May 8, 2011

How Much Help Should An Adult Child Give Parents?

I suppose this is a fitting enough post for Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day!

In the aftermath of my venting posts about my brother, The high costs of Parenting Fails, or a Bad Seed Part 1 and Part 2, I feel I did my parents a disservice. In focusing on the mistakes that we made specific to my brother, I seem to have implied that my parents were a) ungrateful, and b) hadn’t done anything right.

Those two bits couldn’t be more wrong.

To compound the wrongness, some, especially after the Consumerist picked up the latter post, said I was asking the wrong question, that I ought to have asked how much I ought to be supporting my parents instead of how much parents should support their children.

To be clear, I wasn’t asking any question in the first place, I was just mad at my brother for being a clown.

But if I were, my simple answer would be this: parents are to love their children completely and equip them with the skills they need to become fully functional, independent adults. Many times, that will mean not just giving them things or money but rather imparting the knowledge of how to obtain those things. And the material support does have an end. The complicated answer is complicated.

Before I can answer the question of how much help this adult child should give her parents, I have to put in context this adult child and her parents as there were a number of assumptions drawn from the limited and rather irrelevant posts above.

Without getting into the details of their lives before us, some of which you can read here about my mom and a brief synopsis here, there was plenty that they did right and much they did to have inspired my desire to support them in return.

This isn’t a blind, enculturated sense of filial duty. Certainly it’s filial but it starts from the knowledge that they chose to sacrifice their established lives to come to a foreign country, learn a new language, and start over to give us a better shot at good lives. They could have stayed but instead chose to trade in their quality of life for an automatic “one up” for us. It was a roll of the dice whether their lives would improve or not since “Land of Opportunity” or not, life in America was equal parts luck (ill or good) and much hard work for the first wave of immigrants; we had relatives already in the States who could testify to the amount of work necessary to make it here. There was no such thing as an easy ride and they still chose to make the leap for us.

Making life even more challenging for themselves, they moved into a tiny predominantly Caucausian suburb instead of the established community enclaves, guaranteeing our better education and assimilation; the freeways creating concrete barriers between us and the vortices of gang violence developing in the LA/Orange County areas where much of our family had already settled.

Upon their arrival, my parents worked every single day, 14 -16 hour days. They never took a day off, never took a holiday and only alternated three vacations between the two of them in thirty years in order to do their duty in taking us home to meet our grandparents. We couldn’t afford those trips, of course but it was incredibly important for us to know them. We occasionally drove into the city on the weekend for a morning to run an errand as a family, but otherwise, my parents worked constantly to make the bills and send us to the best school possible. I never heard a single complaint, so I never knew this wasn’t “normal.”

During my teenage years, the hours actually got longer because they put my brother in private high school having seen one male cousin fall in with the wrong crowd at the public school and come to a tragically early end, planned to pay for our college education and ran two businesses to afford it all. They paid for music lessons and three sports of my choosing before my senior year of high school.

By the time everything started to unravel at the start of my college years, my parents had worn themselves to a thread giving us as much as they could. That didn’t mean they’d given up, though.

Despite Grandma’s illness, living with us, bedridden, and in the past…
Despite Mom and Dad having to tend to her every day even though Mom herself was quite ill requiring surgeries and rounds of medications that weren’t working…
Despite the businesses going south between the embezzlement and the health problems…
Despite the remaining credit card debts from the business and taking us back to the old country to meet our grandparents…
Despite Dad’s inability to get a job due to a combination of ageism and a limited resume that only had “business owner” on it…
Despite Dad’s losing money on his attempts to make money which caused him to spiral into further depression…
Despite Dad’s particularly tough realizations that he’d spent our entire childhoods working only to have his legacy for his family disappear and fear that he might well have lost his family into the bargain…

They still fought for their pride, for my sake, for our survival. Dad kept searching and digging, working odd jobs for old friends who would find something they needed his skills for. Mom was willing to put up with the worst of environments as long as she was helping me with a bit of cash at month’s end. They were driving themselves crazy (and me, into the bargain) for nearly nothing in return but to spare me an hour of work and I couldn’t stand it, so I took everything over. But as long as they could, they tried. We were at emotional cross purposes, all fighting, pulling each other away from our positions to protect one another from pain.

Of course they made mistakes. Desperate people make mistakes. Desperate people care.

