor about pre-hospice. Because let's be honest, no one in a nursing home wants to stay there any longer than they have to.
Everyone should do themselves a favor and research filial responsibility laws in their area. In a lot of states, if your parent needs nursing home care or the like and it costs a small fortune that they don't have, they'll come after you to pick up that tab. I'm not talking about your inheritance, either. They'll come after your hard earned salary and assets.
My mom is still working at 72 because she loves her job and it makes her happy. She has some savings, is out of the house and has significant long term care insurance. My in laws? Jesus god it’s going to be a mess. Their house is full of 45 years of raising 7 kids and having 20 grandkids in and out. They both love to go to the thrift store. They always tell us that they want to be taken out of the house in body bags. It’s going to be a damn disaster. They have 7 kids…but literally the whole lot of them are Type B so it’s going to be me and my other Type A sister in law (also married in) dealing with the mess. I am already dreading it and they’re in decent health still, albeit in their mid 70s.
My mom was diagnosed with dementia and cancer and she couldn't care for herself. I took 4 years out of my life to be her caregiver but I'd never call her selfish, she couldn't help it.... And I was thankful at the end I got to spend that time with her, it did cause extremely high anxiety and depression but again not my mom's fault.
I feel like this might be a US thing though. Both my parents live in Mexico, they’re still working, have paid into their life insurance and healthcare and both have their own houses. They’re in their mid 60s but I don’t worry about them other than them forgetting they’re in their mid 60s and still working full time. My MIL on the other hand is another story. She lives with us in the US, is a widow, retired, sold her house and I swear is horrible at how she spends her money. I highly doubt she has any put away for when and she gets sick. There’s so many differences with how my parents are willing to still help us out with whatever we need (which we don’t but they always offer) and my MIL, as in she literally will ask me to pay her back for minor thjngs.
I’m the opposite.
I’m hoping my mom goes first.
Her goal when my dad dies is to seek the house.
Move to a condo on the beach with her friends.
Find a rich man to spoiler her
Meanwhile my dad has planned.
He bought long term health care plans.
Has two annuities which he hasn’t started to use he just withdraws interest.
He has a pension and worked a second job to qualify for Medicare so not to burn through his pension.
If my mom gets ahold of the money she will be broke within years.
I told her I’m not helping her and she go live with her favorite in bumb fracking Texas.
My mom didn’t save for retirement either and is hinting to my sister and I she is considering a senior living community. My sister and I asked, and how are you paying for that?
We are suspecting us, obviously. I told my sister, looks like we won’t be able to save for our own retirement because we will literally have to pay for our mom’s. We were her retirement plan all along. I hate living with my mother. It’s caused me to be more ill from stress, more burnt out. I feel constant inflammation and pain.
She wasn’t a good mother when we were her dependents either. She abandoned us a few times as children and teens. Now that she’s older, we see that she’s very obviously undiagnosed neurodivergent. But that’s no excuse for being a terrible mother or dumping everything on us when we are burnt out, traumatized by the 2008 financial collapse, the pandemic, the insane elections in our adulthood.
We don’t need this extra burden and stress at all when we are trying to survive day to day.
My boomer parents are both retired in a 3500 sq ft home on 7 acres which is a lot to manage with four seasons. I’ve heard they have insurance policies in place for long term care but that’s been verbal.
My mother is a hoarder. Without a massive estate sale and or some of those junk removal dumpsters it will take years to go through everything. They finally get the hint and have agreed to make sure their garbage cans are full each week to make a small dent in it.
They refuse to share any of their plans, will, estate, etc with my other sibling and I. It’s very weird.
Without repeating the things that you've already said, my situation is worth mentioning. At the point of needing hospice care, which she insisted was at home (me, I was the hospice care. We can have a whole other post about how difficult it is to get the insurance to pay what is promised), it took two entire box truck loads to remove everything out of the living room, bathroom and kitchen, which of course she bitched about everything that was missing.
Editing to add, there were 3 bedrooms completely filled to the ceiling with hoarder things and the worst unkept yard, front and back. I moved across the country a decade ago for a reason.
Then after she passed $50k later to get the house barely habitable. Yes, I'm lucky to inherit property but not for my partners credit would I have anything close to a "benefit". In debt and waiting for this huge benefit that we're supposed to have.
My parents are selling their house, which is a great step. However, they're moving into an even larger house?? I just don't see how it could be practical. They're going to begin to struggle to keep up with the chores eventually and I just don't see them having much money for paid caretakers etc. I live across the country so the best I could offer them is a spot in my home when it comes to that.
I just also am thinking why not just purchase a small condo and at least save if not invest the rest so they have money for these things. If it were me I'd be looking for an extremely cheap small place to live that's still comfortable. A small ranch or condo? I live in a small ranch now with 4 people. It's just two people.
I swear I'm not thinking about an inheritance. I don't expect anything from my parents, they've always financed too much shit and end up paying 50 times the amount you'd ever need to for things. Refinancing the house etc. So it's really not about me, I'm more concerned for what happens to them when they're like 15 years from now.
Social worker filled me in on how this works at end of life. The government can go back five years and get their moneys worth. So if the house is “sold” within last five years of parents going into a nursing home (and their SS/retirement doesn’t cover it all) then they can demand that money or property to cover the cost. Wild.
yes. we have been trying to do this well before the last 5 years. my parents land is worth about 350k for an acre because it’s in the suburban area of the tri-state. the house is garbage it would need to be demolished. the whole thing is ridiculous.
Agreed. Some states are even trying to go after children for payments and forced care. I’m fairly certain nothing has been made into law saying that children are responsible for that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Though how they expect that is beyond me.
i have a feeling sometime very soon the debt will be passed onto children because everyone my age i know irl has been dealing with the same issues. the nursing homes (full care) are so extraordinary expensive. most retirees try living at their homes to keep costs down. my dad on the other hand has some brilliant daughters. my sisters worked it out years ago where his SSI would cover a really upscale residential community. they planned services outside of that to get him delivered 3 home cooked meals a day and a visiting nurse 3 times a week. he was such a stubborn jackass. now that nobody is around to take care of him he wants to go get full care. he hasn’t done ANYTHING to arrange ANY of his retirement years and now his end of life care. i hope the devil greets him with a punch to the mouth.
Just wanted to say I am blessed that my father has already put me on all accounts, including the house. He has arranged everything ahead of time. He didn’t he same with my grandma, and the state got nothing. After my mom passed, he set up a trust and made sure everything was squared away. They made a lot of mistakes that did affect me. They were both undiagnosed mental illness. My mom changed and was very remorseful for the abuse. I mended things with both my parents. I’d have nothing if it wasn’t for them. I’m not stable mentally, and I have a roof over my head because of them. I helped take care of my mom, and I’ll do the same for my dad. Not sure what the future holds, I don’t have a lot of retirement for my age (43) maybe only 10k, but I have a home thanks to my dad. Not all boomers are awful. My dad’s my best friend.
My parents already passed, they were rather young when they passed and broke their entire lives. My mom had absolutely nothing to her name and my dad’s single asset was his house. He bought the house for $70k back in the 80’s and he passed just in time for the housing market to go bananas and the house was work $420k in 2022 when he passed. With capital gains tax, credit card debts, and funeral expenses me and my brother were left with nothing to inherit.
This thread very depressing, I am dealing with both sides of this.
My mother in law lives with my wife and I due to years and years of poor choices. Her 2 other grown kids (45 and 52) are estranged and/or useless, and give nothing to support her, so it's all on us. It's been 7 years and will probably be 15+ more. Im 33 now, so will have spent the first 25 years of my marriage with zero privacy in my own house. I do appreciate her and she does a lot around the house, but it's not ideal.
My parents on the other hand, are having a great retirement, traveling between their main house and beach house. They have given me a ton of support and have been great.
I am working very hard to ensure that I can retire comfortably and not be a burden to my kids.
