Ungrateful wretches, AKA adult children

[DSRIGGS]

5K sq ft?? Wow! We have all these people in less than 1900 sq ft plus a small basement (~400) plus the pool house (~200).

Charles and I are quite cozy in the 30' RV with no slides (less than 200 sq ft) but the replacement on will be a bit longer, with slides and an extra half bath. Very necessary for a household with a DSer.

You should see some of the houses up in Elmhurst (very nice suburb of Chicago) where Collin was going to College and playing football and running track. Developers buy old house in neighborhoods, sometimes two, tear them down and put up 4,500 to 9,000'sh square foot homes. It is just insane and I can't even begin to think what the price tag is and the taxes are on those places. We have 3,000 square feet and a home that is valued around $275K (housing is very affordable around here) in a very nice bedroom community around Peoria and our property taxes are around $6,500 the last I checked.

We are looking to downsize when we move but the problem is that it seems like the smaller ranches end up being just as much if not more than the bigger homes and with lot sizes being so small it seems like very few ranches go up anymore because two story foot prints fit better on the lot and you get more square footage for the Buck.

 

[Whit]

I am so darn tired of working so hard and being miserable. Nothing t show for it. I really love what I do but the bs ungrateful people I work with suck out of the joy out of it.

I would have to work for another 30 years to payoff my house which would make me 80 so that's a nope. And our property ever increasing taxes alone are about 12k.

So with my grand kids about 600 miles away the plan has always been to motor south to be closer. We are just waiting to get a coupe of ducks in a row, pay down our cars and then we will either rent out or put our house on the market.

I plan on working a part time job in nothing close what I am currently doing. Mostly to keep me busy and for a little spending money.

It will mean lean living for a few years as I am only 53 and my husband 59 but the way I look at it why be miserable. My parents worked until 63/ 72, retired, diagnosed with cance and then died shorty after.

So we are going for it in about a year. I may be in a tiny condo with a tiny class C to tool around in part of the year but what the heck life is short!

 

[DianaCox]

We are essentially in the same position - work has been dropping off for the last 3 years and I've had to take cuts in pay. I could maybe change jobs but at 62 that's not easy, and I like the freedom I have to work from my bed, no matter where the bed is located, plus with this job, I can probably stay working part time until I'm tired of it - less than 8 years till I max out my SS. Our property taxes went up another $3K this year, and I have been having bad feelings about both a potential earthquake destroying our equity (even if we had expensive earthquake insurance, it has a 25% deductible) or the housing "bubble" bursting. Unfortunately we will be moving AWAY from our kids, who can't afford to live here either - maybe they will end up following us.

 

[DSRIGGS]

We have 25 years left on our mortgage and if we relocate will more than likely have to do another 30 year mortgage ...
Probably going to be a more expensive market and who knows if I can get a good enough package to be able to take a 15 year mortgage. I am like you Whit and I am exhausted mentally (I am physically exhausted as well) but there is no way I will be able to retire for at least 15-17 years and that sucks. My wife has great insurance but makes about 20-25% of what I do so my income is what we live on and I have lost my job a few times over the years (no fault of my own) and that killed us financially.... Should have a paid off house, 7 figure 401-k balance and a vacation property by now but instead I have a paltry 401-k balance, a whopping $600 a month pension coming at 67,(will buy two happy meals at McDonald's) a mortgage and 20 more years of work for probably 3 to 4 different employers because that is how it is now days. Oh well, I could be a Syrian refugee running for our family life trying to find refuge and scarIng bigoted republicans (sorry for the political jab - my country embarrasses me sometimes)

Btw I will be 50 next June and my wife is 50 now.

 

[Whit]

Oh Scott @DSRIGGS life is short and you are doing what you have to for your family. Your situation is different. I do not have children. Grandkids from my husbands kids yes, and I love them like my own...well they are mine! I also have heath care for life from my husband retired USMC ... you get your health back. Thats first priority. Then all else will fall into place...and if you are ever in my neck of the woods you (and your clan) have a place to stay!