Mom’s health deterioration was jagged. Reduced to menial jobs, places where supervisors and coworkers were abusive, she was shorted on wages because her mental and physical health was diminishing in loops and fades; she couldn’t truly function or keep a job. Until I made her stop, she was taking every job she could secure. Even then she tried strongarming my dad into taking her to job interviews when I was away even though she wasn’t capable of working because she was so pained about my working such long hours. She didn’t peacefully accept the loss of her functioning.

My parents are both very grateful to me for my help and communicate that. I’ve no doubt of that just as they know I love them and will always care about them. It may be a frustrating cognitive dissonance to know that and reconcile it with their actions toward my brother that ripple back to me. But at the same time, I understand because just as much as they love me, they love him. He is their child every bit as much as I am.

(More their child, ahem. Nope, not bitter, grumble grumble.)

In all seriousness, I love and respect my parents because for better or worse, they did the best they could with what they had. They always strove to be strong and good people. The choices and mistakes they made out of love for their other child that I disagree with doesn’t change the fact that they also raised and cared for me deeply and deserve to be well-cared for as best I can manage. If the circumstances were different, if they were a bit less unlucky in their health and business manager (the thrice-cursed embezzler!), perhaps things would be different but that doesn’t necessarily follow that different is better.

Perhaps some people might say that having supported them for the past ten years as I have was too much and “enabling” but there’s a hugely important factor: You can’t compare my brother to my parents because they are completely different people.

He might have worked all of three years in his total of 30+ years of life. They’ve worked two lifetimes. He’s done little but been an influence in my life. My parents both gave me life and nurtured me, succored me when I was ill, and would still do anything they could to ease my way now if they were able.

Supporting my brother would be enabling because he could, if he chose, find a way to earn a living and support himself. My mother is no longer medically able to care for herself or be independent and my dad has to care for her around the clock. Supporting them is a matter of their survival as the clock on their finding and holding jobs has long run out.

These past years have been challenging and I know it will take quite a lot more planning and resources to provide for them in their later years. But it’s not really a question for me whether or not I’ll do it.

How I’ll manage it has been a question posed a time or two (thousand).

Getting them safely into a protected home environment where idio-sib can’t moosh in with them is only the first in many steps we’ll have to take to get there since living together’s not really an option.

Getting back to the question: how much should I (we) support them? Well, no amount of money in the bank is worth the loss of my parents from my life, forgotten and uncared for. And PiC, bless his heart and soul, is on board even though I’ve only newly introduced him to Ship Support the Parents as it’s been such a private journey for so long.

Their basic needs will always be provided. They won’t be living in luxury. I can’t afford that unless y’all decide I’m a genius blogger, share this with millions of your friends and I become the next dooce.com. Hardy-har. But they will live in safety. They will always have enough to eat. They should always have some form of safe transport and access to medical care. The cost, even now, is stiff. Each time a situation or a crisis arises, I have to evaluate the situation to see what can be afforded or what the right solution might be given the circumstances and the resources remaining for the year. I hate that I can’t simply wave a wand or a card and throw money at the problems, sometimes.

They try to help in their own way, though I’d not asked for these things. They don’t go anywhere they don’t have to, unless it’s very local so as not to use gas, and they don’t go out to eat, ever. I think they’re doing their very best to show in their daily lives that they respect how hard I work to provide.

The cost in the future will be even higher so as ever, Planning. Earning. Saving. Investing. It all keeps the reality of needing a strong financial edifice at the forefront of my mind.

In the end, everyone has to answer this question for themselves in the context of their own lives and their own finances and their own relationships with whomever they may be called upon to support.

If they hadn’t raised me with love and respect, if they hadn’t treated me with so much care, humor and just plain sanity during my formative years so that for those brief moments before everything went to mush we had a great relationship, this would likely be a very different story. And I know for many of you, or for many of the first time readers who came to the other posts, it is a different story. That’s ok. It makes sense. This is what makes sense for us.

March 31, 2011

Money chunking: what’s your style?

Let’s talk bonuses, windfalls, and irregular income.

Say you have the occasional gob of money come your way every so often that isn’t part of your usual cash flow. Birthday money, Lunar new year money, an annual work bonus, work overtime, what have you. The size of it doesn’t matter so much as the definition of money that is not part of your usual income.

Is that money budgeted into your cash flow in some way? Does it get directed into your emergency savings, towards paying down debt or into bigger savings goals? Or does it get spent on a treat? Does it depend on the size, timing or something else entirely? Do you plan for it, in the case of annual events?

