Reverse Generational Weath Transfer?
Profunksticated again apologizes for the lag between posts. It’s been pretty busy on the job and on the personal tip.
Let me ask you all something. Should we 40- and 50-somethings be required to take care of our parents financially? I ask because I saw this article in the Washington Post. It quotes a minister as saying that folks need to be putting away money to help care for their parents in their old age.
And the writer chimes in, crowing about how she’s helped her grandmother.
I was raised by my grandmother, Big Mama, and I vowed that I would take care of her until the day she died. In fact, while in college I would send money home to help my grandmother with some of her bills.
After I graduated, I paid my grandmother’s property taxes every year (she had paid off her home). I regularly gave her money for groceries.
The article struck a nerve with me. The comments section for this article is closed, but here’s would I would have written:
“Bully for you, my sister, that you were able to help your grandmother. But not all of us have that opportunity. Maybe if I hadn’t gone through three layoff/firings in 11 years and my spouse hadn’t gotten ill, and then injured on the job, resulting in several income interruptions, maybe I’d be in a position to help my parents also. And maybe I wouldn’t have had to ask for help from them, which I hated like hell to do.
“But my parents don’t need help from me financially, at least right now. They inherited the house I grew up in. They had no mortgage. My dad joined the local electric and gas utility in 1971, and retired after 30 years. He has a pension and enough liquid assets to purchase with cash the house next door that his recently deceased older brother left behind (his eight kids amazingly didn’t want the house) to keep out what Dad considered undesirable neighbors.
“Like you, I am a journalist by trade. Hey, maybe if the Washington Post had hired me when I applied in the early 1990s, rather than having your spook gatekeeper send me a letter containing the bullcrap brush-off line ‘We need to see more depth and breadth in your stories,’ maybe I’d still be there today and had built up enough assets to help my parents. ”
Yeah, that last line sounds like sour grapes, but screw it. Anyway, what think you all of helping out parents? I thought it was all about parents passing down wealth rather than the other way around. At least, as I understand it, that’s how the white folks do it.
Peace.