 

[DSRIGGS]

Oh Scott @DSRIGGS life is short and you are doing what you have to for your family. Your situation is different. I do not have children. Grandkids from my husbands kids yes, and I love them like my own...well they are mine! I also have heath care for life from my husband retired USMC ... you get your health back. Thats first priority. Then all else will fall into place...and if you are ever in my neck of the woods you (and your clan) have a place to stay!

@Whit that is so very sweet of you and be careful I just might have to take you up on that offer.

I know things will work out, but it gets the best of me sometimes when I look back at life. I did everything I was supposed to do and through bad timing I have jack squat to show for retirement savings now because I have lost my well paying job 4 times since 2001...that eats your rainy day fund and eventually your retirement when you have to dip into the 401-k to live (takes a while to replace a mid-senior manager level job - I have been out over a year twice on job searches). Then you throw in our last 5 years of medical battles for Cameron and me, it gets hard to swallow. Plus being a proud man when I have soooooo much to offer and CAT lays me off while keeping these 28 year old kids (yes much cheaper and they can still shape) who know an eighteenth of what I do about the business and leading organizations, it hurts.

and I am starting to think my gut issues are chronic and are never going to get better so I am just not in a good place right now..

sorry to be so whiny

I hope your plan works out and you can get closer to those Grandkids....I know you are a great Grandma.

 

[DianaCox]

Small further update:

• My daughter's former insurance company didn't send the money on Monday due to a miscommunication about the wiring information; in the meantime, I discovered another $1568 in unpaid bills - so when I bitched at the Aetna appeals director about the money not being sent, I added the other bills - and they are supposedly wiring over $10K to my daughter tomorrow.
• Since the reason the $1568 was not on the bill was due to a billing mistake by the medical center, they had already agreed to write it off; after I was able to extract the additional money, I asked them to consider writing off the remaining $500+ my daughter would still owes, and they have essentially agreed to do that.
• I posted our house on our local NextDoor site yesterday, and on Zillow as a FSBO - I have gotten some nibbles, including one woman who said she has all cash and needs a multi-family sort of home (which our house is quite suitable for). I'm a little leery, but at least it means people might be interested.
• And the work of decluttering/downsizing proceeds - we rented a storage unit last week. The whole thing makes me feel simultaneously excited and ill.
• We did our Thanksgiving on Friday, and of course used some of our good dishes. Charles always does the dishes after our big meals and refuses any help - and while he was cleaning up, I heard a crash from the kitchen. I asked what happened, and at first he said "nothing" and then when pressed said "I broke a dish." My heart sank - it's just stoneware, but really nice stoneware, and we have a full service for 12. And for some reason that triggered serious OCD-type anxiety - the next morning, I asked him to bring me another plate from the set so I could see if I could buy a replacement plate online. He looked at me funny and said it wasn't a plate, it was a bowl - and then I got really cheesed, because the bowls from this set are really pretty and I said "then bring me a bowl - I just need to know what the name of the set is so I can try to buy a replacement." And he said "it wasn't a bowl from the set - it was that off-white ceramic serving bowl we use every day that doesn't match anything else we have." And the feeling of relief I got tells me that once we get rid of all the CRAP that I've been (I don't want to say hoarding, but it might kinda sorta be hoarding) holding onto for no really good reason, I might actually feel like my spirit is lightened too. It doesn't make me look forward any more enthusiastically to the process of decrapping our possessions, but it DOES make me feel like I will be OK with it afterwards, if not relieved.

 

[Clematis]

I can identify with the last two points @DianaCox. A friend has told me for years to just get rid of all the stuff and I'll feel so much better. Not so easy.

The thought of getting my house ready to sell paralyzes me with fear. My husband and I are the eldest in our families and ended up with all the crap of our dead parents and other relatives. Unfortunately much of this is GOOD crap that can't be unloaded on Craig's List, a garage sale or even donated. And although very expensive, there's no market for it. For example, I now have SEVEN sets of sterling silver each with place settings for 24. I could have it melted down but feel enormous guilt doing this to the beautiful wedding silver of my great grandmother or other long-gone relative. Then there are the boxes and boxes and boxes of papers and old books from my father-in-law that my husband refuses to part with. What am I supposed to do with it all? It's an incredible burden. Until I can figure out what to do, I don't see how we can move to a smaller house. Part of the reason I want an RV is so I can toss in the dogs and just drive away from all the STUFF.