I earned a modest bump in income outside of my regular income this year, and after taxes:

1. I put the first $700 in the insurance fund. It’s been looking bare and I know the auto insurance and renters will be coming due in April.
2. The second $700 was my first deposit into the wedding fund.

Thinking back, my modus operandi has pretty much always sent windfalls into existing savings funds because that brought me the most joy. Or satisfaction, really.

Posted in: Budgeting, saving

18 comments

January 6, 2011

A few plans for the new year

We rang in the new year driving down the highway counting down about ten seconds off the real time. But never mind that, onward!

Savings

I’m looking at three specific areas to save money in January:

1. Cell phones – consolidating my parents and PiC and myself onto one family plan

2. Cable/internet/landline – PiC’s promotional rate for all three services has expired and he’s now happy to let me reduce to the most basic or do without some services. I’m considering the options, though my heart is sad to consider options that don’t include BBC. Alas.

3. Insurance – I’ve been carrying a variety of insurance policies and he and I need to take a closer look at whether we’re overlapping or if we can consolidate for better rates at some point. This is mostly planning, I’m in favor of getting an umbrella policy if we end up combining finances and y’know, marrying it up this year.

Income

1. There’s bonus talk in the air this year, based on last year’s performance, and I had intended to put it toward a big fat trip this spring but as it turns out, that might not really take the form we once imagined. (That bit goes under spending, doesn’t it?)

2. My first year comes to an end this spring and I’ll be up for a review. I fully expect to make a strong case for a raise since my six month review was entirely positive but I’m not sure that the organization tends to be generous on either front (raise or bonus) in comparison to previous years and employers.

Investing

1. PiC and I will be sitting down to evaluate his investment strategies for age and goal appropriateness.

2. My trading account has been dormant, accumulating bits of dividends, and it’d be nice to have a few more income-earning stocks. Time for more research!

Spending

1. Travel will take a chunk of money, depending where we go, and if we count honeymooning in there, that’s another chunk. Then again, honeymooning might happen next year.

2. There’s the small matter of a wedding. I’ve got no plans other than to keep it as simple as possible.

What are your plans this year?

Posted in: Budgeting, investing, plans, Spending, travel

11 comments

December 20, 2010

Frugal Comfort Food: Tomato Soup

After some months in which PiC was so over-generous in treating his family that I cannot even write down the numbers here, PiC and I are well into our new quest to keep our grocery and eating out bills down to an almost unimaginable $400/month.

Much like 444 Express, we’re making an effort to go through the foods in our cabinets, and I’ve been keeping certain staples in stock for our new go-to recipes that are delicious, versatile and last a heck of a long time.

I adapted this Full-Bodied Tomato Soup from Not Quite Nigella, tripling the garlic because we loooove garlic. Dropping the meatballs keeps the cost down to about $5 per large pot of six or ten servings and we really didn’t notice any difference. We did add a half cup of orzo to the last batch and it took over the entire soup like a mad mutation. By the third bowl, it was just a pasta dish. I’m not sure we should do that again.

I’m sort of considering adding some of our 99 cent per box tofu to the next serving, just to see if it’s weird or if it works. Thoughts? In original form, the soup was excellent by itself or as a side to my constant stream of cheese quesadillas. Mmm….

Managing to continually rotate a menu that includes fresh produce without wasting food due to spoilage is tougher than it should be with modern conveniences, but between a busy work schedule and my inherent laziness about eating balanced meals if I’m tired, I admit to failing more often than not of late. Still, we’re fighting the good fight, and the more new recipes I find, the more interested and invested I can be in the process.

Posted in: Budgeting, cooking, recipes

5 comments

September 27, 2010

My verdict on Allegiant

As requested by Stacking Pennies when I first mentioned flying Allegiant, my opinion now that I’ve flown my entire round trip: You get what you pay for, but only if you pay very little.

Pay more than $30 each way and you will probably be livid at what you overpaid for.

The MD-80s are creaky, ancient jobs that more often than not spill water on people towards the back (polled frequent fliers: this is true in their experience); the engines are so loud that you might suffer temporary hearing loss if you’re seated too close to them; they charge for everything like the right to choose your seat, even the “standard” free beverage so don’t expect a free glass of water, you cannot check in beforehand, if you miss your flight you have to wait a week for the next one or buy a new ticket on another airline.

It’s as barebones as you can imagine. More. I don’t know if you’re charged to use the lavatory but I’ve started to expect so.