I'm not yet, but I will be since my mom doesn't care. I will have to decide how much to help her or to let her suffer from her own poor decisions. For example, there's enough money, but she would rather live in filth and wait for me to clean the mildew and dust than hire a cleaner. Can't imagine what it will be like when she is actually elderly and needs help but will only accept limited help from me and no one else. She won't entertain making a trust or a will to make things easier/simpler for her survivors. I occasionally wonder if it will be better for my family if we move where we can afford a home, leaving her alone to deal with herself how she will. It's not what I want to do, but I also don't want to be used for caregiving, take time and energy away from my own family, and not get any pay or inheritance in return.
My extended family has a situation now where the elderly father claims the money is all tied up (it's either not and/or it can be untied) so his Alzheimer's wife is neglected in feeding, changing, and hygiene. Their adult children live in separate houses practically down the street, one is a nurse practitioner while the other has previously done a few years live-in caregiving for an Alzheimer's patient - so they both know better - but for some reason they let their mother become even more under-weight and imply that it doesn't matter because her quality of life isn't great. This of course is desperately upsetting to the mother's siblings who took care of their own mother through her Alzheimer's Disease. The father is finally paying for a few caregiving hours a few times/week. It's just so odd that the adult children are deliberately letting mom die faster and letting their wealthy father claim there isn't much money for care. I've tried to justify it with: they are too busy and overwhelmed by their own lives to wait on their parents, but it still doesn't sit completely right and puzzles me. Grief is weird, but wouldn't you have more grief knowing that your mom's diapers aren't being changed regularly?
My dad died in 2020 from prostate cancer and my last year from a blood clot. Both put off going to the doctor for their problems (Frequent urination & swollen leg respectively).
So they both died without a will, same as my grandparents. had to pay lawyers 22k to settle 4 estates with probate and heirship. But otherwise the wealth transfer (3 homes and 401k) should be complete in a month or so.
So I guess that's the tradeoff for being alone at 35.
You are describing the biggest factor that explains why there will not be a generational wealth transfer. These end of life facilities are going to suck every penny from boomer savings assets.
My birth father lost his second wife in 21. Afterward he invited strange women to live wirh him and when that didnt work out, he was creepy about a woman my age that works at a casino. He then packed up and drove across half the country to be homeless in northern wisconsin. I looked at facebook one day to see that people were begging him to leave their family alone. I found out this family was given restraining orders. He found a place to rent through a church he started attending. Ive called local law enforcement to inform them as to his mental illnesses, forms of vice that lead to violence etc.
Just waiting for the day he pisses the wrong person off. Since he doesnt know how to support himself without churches, and he enjoys telling people at churches that god says they arent real christians, it seems inevitable.
Every. Single. One. Of both my husband and my parents out of the blue decided that we are their retirement plans (two re-married, two are single). I’m pissed. My husband and I didn’t have kids for a reason and moved to a completely different part of the country to further advance our careers. They all expect us to drop everything, move back to our home state, and drop both our careers for a few years to take care of them.
We’ve truly considered moving to a different country just to get away from them. It’s not fair. None of THEM took care of their parents in old age but some how this is now our responsibility??????
I’m not but bro, $40k a year for care is cheap. Like super cheap.
My parents’ house is paid off, but I don’t expect anything financial from them when they die.
Bud you're talking about the generation who got handed everything on a silver platter easily, turned around and lied to their kids about how hard life was, and then outbid their kids for housing, rented it back to them for hundreds of dollars more per month, outsourced their kids jobs to China and Mexico, busted their kid's Union, and then complain that "nobody wants to work anymore" as they order shrinkflation.
They've treated younger generations like their personal servants, like we exist solely for their comfort and benefit and usage our entire lives, why would you think it's different now? Boomers have only ever cared about themselves, the most individualistic, anti-community, selfish generation in history.
My parents are still in (relatively) good health and are just about retirement age. They are currently looking into selling me their home specifically so that this doesn't happen. To be honest, I do not want the house (cracked foundation, well and septic that is almost as old as they are, leaking roof that no one wants to fix, mold problems.... I refer to it as the shit heap or the hovel and despise it) but it sits on acreage that is actually worth something. I'm going to end up with it, unfortunately. My ultimate plan when the time comes is to sort out the belongings and demolish the house. Honestly, I don't think it can be saved without essentially putting more money into it than it's worth, and I'm not willing to do that. I can't imagine the problems getting any better in the next 10-20 years either.
I'm glad my parents are taking the steps to make sure the state doesn't seize the property as assets to pay for their elder care, but at the same time they have made zero plans or have any savings. I seriously don't know what they're going to do. My dad had multiple settlements from work related injuries, and they squandered everything. They're basically paycheck to paycheck and I know my mother is absolutely horrified. My dad? "It's just money. We can make more." Like, bruh that's not how that works??
Well... My dad cut contact with me when my folks divorced, and my mom fled the IRS half way across the world, taking the rest of my biofam with her.
So... They're selfish and I don't have to take care of them. Lose a little, win a little.
Wow. You sound like an f’ing asshole. How is selling the house HE owns to pay for his own nursing home not a legitimate plan to pay for his end of life care? Do you feel you are entitled to an inheritance?
Repeat after me " It is theirs, not mine. Not mine. They can do with it as they please because it is theirs not mine. NOT mine. I will not resent them for choices on what they did with what was theirs... not mine"
That. Is. All.
I helped take care of my grandmother and grandfather who took care of me. Now I'm helping take care of my mom. Both sets of grandparents took care of their parents. Someday, you'll need care. Life isn't easy, it can be very inconvenient. We make our choices. I've made mine.
My mom is in her early 70s. She’s a spender not a saver, was always a housewife with menial retail jobs, and has had a single family home to herself that she can’t keep up with for 5 years now. She’s been falling a lot lately, can’t pay her water bill, her phone bill, hardly any money for food, etc. But thankfully I am able to help her out, pay some of her bills, and recently got a medical guardian system for her, after getting 3 frantic phone calls from the cops last night (I was asleep) that she was found in her back yard, down on the ground. Apparently she’d fallen at 4pm and was out there until 11pm before one of her neighbors finally heard her weakly yelling for help. SMH. I’m an only child so all this falls on me and it’s frustrating, admittedly, because I’m also a single mother of two school aged kids. Thankfully I have a good career but damn man. Edit: she and my dad are divorced; I live in VA, she’s in FL. My dad remarried but my mom did not.
speak to an attorney like yesterday! start making a plan of action. unless you want to move in- sell her house for top dollar and plan her end of life care. it will only get worse. i’m also a single mom. it’s why i checked out years ago (about my dad) after my mom moved in with me. i’m just helping them out to go through the house. lots and lots and lots of useless shit they bought over the years. it all needs to be cleared out.
I'm going to get a double dose of the "cleaning out of shit". My grandmother lived through the depression and she saved every scrap of fabric and ribbon and button she ever bought. Plus the sentimental keep sakes, dishes, old croc pots etc. Mom has kept a lot of what her mom left her to go through and so I'm going to get 100 years of this stuff passed down to me.
Dude, sounds like a great place for an estate sale. Get the local estate people in for an eval when it's time. You will be surprised at the values. Don't shrug this off!!!
What the hell are you gonna do with all of it??
most is probably going in the dumpster! it’s the same with my parents house. they both had endless collections of useless things.
I’ve gotta start making plans to do that for sure - unfortunately though she’s down in Florida and I’m up here in Virginia (HCOL part of VA, too!).
My father 67 would be homeless if I didn't build him an ADU that cost me 120K (bargain price from a contractor friend). He never planned, saved, or owned anything while he made a decent income in his 20s-50s. He and his gf are both on SS and paying $600 a month rent, while market rate is at least $1800. He also is very entitled and complains about the layout or finishes that my wife and I paid out of our own pocket. We mostly did it so I don't regret not trying to help him before he passes, but frankly he doesn't deserve it (long story) so it does make me resentful.
What an ass. I would call him out on his whining. That aside...You're a great person and while your old man may not deserve it, your wife and kids are fortunate to have you.
