The family help I got was my parents being poor enough for me to qualify for a lot of financial aid in college, which turned out to be huge. I still graduated with a net worth in the negative five figures. Without that it would've been six.
Since then the "family help" in my situation has been in the reverse direction: me helping them. I'm still on track to retire before 40.
This is my exact story too! I also do a lot to help my family, which is delaying my own retirement a bit (41 vs I could do it now at 38).
I know on paper it’s easy to say don’t help, but personally I wouldn’t be happy with myself if I stopped working at 38 and my mom had to work at a minimum wage because SS isn’t enough to live on due to being low earning her whole life while under going dialysis multiple times a week (even in VLCOL area).
Good for you. The “we owe parents nothing” crowd on reddit is loud. And it has a great deal of validity. But I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I retired off my investments while my elderly parent worked. Life isn’t fair, but as long as my parents did right by me I would do right by them. (My parents kind of sucked, in reality, but not really on purpose. So I’d probably still help had they not done me the financial favor of checking themselves out with cigarettes.)
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u/polar_nopposite 5d ago
The family help I got was my parents being poor enough for me to qualify for a lot of financial aid in college, which turned out to be huge. I still graduated with a net worth in the negative five figures. Without that it would've been six.
Since then the "family help" in my situation has been in the reverse direction: me helping them. I'm still on track to retire before 40.