So yes, if you snagged one of those magic $10 tickets, you should put up with all of that without complaint but if you ended up paying nearly standard fare before opting for any amenities, I can only imagine you’d be a tad grumpy. *hand raised* Other than that, we saved the cost of a rental, though marginally offset by the cost of public transit going to and from the Oakland airport on this end, and maybe a few dollars more than that for a standard fare into a more metro city.

Still, it got us into the destination with a minimum of fuss for our hosts and given the fact that they put us up in, while not decadent, very well fed fashion, I’m glad it was very easy for them to pick and drop us off. So there’s that.

{————Carnivals————}

My thanks …..

to Well Heeled for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance and including my post on the costs of PiC’s Marathon entry win.

Posted in: Budgeting, travel

5 comments

April 26, 2010

Budget Execution: How a DHSI saves

This is probably the most important detail in the whole process of budget-making: how do I ensure that I have saved a substantial amount by the end of the year, even on an incredibly tight budget?

Step One was establishing my bottom-line expenses. I know that they will increase but for now, I need to know the precise minimum I *must* have.
Step Two was establishing my savings wish list. This is what I want and mean to have. On a meta-level, I know that I have a priority list and can switch priorities as necessary.
*Investing in a 401(k) will be automatic and basically invisible.
Step Three was re-establishing my time commitments. I rely on alternate income to make up the difference between the regular income and the goals and that requires careful time management so that I don’t drop the ball on either side.
Step Four was setting up tracking spreadsheets for the income generated so I stay abreast of the tax implications of freelance work.
Step Five is pulling it all together: as income is earned after the month of April, a set amount will go towards the expense fund and the rest will go to savings. All alternate income goes toward the savings goals as well.

My priorities

Providing for my family
Rebuilding my portfolio of savings and investments
Making time to enjoy my new life

The numbers

Expenses: A very conservative $2,800 per month

Savings: I aim to average $400-500 per month on freelancing = $4950-5850/this year. That takes care of my debt to self which is the same as 50% of my Emergency Fund rebuild goal. I would then take the rest and stash it in the insurance and maintenance funds.

It’s a little disappointing to see the numbers are so low, but any other windfall gigs aren’t included in that total. It’s ok, this is a work in progress.

{———-Bonus Round———}

And we now know that I have to budget in extra money for further medical treatment and therapies for my mom (to be determined) as well as to move them. Look forward to Budgeting, Redux!

Posted in: action plans, Budgeting, saving

4 comments

April 22, 2010

What a DHSI Saves

[This budget was developed before Sunday and Monday‘s situations, so of course it’ll have to change to accommodate the new developments. But I worked hard on it, so this series is going up anyway!]

These goals are beyond stretch goals since my disposable income doesn’t actually cover saving an average of $2900/month from the end of July through year-end. That’s fine, I prefer to set high goals and find ways to meet most of them than settle. Some of these are overlapping from the previous post so they’ll look familiar, or they might have been expanded. Until my benefits and paychecks settle out, which they will by the end of May, these goals will remain soft.

Long term Savings Goals

Emergency Fund: Doesn’t need too much work. I’d like to ratchet this up to $40,000 by next year so that I can roll $20,000 into any decent interest-bearing, mid-term CDs.

[Need: $5,400]

Expense Account: It’s less than half its former glory. Let’s take it back up to $10,000.

[Need: $5,000]

ROTH IRA: Haven’t made a contribution in years. Let’s fix that by April 2011.
[Need: $4,000]

Short term Spending Budgets

Taxes: If I earn enough freelance income this year, taking no exemptions throughout the year may not cover my 2010 tax liability. If that starts to look iffy, I will restart this savings account and put away 30% of all freelance invoices.
[TBD]

Auto Maintenance: Credit card rewards alone won’t be enough to cover this category of expenses. I should have at least $1000/car per year.
[Annual Need: $2,000]

Insurance: Car insurance costs $1200/6 months for two cars. I’ll be canceling my current -very costly- private life insurance because my employer-sponsored version has become active at $9/month and “save” $41/month. Renter’s insurance is another $500/year.
[Annual Need: $2,900; current policies are paid through to October or this time next year]

Travel: Oh for an endless travel fund! Realistically, I should save for the two trips I’ve already committed to (San Diego and going home for a graduation). And maybe two more trips back home this year.
[Need: $2,000; have some travel credit on hand already]

Clothing: I must have a budget for 2011. The budget strings will simply be too tight for me to steal a little bit here and a little there from the Expense fund like I used to do (shhh!).
[Need: TBD]

Posted in: Budgeting, saving

4 comments