 

[bearmom]

I can identify with the last two points @DianaCox. A friend has told me for years to just get rid of all the stuff and I'll feel so much better. Not so easy.

The thought of getting my house ready to sell paralyzes me with fear. My husband and I are the eldest in our families and ended up with all the crap of our dead parents and other relatives. Unfortunately much of this is GOOD crap that can't be unloaded on Craig's List, a garage sale or even donated. And although very expensive, there's no market for it. For example, I now have SEVEN sets of sterling silver each with place settings for 24. I could have it melted down but feel enormous guilt doing this to the beautiful wedding silver of my great grandmother or other long-gone relative. Then there are the boxes and boxes and boxes of papers and old books from my father-in-law that my husband refuses to part with. What am I supposed to do with it all? It's an incredible burden. Until I can figure out what to do, I don't see how we can move to a smaller house. Part of the reason I want an RV is so I can toss in the dogs and just drive away from all the STUFF.

Oh boy do I relate to this. I've seen some interesting jewelry and larger art pieces made of sterling, but most of us have enough to do without adding new projects.

I thought when I was 19ish, that it wouldn't be possible to manage all the things that are being talked about here (education, child rearing, home buying, retirement investing, debt management and student loan debt) so that I needed to eliminate something. My first husband had a very broken childhood, so I wasn't sure he could keep his shit together as a parent, and that helped me to eventually decide that children weren't going to make the cut.

I've fretted for 30 years now that when that maternal thing overtook me like it did my sisters I'd be kicking myself for not having kids and it would be too late to change my mind, but no. Watching some of my nieces and nephews struggle with transitioning into adulthood with the very things discussed here, as well as some with drug addiction or mental health issues just reaffirms my choice. I'm actually not tough enough to deal with many of the tough love issues I've seen others my age have to deal with.

 

[Munchkin]

@Whit Let me tell you a story. The guy is my SO's cousin. Sometimes it's better to retire with not very much. Not very much can actually be better than just sort of poor.

Andy's big mistake was living all his life in NYC. He was a server and a restaurant manager but he never made a decent living because he lived in NYC. He never married or owned a home. He was not a lazy bum. He worked darn hard, usually 60 or 70 hours a week just to survive because the COL was so high. At 62, he fell, hurt his knee, needed surgery and developed traumatic osteoarthritis. That was the end of him being able to work. In the big scheme of things, he had nothing and was going deeper and deeper in the hole every month. He had to learn how to work the system to live.

Finally he decided to move to Las Vegas for the weather and the lower COL. Smartest thing he ever did. He stayed with us for about 6 months while he got everything set up(longest 6 months of my life but that's another story). He gets about 1K per month in SS and a small union pension plus $150 per month in SNAP(food stamps). His medical is all 100% free, he has Medicare and Medicaid. He has better medical than most of us! No co-pays and all his prescriptions are free too. He scored a great apartment in a low income senior complex. Here it is http://lasvegasliving.com/community/tempo Great area of town too. $500 per month all bills paid. He can set the thermostat on 70 all summer without living in fear of the electric bill. He gets a free landline and cell phone from Medicaid. All he has to pay for is cable. And since he has Medicaid, he gets free food from the food pantries and the USDA. They even bring it to his apartment sometimes. And if he has a medical appointment, they even come pick him up.

He ends up with about $500 per month free and clear disposable income. Because he gets almost EVERYTHING free he is doing better now than he did working his whole life. And he doesn't have a single worry about medical either. If he needs a nursing home in the future it's all paid for and chances are it's the same one a paying patient would end up using. Living with Andy was a huge education for me. I learned a lot. Probably the biggest key factor is not owning a home/property.

I always envisioned people like Andy with tin cups out on the street but that's not really the way it is.

 

[DianaCox]

My mother worked herself into a pretty sweet situation as well, but in NoVA.