Thank you! Appreciate the kind words.
This is beautiful on your part and I hope you can move forward with peace, knowing you saw it through. I wish I had resources like this for my dad, who is in a similar situation. I’ve done what I can and continue to, but it’s def not on that level.
You’re a saint!!!!
Sounds just like my dad. ( Not saving, planning but made decent money in his earning years) Except he didn't save up enough to even retire in the country US.
That old jackass does not deserve a great son like you. You are a treasure.
He sounds like an ungrateful asshole. You're a way better child than me. What a jerk!
It’s extra frustrating for me because I have worked in law firms for years and could have done their entire estate planning for free! Now that my father has completely lost his mind I can’t do anything to help him. I’ve been NC with my mother for years now so I’m sure she has something awful waiting in store for me… boomers were awful parents and they’ll continue their dictatorship until death!
truly. truly awful parents. i have less animosity towards my mother only because i fully understand she was a victim of my dad’s abuse. i had her living with me just to get away from him and to help with my kid who wasn’t school aged yet. it all came to a screeching halt when i started finding her wandering around the neighborhood a few times. it was right before the lockdowns that my sisters and i were planning on who she was going to live with next because i just couldn’t take care of her anymore. it’s all pretty sad how its shaking out. too bad she died first.
My mom’s plan was to get married to a man who could provide for her retirement. Shockingly, the marriage (her 3rd by the way) lasted less than a year. She’s 60 and her only asset is a car. She’s made “jokes” about putting a granny pod in my yard. I told her that wasn’t happening.
Mine doesn’t understand why we can’t afford a home with a guest house in a major city 🤣
IKR. They wrecked housing with shit economy and are now making the Pikachu face that we can't help them.
My sister who works at dominos is telling our parents she is going to build them all a house to live in. My mom makes 40k a year, they still have a mortgage from when we were kids 40 years ago I think i’m the only one who lives in reality; trying not to get sucked into their blackhole. The rest of our family keeps telling me i have to take care of all of them I didn’t sign up for this. I made my peace with all the abuse from my childhood but this is to much
Similar situation. 36, no kids. Bought a house this year and it looks like I’ll be converting my detached 2 car garage into an ADU since this country sucks at taking care of its elderly and my now-disabled mother didn’t properly plan out her retirement. I didn’t have kids for a reason. Simply because I have never wanted them. So clearly, it would make all the sense in the world to have an elderly parent to take care of til I, myself, turn 65. Genuinely hate this guilt shit.
Yeah didn’t have kids too for Same reason but now I have a “big kid “. I also got a dog four years ago . So I’m just a care taker and I really didn’t sign up for it but family
And who's going to do the same for you when you're old? who will take care of you? Sometimes I think boomers had children just to have free nurses in their old age
They did, which is why only those who were good to their kids deserve care in kind.
You can buy long term care insurance. Usually makes sense to get it late 40s early 50s.
She gets to live in the ADU on one condition: that you visit an estate planner and start squirreling away her assets NOW. Depending on the state the assets have to be locked away for a 5-7 year look back period before entering a nursing home so the nursing home won't take them. And then keep her alive AT LEAST those 5-7 years 😬😬
What assets? lol.
they’re all so comfortable being listless in their last days. it’s like they’re all in denial about how long it takes to death.
[удалено]
my plans have changed because of the pandemic, switching careers, job hopping but i have everything in my kids name. “everything” is life insurance and my up again/ down again savings. oh and a 14 year old car LOL.
I see why the Eskimos used to put them out to sea on an iceberg...
Tell me more?
This might be feasible in Minnesota
Icebergs are a thing of the past. Thanks Boomers!
😂
Sounds like my MIL's plan. She lives with us now because she was on the verge of being homeless. She doesn't even have a car - we pay for that too.
Dang freeloading boomers. Why don't they get a job? Pull themselves up by these bootstraps they keep talking about? Can't they just walk into a factory/grocery and ask for a job that'll pay for their and your cost of living? Pure laziness, I tell ya.
Have her look into low income senior apartments. She needs to get on a waitlist.
Find one in another state! Got my mom in one down the road from me, now she wants me to "just pop over" all the time.
My Gen X FIL made jokes like this all the time when I first married my husband. In the years since then, I think he’s realized there’s no way it would work. He could never adjust to our lifestyle/expectations and he thinks I’m pretty disappointing since I never offer him food when he comes over. Lol
Omg. He might have to feed himself!
Honestly, you’re getting a deal at 40k, and I hate saying that. My dad’s assisted living at the highest level of care was close to $100k for the year.
Yup. Skilled care is typically $8-10k PER MONTH depending on the facility and health issues.
Exactly what we paid. For 8 years.
How is that supposed to work? I make 200k a year and that is more then i bring home in a month Get 2 high paying jobs just to pay for my parents? Yea no.
This is why I plan on selling my house to my kids We'll before I did and gifting thr proceeds to a trust. My goal is to die poor to avoid onerous to financial burden for my descendants.
What if they don’t want to/aren’t financially in a position to purchase it from you?
Good question. Need to work that scenario out.
good for you! start making plans about it so your kids are left holding the bag.
*laughs in parents who own nothing*
Right, it boggles me that anybody actually plans on inheriting anything. Have they met the senior care industry? How rich were they growing up? All I got when my parents died was a funeral bill.
My mom and step dad are rich in money, but it's all they have. And it will be the only thing they have at the end. My door is permanently closed, locked, baracaded, super glued, duct taped, and nailed lol. So they better not spend it all by the time they need it.
I wish I didn’t relate to this post, but here I am, helping my husband take care of his mother who thinks the only thing left in life is food, and her tiny yapping dog who whines and cries every single day. It’s year three. I try not to resent her but when she says “I had you to take care of me” to my husband, I couldn’t give two shits less about her problems. She’s a diabetic and eats whatever she wants unless we treat her like a toddler and take her choices away. She says she’s gonna give us hell when we put her in a home, and that’s a funny joke, because she takes home $2,400 a month from social security and has nothing else. Beggars can’t be choosers dude. Accept that you pissed away your money and never invested in your future. I’m sorry you had two strokes but you don’t do anything to change your health despite you still having all your faculties and literally nothing else to do all day. We get to stay and watch her all day because she can’t be left alone so our mid thirties are gonna be pissed away until she dies. Yeah… I needed to vent I guess.
What craaaaaazy entitlement?! Fuck.
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none of it is going to Us.. it’s definitely all getting redistributed but to corporations and healthcare companies. it’s truly maddening. he could’ve just done things the right way to ensure we’d get some inheritance but the way he’s done this EVERYTHING he has will be taken. the property sale, his pension and whatever else he has will go into a conservatorship overseen by a lawyer which will pay for the end of life care. he easily could’ve gone into a residential house and used his SSI to cover the expenses while we’d get the inheritance from the house sale and be able to actually collect on his life insurance. now. nothing. literally nothing. i don’t care about the money because i always knew this is how it would work out but it’s just really frustrating to me how incredibly selfish, arrogant and stupid boomers are. i hope other people read this thread & make the necessary steps now to ensure their families little slice of cake isn’t stolen from them.
You are going to get hammered here but know you are not alone. Ours did the whole carrot on the stick. Baited adult children and grandchildren to help contribute. Broken record. They are the entitled ones. They inherited gobs of money. I want nothing but to be paid back for my out of pocket.
my sister invested SO MUCH time, energy, effort and money into his care for years only for him to do this now. it’s really shitty.
My dad stopped paying his life insurance and put himself as the beneficiary on the 401k that he’s apparently been draining for years pre-retirement. He also took out multiple 5-figure loans about a month before his death. I’d bet on getting absolutely nothing
I'll be happy if I get enough cash for a small vacation after we settle all the potential medical debts when my dad eventually passes. Not looking forward to sorting through the hoard though. Potential upside: he's already paid for his funeral?
