Month: December 2024

Many of us have heard the instruction to “Put on your own oxygen mask first before attempting to help others around you” on an airline flight. The same idea makes sense when it comes to helping adult children financially.

You’d Like to Help, But…

As noted in a previous Sixty and Me post, the Baby Boomer generation collectively has about $78 trillion in assets, but much of this wealth is held by the richest households. As they retire, many Boomers could find that their ability to help their adult children financially is limited. According to the ALI Retirement Income Institute:

“More than half [of Baby Boomers] (52.5%) have assets of $250,000 or less, making it likely that they will run through their savings and have to rely mainly on Social Security for income. Another 14.6% have assets of $500,000 or less, so nearly two-thirds will strain to meet their needs in retirement.”

As much as they may want to help, a substantial number of Boomers may find they cannot afford it.

For Those Who Can

Nevertheless, there are Boomer parents who are helping their adult children financially. In a survey by Savings.com, 45% are helping at least one of their grown-up kids on an average of over $1,400 per month. Not yet retired parents paid the most at $2,100 monthly, but this came at the cost of limiting their monthly retirement savings to an average of only $643.

The main expense categories were housing (rent/mortgage), cell phones, and groceries. Some parents (21%) helped with student loan payments at an average monthly amount of about $245.

Such generosity can be costly. A 2023 Credit Karma survey found over 80% of parents who helped their adult children hurt their own financial standing:

While some are willing to make sacrifices to help, the risks must be understood. For example, healthcare and long-term care costs can be significant in later years. According to LongTermCare.gov, of those reaching age 65 today, nearly 70% will require some long-term care before they die. Of these, 20% will need it for longer than five years. Therefore, overly generous financial help to adult children today could drastically impact future healthcare options.

Making Smart Choices

Here are some questions to consider about financial support for an adult child.

How Much Can You Actually Afford?

Protect your retirement savings. Think about ways to trim your expenses to free up funds.

Loan or a Gift?

If the money is a loan, it puts responsibility on the recipient’s shoulders rather than creating a sense of entitlement. Eventually, you could choose to forgive the loan. However, a gift, once given, can rarely be easily reversed.

Alternatives to Money?

Instead of giving money directly, what are other ways could you help? For example, babysitting part-time for grandkids. Think about the various scenarios and state what you are willing to do. Also, both parties should reserve the right to request changes to such an arrangement if needed.

Living at Home?

If help comes in the form of an adult child moving in with you, make sure the ground rules are established beforehand. What responsibilities does the “tenant” have around the house? Remember that this “kid” isn’t 12 anymore, so it’s important not to be overly motherly. On the other hand, your kid needs to act like a responsible adult.

How Will You Manage the Arrangement?

It’s your money, so you can make the rules about how much and how often you’ll provide funds. Meet face-to-face with your adult child, if possible, since long-distance communications leave more room for misunderstandings. Most of the time, these arrangements are temporary, so both parties should mutually agree on the conditions under which the arrangement ends.

Once you agree on the details, put everything in writing that both parties can sign. Having this for future reference rather than relying on memory will be helpful.

How Can Your Adult Child Learn Independence?

To help avoid dependence, think of ways to encourage the learning of practical life skills. For example, refer your adult child to resources for budgeting and financial planning. Also, consider providing referrals to financial coaches, financial planners, and accountants who can provide knowledgeable and objective viewpoints. As neutral third parties, this avoids the emotional baggage in the parent-child relationship.

Decisions about helping your child financially can be overloaded with emotion. While we’re willing to sacrifice for our children to help them in times of genuine need, we should also be honest about our own financial well-being. This isn’t selfish. If we maintain a stable foundation for ourselves, we’ll be better able to be there for them in the long run.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you been helping an adult child financially? What terms and conditions have you set? In what ways can you help your adult children?

This year’s holiday is extra special for their family.

Some fans love it…others, not so much.

Did know that your brain’s sensory network “has dedicated real estate and takes up most of the back of your brain?” The problem is that you don’t practice using your senses enough according to Dr. Norman Farb, author of Better in Every Sense: How The New Science of Sensation Can Help You to Reclaim Your Life.

On my podcast, Your Outside Mindset, Farb shared that if you practice using your senses – even for 10 seconds at a time – you can develop new sensing pathways in your brain – and sensing can become your superpower.

Habit Is Your Brain’s Default Mode

Dr. Farb says that the way to change your model of the world is to let your thoughts be interrupted by sensory information. Your brain’s default mode network (DMN) automatically balances your heart rate, breathing, and grows to carry your mental habits – like thinking about what you’re doing this day and the next – the world as you expect it to be. 