• She and my father divorced in around 1981, after she talked him into turning on, tuning in and dropping out, and they lost everything (house, savings, etc.)
• She got herself declared disabled by obesity at age 60, after working for a few years as a secretary.
• She moved in with me for a short while, and then got herself into a Section 8 senior housing situation with a retirement home in a nice part of NoVA run by a Korean Xtian church when she was 61 or so.
• She has been there for 22 years now, paying 1/3 of her income (which I don't think is over $1000/mo) for rent.
• Although by all rights, she should not be allowed to live there anymore, because she is not capable of independent living, she and my sister have managed to get her into a program called PACE which provides her with an aide 3 times/day to help her with the activities of daily living, including bathing, cleaning, wrapping her lymphedematous legs, making sure she takes her meds, etc. It is their purpose to keep her in the apartment for as long as possible.
  
• There is no intermediate level care available (assisted living) for indigent people - it's either her current apartment or a SNF. Obviously, keeping her in her own apartment is preferable to a shared room in an SNF.
• Essentially all of her medical expenses are paid by Medicare and Medicaid.
• She just has to buy her food.

But you have to be really really poor to qualify, and you need to be very very clever to play the system to get this kind of help.

 

[Munchkin]

Small further update:

• My daughter's former insurance company didn't send the money on Monday due to a miscommunication about the wiring information; in the meantime, I discovered another $1568 in unpaid bills - so when I bitched at the Aetna appeals director about the money not being sent, I added the other bills - and they are supposedly wiring over $10K to my daughter tomorrow.
• Since the reason the $1568 was not on the bill was due to a billing mistake by the medical center, they had already agreed to write it off; after I was able to extract the additional money, I asked them to consider writing off the remaining $500+ my daughter would still owes, and they have essentially agreed to do that.
• I posted our house on our local NextDoor site yesterday, and on Zillow as a FSBO - I have gotten some nibbles, including one woman who said she has all cash and needs a multi-family sort of home (which our house is quite suitable for). I'm a little leery, but at least it means people might be interested.
• And the work of decluttering/downsizing proceeds - we rented a storage unit last week. The whole thing makes me feel simultaneously excited and ill.
• We did our Thanksgiving on Friday, and of course used some of our good dishes. Charles always does the dishes after our big meals and refuses any help - and while he was cleaning up, I heard a crash from the kitchen. I asked what happened, and at first he said "nothing" and then when pressed said "I broke a dish." My heart sank - it's just stoneware, but really nice stoneware, and we have a full service for 12. And for some reason that triggered serious OCD-type anxiety - the next morning, I asked him to bring me another plate from the set so I could see if I could buy a replacement plate online. He looked at me funny and said it wasn't a plate, it was a bowl - and then I got really cheesed, because the bowls from this set are really pretty and I said "then bring me a bowl - I just need to know what the name of the set is so I can try to buy a replacement." And he said "it wasn't a bowl from the set - it was that off-white ceramic serving bowl we use every day that doesn't match anything else we have." And the feeling of relief I got tells me that once we get rid of all the CRAP that I've been (I don't want to say hoarding, but it might kinda sorta be hoarding) holding onto for no really good reason, I might actually feel like my spirit is lightened too. It doesn't make me look forward any more enthusiastically to the process of decrapping our possessions, but it DOES make me feel like I will be OK with it afterwards, if not relieved.

I hope it's still going well! My mom really was a hoarder and kept everything! Daniel was good at hoarding too. Stupid stuff, like magazines. I finally refused to buy subscriptions unless he agreed to throw them away in a reasonable period of time. He kept this stupid comic book 'collection' for decades, insisting the whole time they were valuable. After he died I took them to a comic book store and they were completely worthless!

It's almost the end of the year and I have yet another load to get rid of. Computers, camera equipment, a fish tank that's still in it's crate, a kiln, and a keyboard.

Every load that leaves the house makes me feel better!

 

[DianaCox]

Charles estimates it will take three dumpsters - and that doesn't count the "project" cars in the driveway that never got worked on.

 

[Munchkin]

Donate everything you can. Take the tax write off. Everything helps!