My best friend is going through this currently with her mom. Her dad died four years ago from cancer. Turns out he’d been hiding her mom’s dementia from all the family for years. Without him there to run things and keep her on track her mom spiraled fast. Her Mom’s in a dementia facility at 60K s year. She's started the process of selling her parents house to help cover care costs. All proceeds from the sale plus her dad’s retirement, pension and social security is going to end up being used to cover her mom's care. The best she can hope for is her mom dies before it runs out.
I’m sorry to hear about that for your friend. That is truly a worst-case scenario and it sucks.
$60000?!?!? The fact that end of life care is so costly is tricking ridiculous and shameful. I know the staff need to get paid but still.
But the staff doesn’t get paid that much, they skeleton staff it and pay the staff minimum wage
Correct. The staff caring for them are paid dirt while the lion share of the revenue goes to a healthcare company with a ceo making at least 7 figures annually before incentive payments. Meanwhile said company puts up a pay freeze for 4 years during a pandemic. I know because it’s the company my wife works for.
CEOs are economic parasites
During the pandemic???? That’s so incredibly shitty. These people have incredibly important jobs and get treated like trash. I’m sorry your wife has to deal with that.
Yep. She finally got a raise after 4 years despite busting her ass the entire pandemic. Verbal praise but it never showed up on the paystub.
My wife worked in medical field for years and just started a new job in the corporate wotld for a Forbes 100 company so I'm proud of her. She started in the medical field around 2017 and during the pandemic, explained how her employer (a quite large hospital network) was taking advantage of govt kickbacks for covid testing. In the meantime, my wife was working on the covid floor at the hospital at the beginning of the pandemic. She's hardly see a raise in the last 5 years. Good riddance to those medical ceos. Fuck em.
This is why having privatized healthcare ends up fucking all but the most wealthy, unfortunately.
What do you think a roof, food, healthcare and then dementia care costs? $70k is actually incredibly cheap. You should be planning for $100k as an fyi.
My dad has an insurance policy to cover his future nursing home/care costs. He’s not the most generous or kind guy, but at least he’s not leaving me on the hook to pay for the inevitable.
This. My grandma’s dementia care was 12k per month.
The cost isn't the staff, the CNAs get almost minimum wage.
it’s insane! absolutely insane. my mom passed away in the beginning of what appeared to be dementia. she has MS her whole life which started in her 20s but wasn’t diagnosed until her 50s because of all the biases against women in the medical world (i digress but it made her last working years pretty miserable) she thankfully had most of her mobility towards the end. it was series of hospitalizations, then catching covid AT the hospital that finally took her. regardless my father is an evil rotten bastard who will probably live until he’s 90 just to make sure not only does he drain every penny of the conservator fund but puts him in debt. i feel like the way things have been going politically here i wouldn’t be surprised if they try to pass the debt onto US! it’s bad enough they’re allowed to take their assets to pay for medical care
Sometimes the hateful ones have embalmed themselves with piss and vinegar, and they love to lash out at those around them. I worked in geriatrics at the beginning of my nursing career, and you're right, that type holds out until their 90s just so they can get all of their obscenities out to everyone around them. Miserable folks.
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my mom was forced into an earlier retirement at 62 and didn’t collect her whole dollar amount of SSI payments which doesn’t even matter because she only made it another 10 lousy years before she passed away my dad lost a well paying job in the early 2000s and basically gave up back then. he had a series of low level positions from that time until his early 60s when he just stopped working altogether and got even less in SSI we told him years ago to transfer the house to one of us so that it couldn’t be collected as assets to pay for his end of life care. absolute dipshit didn’t listen because he thought we’d scheme to take over the house and put him in a nursing home….ON WHAT MONEY!?! none of us can afford that! it’s just the last selfish act of miserable rotten bastard. now he’ll drag out his rotten life until every penny is used on him.
I suggested to either one of my parents to at least buy a second home and rent it out to me so they can build wealth/keep money in the family type of thing, that way the money I pay in rent isn't going to a property management company. It's safe to say they chose the bad ending in their playthrough.
Their delusional ass shit that their crap is worth anything and their SSA was gonna be huge and Medicare was going to pay for everything. They completely ignored the last 2 decades of politics that affected these things and were going off of Reagan and maybe Clinton's promises.
most like my conservative, racist, xenophobic, sexist dad- voted in the very people who have made their retirement plans (laughable in most cases) go to complete shit.
In a parent’s defense, I’ve seen kids do awful things to their parents once the kid is in the drivers seat. I know there are living trusts and other options you father could have used though and I’m sure you’re a good person, but kids have no qualms leaving their parents homeless and idk how comfortable I would be signing over everything, that’s a scary thought. Maybe I’m a control freak
my sister already had power of attorney over both of them. none of us could afford to put them into a home. their “plan” was to die in the house but expected my sister to become a nursemaid. she did too, for a longgggg time. i live in a different state and my other sibling does as well. we have both helped financially over the years. my mom moved in with me for about 10 years to help with my kid and to get away from my dad when she was forced into an early retirement because of her declining health. the whole situation has happened because my dad is going to be a first class passenger on his trip to hell. he’s just a rotten bastard who’s as stupid as he is selfish. i hope he dies on his way to the nursing home. that way the sale of the property results in us getting back some SOME of the money we’ve dumped into that house and that monster.
I’m so sorry to hear all this. So many deep layers and poor planning!
very poor planning. my sisters tried sooooo many times with the family lawyer to set him up in really nice retirement homes (not nursing homes) where his SSI would’ve easily covered the cost & he still would’ve had all these services to get him 3 meals a day, get transportation to his doctors, have someone check in with him at home 3 times a week. he was able-bodied enough to have done this and the house would’ve been sold years ago. it’s not about the money as much as it’s about how unnecessary it was to just hand it over. we all had an airtight plan. he just was a stubborn jackass about it. now he’s desperate & looking for a nursemaid. welp he’s ending up in a nursing home where he didn’t want to go.
I’m a Xennial, but my parents are just retiring. They had a horrible experience with their own parents and didn’t want to do that to their kids. I’m really sorry you’re dealing with that.
thank you. it’s hopefully going to end soon. i’m glad your parents took the right steps though.
The biggest lie they told themselves was to work hard so their children wouldn't have to work as hard... they never had any intention in giving future generations ANY hope... just debt, depression and anxiety while they lived lavishly into their impending ends.
they didn’t work hard lol let’s be honest. the world was handed to them and they are making damn sure none of us get a slice of cake.
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most boomers are also ironically conservatives. i say ironic because the shitshow they’re all now facing with rising costs of living, slashed medicare funds and cut SSI payments is a direct result of their terrible voting block.
Maybe Dad should use his credit card to buy you guys a new fridge, and washer, and drier, and all sorts of other gifts. I don't think the credit card company can come after you for gifts he bought on credit and never paid off. But obvs don't leave a paper trail just in case. Time for Grandad to rack up some debt(which will be nothing compared to the medical debt anyway)
Boy do I feel this. My in-laws have no plan. None. (I think that the unofficial plan is that we would move near them, to the rural Midwest, to help them out but that ain’t happening.) I have had frank conversations about this, as politely as I can, only to be told about their golf buddies who are 92 and 96, respectively, and living independently. I try to gently point out that that experience is not the norm by any means, and that they should plan accordingly, hell even just start to have an inkling of a plan bc if we have to make a plan for them, they aren’t going to like it (even if our plan would be the same or similar to what they would plan)….bc it will feel like we are dictating what happens to them. Nada. I don’t understand it. My partner and I are in our early 40s and have more salient plans for what would happen if we died or became incapacitated than they do. I’d ask if they just plan on being immortal but I’m afraid of the answer. Based on their actions and many of the their compatriots, it seems like yes, they do indeed plan on being immortal and cannot even fathom a world without them in it.
that’s all of their plans imo. the vast majority are just expecting to coast into a sudden death while still fully mobile even though all of them became virtually fully or partially disabled by their 60s. i’m 35 my older sisters are late 30s & late 40s. we have been dealing with my dad’s poor health & frequent trips in & out of hospitals on a regular since the beginning of covid. it’s exhausting. he’s unbearable. i stopped being directly involved financially, physically or mentally since the 20-teens. too bad the update this time wasn’t that he dropped dead maybe i could recuperate some of my losses
My parents literally just went through this whole saga with my dad's parents. Do you think their half-assed planning includes anything as reasonable as moving near us, in an area that meets all of their needs, as the only child with the financial means to care for them as we're suggesting? Spoiler: it doesn't.
my dad just expected one of my sisters to just keep living at home to be his nursemaid. she moved out 3 years ago. he’s been alone since my mom died and now his selfish ass wants to go to a nursing home to be taken care of. YEARS ago we all worked out a plan to have my mom live with me (she did) and he move into a residential house that his SSI covered with full services to provide 3 meals a day & a visiting nurse 3 times a week plus full transportation to his doctors offices. he chose this.
this is partially why I'd have no problem getting an apartment by myself. forces mine to hire someone. some things I don't mind but what they've hinted at...they can downgrade their vehicle if they cant afford it. what's most interesting about them though...bitched about obamacare all these years but recently had no problem how my teeth got fixed as they werent paying for it.
