Comments on: Financial Independence Week: The Dangers Of Financial Dependence

By: Pamela Worley

Pamela Worley — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:03:56 +0000

My husband and I are newly married and I struggle with his financially dependent children. Neither one of them work (and they have good health). My husband works overtime whenever he can and I have 2 jobs. We are working our butts off and they continually have their hands out. They won’t take any advice from him and if he holds back money, his daughter will not allow him to see his granddaughter (until of course, she needs something again). Then, his guilt is so bad, he gives in. It’s a cycle that needs to be addressed. As the stepmother, I struggle with my place in this. It’s good to read this kind of information that can truly help people to deal with a real problem.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:25:05 +0000

I have gotten financial support from my mom, but I feel no guilt about it whatsoever. She loaned us money to pay off a rather large debt, and we are repaying her with interest. We are paying less interest than we would have on the loan, and she is earning more interest than she would have on her (very conservative) investments (mainly GICs). Similarly, when my dad died, mom didn’t want to sell the farm out of the family, but she couldn’t afford to maintain it (my parents were seperated). My husband and I bought the home quarter, mom holds the mortgage, she gets comparabe interest to what she would get in her investments and we get a slightly better rate than we would get from a bank. Because she sold to us, she got to put some clauses in the mortgage that we wouldn’t have had to have with a bank (they are a bit of a pain, but livable, and they were important to her). Because she is my mom, she will wait to deposit a cheque if our payday is out of sync with our month. I think that is a lot of help, but I don’t think it is particularly disadvantageous to mom (well, maybe having a lump sum of cash for the farm would have been better, but we wouldn’t have been able to swing it, so she would have had to sell the farm out of the family).

By: cindy

cindy — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:35:26 +0000

I think these comments are a little one sided. Although I live with my parents I pay 1/3 of the mortgage, my mothers car payment, and 90% of the groceries on an entry level salary. I am saving to move out, but currently even a small studio apartment in the bad part of town costs more than my parents entire mortgage. While some people may mooch of their parents, it isn’t true with everyone.

By: Tina

Tina — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:14:09 +0000

Wow! Thank you. I’ve forwarded this post to my parents who are supporting my two younger siblings and it is draining them both financially and emotionally.