Trust Fund Parents?
December 27, 2006
If I seemed to be forgetting something, or more accurately, someones in my holiday bonus posting, I haven’t. The problem of what I’m going to do about my parents’ retirement is definitely still on my mind. I just haven’t come up with a good solution. Initially I thought that I could just save my butt off so as to have money for them, considered opening Roth IRAs for them, and even pondered a living trust. I still haven’t created a feasible solution.
The main problems:
1. They haven’t saved anything for retirement. I’ll be starting from scratch.
2. Neither BoyDucky or I are exactly poised for high income lives. I’ve got grad school and career development sometime in the future (which is an expense) and he’s got a comfortable start to his career but it’s a mid-level sort of job that’s not going to become a 6 or 7 figure income. Neither of us are currently entrepreneurial. Our parents were and while his are now quite well-off, mine certainly aren’t. Whatever I come up with cannot vaguely depend on our becoming ridiculously wealthy. I’m not opposed to that, though!
3. I cannot depend on BroDucky to help.
The goal:
I want my parents to have a comfortable life in their older years but I don’t know what that’ll consist of, exactly. Ideally, I’d really like to be able to purchase a small home for them, and provide a small income for their use. At the least, I don’t want them to have to worry about payments: housing, car, or otherwise. Maybe they won’t get to travel extensively and dine finely but so long as they’re able to get around, aren’t in debt, are well-fed and feel loved, I’ll be happy.
I’m going to look at Vanguard and Charles Schwab to get an idea of what a living trust requires and if that’s even an option.