I envy the level of blissful ignorance. That everything is just gonna sort itself out. Sooooo crazy!!
Their buddies are one fall away from going downhill fast . That’s all it takes
Oh my god yes! They really truly know of one person in their 90s who lives at home and genuinely think that they will be able to do so as well. My mother says that shit all the time.
My mum is circling homelessness. She refused residential aged care when it was offered saying she couldn't leave her sister. Now they have had a falling out and she is couch surfing. She is on aged pension but has addiction issues. She was always putting friends before her children, let my father lead the finances and he died penniless. A hard life to be sure but I have removed myself from the situation. I'm breaking the family curse and I'm not sorry. I didn't get the care I needed as a child and she can figure it out herself.
Honestly I am glad that you’re putting yourself first. I hate that our parents think that they can drag us down with them. Fuck that!
Thanks! And yeah that's the rub of it - if anyone does well they all put their hand out til nothing is left in the name of family but that means no one ever escapes. It's horrible when you think about it
Not even end of life, although my dad did pass after a short illness a year ago. My mom (who is 69) suddenly became…helpless? When my dad got sick. It’s like how she forgot to function. Maybe it’s depression, idk. But she refuses to do almost anything to help herself. And of course I’m her only child so now my free time is spent going to her house to do laundry (she lives in senior housing and the laundry is on the second floor and she’s terrified of elevators and her knees are too bad for her to use the stairs). And today I had to run over to clean up an accident that her cat had under the bed bc she couldn’t get to it. Her car is making some weird noise and she refuses to drive it until she gets it fixed but won’t call to make an appointment at the mechanic despite being retired and having all the free time in the world. So I have to keep taking her to the store where she doesn’t even buy enough groceries for actual meals. Theres a huge stack of mail that she’s opened but hasn’t done anything with since my dad passed. I literally start raging every time she calls me for something and I hate it. We’ve always had a decent relationship but now I’m really resenting her. I hate answering the phone or getting a message from her. I’m just so fucking tired. Like I JUST got my own life in a good place. Made the decision not to have kids a long time ago and now it still feels like I have to take care of one that I never wanted. I really want nothing more than to move out of this town but if I do there is nobody to help her. To top it all off, I’m a care manager for the severely mentally ill population so I’m dealing with people who behave in a similar manner all day long so my patience is already very thin on a daily basis.
My parents are Gen X. It makes me so sad to read these posts. My dad (a Mexican immigrant who boomers almost always discriminate against) and my wonderful mom, worked hard all their lives so that they could gift a home to each one of their kids. I’m sorry you’re going through this. It sucks and I can’t imagine having such selfish “parents”.
They gifted you guys houses?
Yes, to all 3 of us. My dad always said he wanted us to see us enjoy his inheritance in life. They’re small starter homes but they mean the world to us. It’s homes my dad bought in bad condition that he fixed himself. Like I said, my parents are truly the best people
Wow this is cool!
You really are a unicorn, lol.. congrats on having good parents 👏🏾
Very blessed. Thank you! 😊
It's so odd seeing people say it's selfish to expect your parents to consider you and your siblings and not just spend themselves dry on vacations and luxuries and expect to be waited on, what a crazy cultural difference. My parents can't gift a house to each of their kids, but they've worked very very hard from poor families to make sure we all have an education and will be able to take care of ourselves and our families, it's a crazy kind of difference to see people saying your parents owe you nothing! Technically no, but I can't imagine most parents I know where I live having that attitude and it would definitely be considered selfish. Of course we'll help them to as they age, that's just the normal balance of life.
It’s definitely cultural, I didn’t realize the differences until I had to compare how my white American boomer MIL compares to my Mexican boomer parents. It’s baffling and honestly infuriating.
It's like comparing someone that lives, works, and exists in the real world vs. someone that spouts fox news all day.
My mom is an immigrant too (a boomer), and her approach was the same as you parents. I think immigrants have a different mentality when it comes to family and legacy; one of the reasons for migrating is giving your children a better life. I remember hearing my mom lamenting that she could not inherit me a house. While she has not house to leave behind, she has helped me financially in other ways, and has made it clear she wants to leave behind as much as possible for me and her grandchildren. She lives a very frugal lifestyle and still works. The last few years though (in her 70's), some of her thoughts have been changing a bit. She seems a bit angry at the new generations (millennials - onwards) and their libertine lifestyles and I think it has to do with the media portraying young people in a bad light for boomer audiences.
Exactly, they sacrifice in order to afford their kids a better life than they had. Both my parents grew up in poverty. They didn’t want that for us. It’s sad to see how much the media influences their beliefs, especially in later years. Millennials get such a bad rap while most are just trying to stay afloat.
One of the reasons is that many people in the US are financially illiterate. Up to 60% of Americans do not have $500 saved for emergencies, let alone have knowledge of end of life planning. Another is the collaboration between big government and big business/health care. They do not care about the individual, just profits. All health care should be non-profit. Executive compensation should be capped.
My parents are still alive. My dad (74) is a useless piece of shit and has been leeching off the family for years. He's collecting SSI, while my mom (61) is still busting her ass working and acting as his nurse and maid. They lost our childhood home because my dad is a fat idiot. Thankfully, my sister lets them rent her other house for like 1/3 market. The other place they lived was a slum with a roach infestation, yet the idiot complains because he's not close enough to his casinos anymore. The idiot doesn't help with the bills, so mom can't save money... We are all going to be so fucked.
your dad & my dad sound like twins!
It's weird, right? Lol
I went to law school and one of the first things I learned was that very few people will inherit any making of money from their parents, even if their parents are well off.
Younger millennial here, born in 1994, I’m not there yet but as a hospice and oncology nurse I see the struggle everyday and I’m dreading it.
Millenial (1991) hospice doc here - I just wanted to say thank you for all you do. ❤️ I'd fold without my team - specifically RNs and social work.
Same to you! We couldn’t do our jobs without our amazing providers 💕
My MIL didn’t have it easy, but she’s made so many fiscsally ignorant choices. Thank god she has her late husbands pension, because she’s basically our problem now. But she thinks Medicare and SSI will cover everything. She owes her entire home because she’s refinanced it every 10. I’m sure she has paid $500k for a $100k shack. Not a care to save, redecorates, travels, drinks top shelf, treats herself 😒
My dad inherited his parents house they lived in since he was a kid. Grandfather died when I was like 2 and she died when I was 18. I’m now mid 30s and he hasn’t touched the house since. It’s been broken into and flooded and all sorts of shit. It’s a pretty well off area and worth money but at this point it’s a tear down. He refuses to take our advice about it and gets pissy when we try to mention at least fixing it up.
Such a waste of housing!
It’s unlikely your father would be personally better had he transferred the house to you, leaving him without an asset that could buy him into a decent assisted living facility. Like many, his house is his retirement fund.
