My parents were not well-to-do (firefighter and secretary in a small Midwestern city), but they were frugal and managed their money well. They had pensions and some Social Security (through my father's second job), and saved enough that they could buy a small apartment in South Florida after they retired in the late 1970s.
They paid for my undergraduate at a small private college. I paid my way for grad school with teaching and research assistantships. (Likewise for my wife and her parents.) They paid the plane or train fare for me to visit them in Florida twice a year, while I was in grad school. When they decided they no longer needed two cars, they gave me the second one (a secondhand VW Beetle), which was the first car I owned.
A few years after I landed a tenure-track college teaching job, I married one of the other professors and we bought a house. Both sets of parents loaned us money for it, which we structured as standard mortgages, so we didn't have to deal with a bank. About five years later, both of them figured we were going to stick together, would get the payments back as inheritance anyway, and therefore forgave (gifted) the loan balances. This was in our early 40s.
Both of us did receive inheritances from our parents in our mid 50s, in the ballpark of $500k each, in today's dollars. They weren't life-changing, in that we didn't upgrade our lifestyles except for one-time splurges like a kitchen remodeling (for my wife) and a nice new computer (for me). They did give us more flexibility and less stress in managing the finances of our retirements, in our early 60s.
They paid for my undergraduate at a small private college. I paid my way for grad school with teaching and research assistantships. (Likewise for my wife and her parents.) They paid the plane or train fare for me to visit them in Florida twice a year, while I was in grad school. When they decided they no longer needed two cars, they gave me the second one (a secondhand VW Beetle), which was the first car I owned.
A few years after I landed a tenure-track college teaching job, I married one of the other professors and we bought a house. Both sets of parents loaned us money for it, which we structured as standard mortgages, so we didn't have to deal with a bank. About five years later, both of them figured we were going to stick together, would get the payments back as inheritance anyway, and therefore forgave (gifted) the loan balances. This was in our early 40s.
Both of us did receive inheritances from our parents in our mid 50s, in the ballpark of $500k each, in today's dollars. They weren't life-changing, in that we didn't upgrade our lifestyles except for one-time splurges like a kitchen remodeling (for my wife) and a nice new computer (for me). They did give us more flexibility and less stress in managing the finances of our retirements, in our early 60s.
Statistics: Posted by 22twain — Fri Dec 22, 2023 12:25 am — Replies 32 — Views 1990