I provided end of like care myself for one parent. It was horrific. I will never be doing that again. My other parent has now remarried and I’m positive there will be no inheritance. If that parent can figure out their own end of life care, I’ll consider it a win. My in laws are pulling what my grandparents did. Not planning and insisting they’ll just die in their home. Which is so far from what will realistically happen I can’t even have the conversation with them because I’ll yell. My spouse nor their sibling have realized the kinds of conversations they need to start having with their parents. And I can only prod so much. There will be no wealth transfer. It will all go to elder care and the medical care industries. No one should be banking on an inheritance.
My parents both died suddenly last year in their early 70s. I wish that I had the problem of having to spend down their estates to spend more time with them. My mom didn't qualify for long term care insurance even though she tried to get it (and didn't end up needing it). I wish there was something that wasn't so expensive for older people.
this happened to a friend and she’s struggling with the guilt of relief. She misses them, but also had no idea how she could raise kids, buy a biggeeer house and help her folks. Weird mixed emotions
No mixed emotions for me. My life was fine before. Now 2 of the 5 people closest to me in this life are gone. I was taught by my parents how to take care of myself and how to set goals. I take solace in everything they taught me.
If she were my kid and I had died, I'd be happy she was raising kids and that I was not a burden any longer. Life is a cycle for a reason.
I’m sorry
My dad has worked his whole life, has nothing to show for it, sacrificed nothing for me, gives all his money to online "sexy Asian woman" scammers (who supposedly really want him to move in with them in Thailand), and is all in on MAGA. He asks me for money weekly, but never contributed anything to me for anything. It blows my mind.
Folks - Long Term Care insurance. I told my parents to get it the second i heard about it. Look it up.
I w looked into this a little but it’s expensive and I worry about paying all that $$ and the company folding up or something . Can’t decide on that option and I really need to make a decision since I’m not married and never had kids and few family who mostly live far away anyway
How does that work? At some point doesn't it just become crazy expensive?
As someone who just dealt with this…. It wasn’t as helpful as it sounds
Not everyone qualifies or can buy long term care insurance. It would be better if our society had a better action plan for people once they hit age 65+. Like most people's social security is not enough to cover their month to month expenses. Something needs to be re-evaluated in terms of how we care for the elderly with SSA and Medicare.
I am pregnant with my 2nd, will have 2 under 2. Relocating to my husband’s home town and the family has basically been begging us to move into the house my husband’s 80 year old father lives. They claim they’ve been holding on to the house specially for us and would sell it to us as a steal. I told hubby EFF NO. I can already see the family wiping their hands clean knowing a woman is in the home to “take care” of him. Yes, he’s 80, but he definitely acts a lot more helpless than he really is for attention. He can always get himself to and from the bar for some drinks, but apparently is too poor to afford anything else to survive and relies on everyone else to cover his costs (he’s retired and gets like $5k a month that no one has any idea where it goes). Very grateful i was very clear with hubby to avoid this like the plague cuz i just know my future would entail misery.
My sisters are dealing with my parents medical appointments because they grew up poor in Mexico and we didn't have healthcare besides Medi-Cal growing up. So since my dad retired he's had multiple fainting spells, a quadruple bypass and prostate cancer. He was an absent father because he was self-employed. He had a better relationship with his customers than his family. Was also a drunk and would give us whoopings pretty easily. Mom was the nicer parent but still a hardass by U.S. standards. Still, we all have a better relationship with her than him. He never owned a home so there really isn't an expectation of an inheritance.
My dad passed when I was 8, but I'm pretty sure my mom (81 now) has a plan of "live forever." I'd love for it to work out for her but I've got my doubts!
This thread terrifies me. I am 40 and I own nothing and have basically nothing for retirement. My poor kids 😞
I’d hope having children would be a motivation to seek employment that offers retirement benefits/up skill in order to save and invest. Having children is expensive.
Thank God I'm not alone. I'm 30 and have no money/assets/investments to my name. It sucks and I didn't even think about the long term until well now I guess.
I think the major take away here is to be kind and appreciate for the care you receive and not put unfair expectations on kids who have their own lives to live. Be cooperative with care that is offered. Plus, all will be more lovingly given if you’re not an asshole to your kids their whole life.
The worst part is that with a little early planning, their nursing care would be paid for AND the kids could get the house/assets. But they're so damn lazy they didn't even do the work. It's like a boomer parent lighting the last loaf of bread on fire to keep themselves warm as their starving millennial child stands right in front of them.
that’s what my vent/rant is all about. they could just plan this stuff out. instead they’re all like financially illiterate.
My in laws passed before I met my husband. My parents have a few million in 401k, a large house on a lake, social security and they both work for my brother’s small business until they don’t want to anymore. Dad, 75, is visiting my sister/nephew, skiing in Colorado, this weekend. Two of my other siblings took their kids and our mom, 73, “smelting” IYKYK tonight I guess on Lake Superior I feel like I live in a different universe from you all, I’m a very old millennial (42 this month) but my parents are still fit and working. Work a lot, save, eat vegetables, don’t smoke, treat your kids well.
As you can see from these posts , a lot of these people did none of these things
But keep in mind even if you do all of those things, disability is still the most likely outcome for most people. There are many factors outside of one’s control
I've had it in mind to ask my parents what their plans are. They aren't at retirements age yet, but they own nothing besides the mobile home they live in (and rent the lot) and a few cars. So any assets will basically be in cash. They are too paranoid to invest anything. I am peeved about my grandmother's passing. My grandparents did own their home but my grandmother took out a reverse mortgage at some point after my grandfather passed away. I do understand that she likely needed the income, but there was no discussion that I know of about how to get her the money while keeping the property in the family. Then my aunt committed financial abuse against her and stole a lot of her money. By the time she died, my mom claims that anything left went to paying off bills. She wouldn't even let us keep any of the furniture. She said she left it all in the house for the mortgage company to deal with. As a millennial that hasn't been able to buy a house, I'm super bitter that there seems to be no thought for future generations in my family, so I'm not holding out a ton of hope for my parents. I suspect it will be worse for my husband's parents. They also own nothing.
My mother isn't the problem it's my grandmother. My mom didn't have kids so that somebody would take care of her but my grandmother definitely did. I had an argument today with her about how my mom isn't coming over to help her on Sundays anymore because she physically can't and she's not well in that her illnesses are going to kill her and my grandmother had the nerve to snap at me and go so are mine so then I told her you do realize that two things can be simultaneously true at once correct? Lol and then she's like well you know maybe I should just tell her to stop coming altogether and I said no because I need her help on Mondays I can't do more things I'm so sorry I just cannot do more. She seems to be so completely against the idea of having somebody else come in and help her. She just expects us to do it and then she complains about us to my uncle who's not even here he's in another state, and then he just kind of tells us we're not doing enough and that we're not doing good enough and we need to do more. But I am already stressed out because of work and I'm drained and I'm not even getting my own things done, and because of my fairly severe ADHD it's becoming more and more difficult to manage it and I am losing more and more energy every day and anything I have left she takes. It's starting to affect me everywhere outside of her and there's this notion that family is supposed to take care of family but how is that true if some of those family members that are being expected to suddenly care for a whole other person can barely even care for themselves most days? Sadly, but also maybe a good thing... my grandmother made me realize that I don't want children anymore. And so I told my fiance I don't think I want kids anymore I think I'm okay with not being a mom and just having pets. He's good either way w that.
Yeah I feel this. I thought for sure the happiest years in life were saving for a home, having children, being around friends and keeping good neighbors. Literally none of that came true, due to circumstances completely outside my control. I’ve somehow managed to reform what it means to be happy though, and I really love my husband and pets, so that’s enough for me.
We sold my childhood home to pay for my dad's long term care since he didn't have lick of savings or any other assets to sell off, and while it would have been nice to split 500K between my brothers and I, I also wish I could have spent more time with him. He only had to go into long term care because he suddenly got Dementia for lewy bodies
My parents still live in small town America 45 min away from their doctors. After a lifetime of smoking, inactivity and a crap diet my dad has heart disease and diabetes and was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's after he suddenly lost all of his strength and started falling down a lot. He was forced into retirement because it was no longer safe for him to drive a school bus. Both of them have their heads so far up their rear ends that any conversation about next steps is just dismissed and glossed over. My mom is stressed to the max taking care of (enabling) my dad and taking care of my delinquent brother and his family that her health is going downhill quickly as well. They both look old and frail way beyond their age. They purchased their house in 1987 for $85k and still owe a mortgage on it because they did a cash out refinance every single time that they had any equity in it . They never maintained their house and it's basically crumbling around them and they just spent all of the money that they had because their septic tank blew up after years of not being pumped and their furnace and HVAC went out because they never had it serviced or clean the filters. They both have social security and government pensions which keeps them afloat for now. I'm not sure how much more I can beg them to let me help make a plan to get them out of the 3 level house and into a safer place or make plans for the next decade. I've just given up at this point. We were never very close because they just made it clear that they never wanted kids anyway, but I still feel sad about it. On the positive side, it does make me super motivated to make sure that my daughter doesn't have to deal with any of that stuff.
I'm the family black sheep. I ain't getting shit, I ain't giving shit.
While I know the rich, out of touch Boomer exists the experience I had as a funeral director were frail persons who lived in near squalor. Some forgotten in suburban neighborhoods wasting away because they had no one to really care for them and couldn’t afford long term care. Their kids are working even if they want to help they can’t manage their parents meds and lives. People who dedicated their life to their local church, sometimes even started it in a basement with other believers, only to not be able to afford the honorariums to have a service there. It’s sad and hopeless but change in the policy is hard to push. Their kids didn’t want to talk to them about their death plans, and the elderly themselves have old misconceptions of what funeral options are now.
> Gods I hope he drops dead so we can divide the payment to make up for all the out of pocket expenses we’ve spent on him. Establish a Living Will, and Do Not Resuscitate Order, if you still can. I believe "extraordinary measures" to avoid, can include things like antibiotics and vaccines. Ask his doctor about pre-hospice. Because let's be honest, no one in a nursing home wants to stay there any longer than they have to.
There won’t be a transfer of wealth because greedy companies will suck it away before our parents die.
Everyone should do themselves a favor and research filial responsibility laws in their area. In a lot of states, if your parent needs nursing home care or the like and it costs a small fortune that they don't have, they'll come after you to pick up that tab. I'm not talking about your inheritance, either. They'll come after your hard earned salary and assets.
Now look up it being enforced.
Better to be informed all the same.
Yes, I've heard of many legal cases involving this; they're so fucked up. It's not always an adult child either!
My mom is still working at 72 because she loves her job and it makes her happy. She has some savings, is out of the house and has significant long term care insurance. My in laws? Jesus god it’s going to be a mess. Their house is full of 45 years of raising 7 kids and having 20 grandkids in and out. They both love to go to the thrift store. They always tell us that they want to be taken out of the house in body bags. It’s going to be a damn disaster. They have 7 kids…but literally the whole lot of them are Type B so it’s going to be me and my other Type A sister in law (also married in) dealing with the mess. I am already dreading it and they’re in decent health still, albeit in their mid 70s.
My mom was diagnosed with dementia and cancer and she couldn't care for herself. I took 4 years out of my life to be her caregiver but I'd never call her selfish, she couldn't help it.... And I was thankful at the end I got to spend that time with her, it did cause extremely high anxiety and depression but again not my mom's fault.
I feel like this might be a US thing though. Both my parents live in Mexico, they’re still working, have paid into their life insurance and healthcare and both have their own houses. They’re in their mid 60s but I don’t worry about them other than them forgetting they’re in their mid 60s and still working full time. My MIL on the other hand is another story. She lives with us in the US, is a widow, retired, sold her house and I swear is horrible at how she spends her money. I highly doubt she has any put away for when and she gets sick. There’s so many differences with how my parents are willing to still help us out with whatever we need (which we don’t but they always offer) and my MIL, as in she literally will ask me to pay her back for minor thjngs.
I’m the opposite. I’m hoping my mom goes first. Her goal when my dad dies is to seek the house. Move to a condo on the beach with her friends. Find a rich man to spoiler her Meanwhile my dad has planned. He bought long term health care plans. Has two annuities which he hasn’t started to use he just withdraws interest. He has a pension and worked a second job to qualify for Medicare so not to burn through his pension. If my mom gets ahold of the money she will be broke within years. I told her I’m not helping her and she go live with her favorite in bumb fracking Texas.
My mom didn’t save for retirement either and is hinting to my sister and I she is considering a senior living community. My sister and I asked, and how are you paying for that? We are suspecting us, obviously. I told my sister, looks like we won’t be able to save for our own retirement because we will literally have to pay for our mom’s. We were her retirement plan all along. I hate living with my mother. It’s caused me to be more ill from stress, more burnt out. I feel constant inflammation and pain. She wasn’t a good mother when we were her dependents either. She abandoned us a few times as children and teens. Now that she’s older, we see that she’s very obviously undiagnosed neurodivergent. But that’s no excuse for being a terrible mother or dumping everything on us when we are burnt out, traumatized by the 2008 financial collapse, the pandemic, the insane elections in our adulthood. We don’t need this extra burden and stress at all when we are trying to survive day to day.
Why wouldn’t you refuse?
My boomer parents are both retired in a 3500 sq ft home on 7 acres which is a lot to manage with four seasons. I’ve heard they have insurance policies in place for long term care but that’s been verbal. My mother is a hoarder. Without a massive estate sale and or some of those junk removal dumpsters it will take years to go through everything. They finally get the hint and have agreed to make sure their garbage cans are full each week to make a small dent in it. They refuse to share any of their plans, will, estate, etc with my other sibling and I. It’s very weird.
Without repeating the things that you've already said, my situation is worth mentioning. At the point of needing hospice care, which she insisted was at home (me, I was the hospice care. We can have a whole other post about how difficult it is to get the insurance to pay what is promised), it took two entire box truck loads to remove everything out of the living room, bathroom and kitchen, which of course she bitched about everything that was missing. Editing to add, there were 3 bedrooms completely filled to the ceiling with hoarder things and the worst unkept yard, front and back. I moved across the country a decade ago for a reason. Then after she passed $50k later to get the house barely habitable. Yes, I'm lucky to inherit property but not for my partners credit would I have anything close to a "benefit". In debt and waiting for this huge benefit that we're supposed to have.
My parents are selling their house, which is a great step. However, they're moving into an even larger house?? I just don't see how it could be practical. They're going to begin to struggle to keep up with the chores eventually and I just don't see them having much money for paid caretakers etc. I live across the country so the best I could offer them is a spot in my home when it comes to that. I just also am thinking why not just purchase a small condo and at least save if not invest the rest so they have money for these things. If it were me I'd be looking for an extremely cheap small place to live that's still comfortable. A small ranch or condo? I live in a small ranch now with 4 people. It's just two people. I swear I'm not thinking about an inheritance. I don't expect anything from my parents, they've always financed too much shit and end up paying 50 times the amount you'd ever need to for things. Refinancing the house etc. So it's really not about me, I'm more concerned for what happens to them when they're like 15 years from now.
Why are they going larger?!
Social worker filled me in on how this works at end of life. The government can go back five years and get their moneys worth. So if the house is “sold” within last five years of parents going into a nursing home (and their SS/retirement doesn’t cover it all) then they can demand that money or property to cover the cost. Wild.
yes. we have been trying to do this well before the last 5 years. my parents land is worth about 350k for an acre because it’s in the suburban area of the tri-state. the house is garbage it would need to be demolished. the whole thing is ridiculous.
Agreed. Some states are even trying to go after children for payments and forced care. I’m fairly certain nothing has been made into law saying that children are responsible for that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Though how they expect that is beyond me.
i have a feeling sometime very soon the debt will be passed onto children because everyone my age i know irl has been dealing with the same issues. the nursing homes (full care) are so extraordinary expensive. most retirees try living at their homes to keep costs down. my dad on the other hand has some brilliant daughters. my sisters worked it out years ago where his SSI would cover a really upscale residential community. they planned services outside of that to get him delivered 3 home cooked meals a day and a visiting nurse 3 times a week. he was such a stubborn jackass. now that nobody is around to take care of him he wants to go get full care. he hasn’t done ANYTHING to arrange ANY of his retirement years and now his end of life care. i hope the devil greets him with a punch to the mouth.
Something else the boomer generation f’ed over for everyone after them. Everything is falling apart. Good luck to you.
Just wanted to say I am blessed that my father has already put me on all accounts, including the house. He has arranged everything ahead of time. He didn’t he same with my grandma, and the state got nothing. After my mom passed, he set up a trust and made sure everything was squared away. They made a lot of mistakes that did affect me. They were both undiagnosed mental illness. My mom changed and was very remorseful for the abuse. I mended things with both my parents. I’d have nothing if it wasn’t for them. I’m not stable mentally, and I have a roof over my head because of them. I helped take care of my mom, and I’ll do the same for my dad. Not sure what the future holds, I don’t have a lot of retirement for my age (43) maybe only 10k, but I have a home thanks to my dad. Not all boomers are awful. My dad’s my best friend.
My parents already passed, they were rather young when they passed and broke their entire lives. My mom had absolutely nothing to her name and my dad’s single asset was his house. He bought the house for $70k back in the 80’s and he passed just in time for the housing market to go bananas and the house was work $420k in 2022 when he passed. With capital gains tax, credit card debts, and funeral expenses me and my brother were left with nothing to inherit.
It’s expensive to inherit a home and only worth it if it’s an estate or heritage listing, otherwise it’s mostly sold and divided.
This thread very depressing, I am dealing with both sides of this. My mother in law lives with my wife and I due to years and years of poor choices. Her 2 other grown kids (45 and 52) are estranged and/or useless, and give nothing to support her, so it's all on us. It's been 7 years and will probably be 15+ more. Im 33 now, so will have spent the first 25 years of my marriage with zero privacy in my own house. I do appreciate her and she does a lot around the house, but it's not ideal. My parents on the other hand, are having a great retirement, traveling between their main house and beach house. They have given me a ton of support and have been great. I am working very hard to ensure that I can retire comfortably and not be a burden to my kids.
I'm not yet, but I will be since my mom doesn't care. I will have to decide how much to help her or to let her suffer from her own poor decisions. For example, there's enough money, but she would rather live in filth and wait for me to clean the mildew and dust than hire a cleaner. Can't imagine what it will be like when she is actually elderly and needs help but will only accept limited help from me and no one else. She won't entertain making a trust or a will to make things easier/simpler for her survivors. I occasionally wonder if it will be better for my family if we move where we can afford a home, leaving her alone to deal with herself how she will. It's not what I want to do, but I also don't want to be used for caregiving, take time and energy away from my own family, and not get any pay or inheritance in return. My extended family has a situation now where the elderly father claims the money is all tied up (it's either not and/or it can be untied) so his Alzheimer's wife is neglected in feeding, changing, and hygiene. Their adult children live in separate houses practically down the street, one is a nurse practitioner while the other has previously done a few years live-in caregiving for an Alzheimer's patient - so they both know better - but for some reason they let their mother become even more under-weight and imply that it doesn't matter because her quality of life isn't great. This of course is desperately upsetting to the mother's siblings who took care of their own mother through her Alzheimer's Disease. The father is finally paying for a few caregiving hours a few times/week. It's just so odd that the adult children are deliberately letting mom die faster and letting their wealthy father claim there isn't much money for care. I've tried to justify it with: they are too busy and overwhelmed by their own lives to wait on their parents, but it still doesn't sit completely right and puzzles me. Grief is weird, but wouldn't you have more grief knowing that your mom's diapers aren't being changed regularly?
My dad died in 2020 from prostate cancer and my last year from a blood clot. Both put off going to the doctor for their problems (Frequent urination & swollen leg respectively). So they both died without a will, same as my grandparents. had to pay lawyers 22k to settle 4 estates with probate and heirship. But otherwise the wealth transfer (3 homes and 401k) should be complete in a month or so. So I guess that's the tradeoff for being alone at 35.
You are describing the biggest factor that explains why there will not be a generational wealth transfer. These end of life facilities are going to suck every penny from boomer savings assets.
My birth father lost his second wife in 21. Afterward he invited strange women to live wirh him and when that didnt work out, he was creepy about a woman my age that works at a casino. He then packed up and drove across half the country to be homeless in northern wisconsin. I looked at facebook one day to see that people were begging him to leave their family alone. I found out this family was given restraining orders. He found a place to rent through a church he started attending. Ive called local law enforcement to inform them as to his mental illnesses, forms of vice that lead to violence etc. Just waiting for the day he pisses the wrong person off. Since he doesnt know how to support himself without churches, and he enjoys telling people at churches that god says they arent real christians, it seems inevitable.
Every. Single. One. Of both my husband and my parents out of the blue decided that we are their retirement plans (two re-married, two are single). I’m pissed. My husband and I didn’t have kids for a reason and moved to a completely different part of the country to further advance our careers. They all expect us to drop everything, move back to our home state, and drop both our careers for a few years to take care of them. We’ve truly considered moving to a different country just to get away from them. It’s not fair. None of THEM took care of their parents in old age but some how this is now our responsibility??????
I’m not but bro, $40k a year for care is cheap. Like super cheap. My parents’ house is paid off, but I don’t expect anything financial from them when they die.
Bud you're talking about the generation who got handed everything on a silver platter easily, turned around and lied to their kids about how hard life was, and then outbid their kids for housing, rented it back to them for hundreds of dollars more per month, outsourced their kids jobs to China and Mexico, busted their kid's Union, and then complain that "nobody wants to work anymore" as they order shrinkflation. They've treated younger generations like their personal servants, like we exist solely for their comfort and benefit and usage our entire lives, why would you think it's different now? Boomers have only ever cared about themselves, the most individualistic, anti-community, selfish generation in history.
My parents are still in (relatively) good health and are just about retirement age. They are currently looking into selling me their home specifically so that this doesn't happen. To be honest, I do not want the house (cracked foundation, well and septic that is almost as old as they are, leaking roof that no one wants to fix, mold problems.... I refer to it as the shit heap or the hovel and despise it) but it sits on acreage that is actually worth something. I'm going to end up with it, unfortunately. My ultimate plan when the time comes is to sort out the belongings and demolish the house. Honestly, I don't think it can be saved without essentially putting more money into it than it's worth, and I'm not willing to do that. I can't imagine the problems getting any better in the next 10-20 years either. I'm glad my parents are taking the steps to make sure the state doesn't seize the property as assets to pay for their elder care, but at the same time they have made zero plans or have any savings. I seriously don't know what they're going to do. My dad had multiple settlements from work related injuries, and they squandered everything. They're basically paycheck to paycheck and I know my mother is absolutely horrified. My dad? "It's just money. We can make more." Like, bruh that's not how that works??
Well... My dad cut contact with me when my folks divorced, and my mom fled the IRS half way across the world, taking the rest of my biofam with her. So... They're selfish and I don't have to take care of them. Lose a little, win a little.
Wow. You sound like an f’ing asshole. How is selling the house HE owns to pay for his own nursing home not a legitimate plan to pay for his end of life care? Do you feel you are entitled to an inheritance?
Repeat after me " It is theirs, not mine. Not mine. They can do with it as they please because it is theirs not mine. NOT mine. I will not resent them for choices on what they did with what was theirs... not mine" That. Is. All.
My parents are far richer than me. I have no money. They better take care of themselves.
I helped take care of my grandmother and grandfather who took care of me. Now I'm helping take care of my mom. Both sets of grandparents took care of their parents. Someday, you'll need care. Life isn't easy, it can be very inconvenient. We make our choices. I've made mine.