Using Your Sensory Network Changes Your Brain

Another brain network is the salience network triggered by the sensory network. When you are noticing a scent, a texture, a sight, a sound – you are taking in sensory information. When new sensory information comes in, it can trigger your salient network and move that forward into your brain. This is a good thing because your brain is plastic. It can change and grow no matter how old you are.

Farb says to ask yourself what is your habit to respond to these sensory interruptions? Do you try to get rid of them or do you respond to them and treat them as something important to update your models of the world? How do you do this?

Play the 10-Second Game

Farb suggest:

“Have fun. Play this 10-second game. This is a great game to play with kids. I Spy with My Little Eye is already a part of our culture and might have unexpected value. Give yourself random points every time you notice something around you that you have not noticed before. Give yourself 10 seconds to see what your eyes just slide over.”

Notice the shape of the clouds, tree top branches, or, when inside, the corners of the room, the shadow a lamp casts. Repeat the 10 seconds for taste and sound. Notice something on the inside of your body after that.

Move into Your Senses for Balance

Your senses are always available, it is just not your habit to move into them.

Farb tells you that these “might become magic moments when you move your mind in directions that you are not used to moving to… especially when you are feeling overwhelmed, make a game of moving into sensation for balance.”

Your Attention Is Your Superpower

You have a lot of power over what shows up in your life in each moment – if you are intentional – rather than be drawn along by your habits that we already have – you can lay new tracks in your brain. You can update your view of the world by simply noticing the world around you.

Dr. Farb says that you can have stewardship over what your life is like; otherwise other people will control what your life is like – so that your sense of well-being will be dictated by someone else deciding what you should pay attention to. Noticing is a choice. What you pay attention to is what your world becomes.

It’s a challenge, but you can choose to pay attention to something sensory in your environment. If something negative is happening at that moment it might allow you to see how you might approach this from a different path. 

The moment you experience agency in the world is when you decide what you are going to bring into your field of representation…. what you are going to pay attention to.

How Does This Change Your Brain? 

When you do this you are leaving trails – “leaving footprints like a bridge extended – when you are mindful, attending to your breath and body – parts of the brain start to pay attention to each other – automatically treating sensations in the body as salient and giving them a chance to show up,” says Farb. This means that the reach of your brain is expanding by including other areas.

The dark side, Farb reminds us, “is that if you think of this diagnosis, this failed relationship, this layoff, this financial concern, that is what will pop up automatically. If you deeply lay habits of paying attention to those things, eventually the world will show up in a different way. So attention is like leaving a trail… without introspection (being aware of this) we think this is the way the world is – this is the way I am – this is the way I am supposed to respond.”

A Little About Dr. Farb

Norman Farb, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where he directs the Regulatory and Affective Dynamics laboratory. He studies the cognitive neuroscience of well-being, focusing on mental habits, such as how we think about ourselves and interpret our emotions.

Together with Prof. Zindel Segal, he wrote Better in Every Sense, a book that describes the surprising role of sensation in mental health. His current research explores online interventions to support wellbeing, and neuroimaging of interoception, our sense of the body’s internal state.

In my podcast interview with Dr. Farb he said, “Sometimes we might wish we had a superpower. We do have a superpower and that is our attention – what goes into our awareness matters, and we can still select what that is.”

Test Drive Your Senses:

How do you respond to sensory interruptions of sight, smell, taste, sound or touch? Would you be open to play the 10-second game of noticing? Give yourself random points every time you notice something around you that you have not noticed before. Repeat the 10 seconds for taste and sound. Would you take the time to notice something on the inside of your body (interoception) after playing the 10 second sense game?

Everyone remembers Christmas – the lucky ones amongst us will have fond memories of family traditions from an early age.

O Christmas Tree – and Decorations!

Excitement begins to mount with the arrival of the Christmas tree and the boxes of decorations dug out of the attic. Our decorations go back generations and each holds a memory, especially the little baubles made by my children many years ago.

Each year I am tempted by the fashionable decorating suggestions in the shops and magazines but my tree always ends up looking the same, with maybe one or two new additions.

Christmas Cards – Joy or Chore?

Writing Christmas cards is one of the first activities leading up to the holidays and seen by some as a chore. It is something I enjoy on a wet afternoon, as it is a way to keep connected with long lost friends and family, but I fear it will possibly die out as emails and virtual cards take over.

I try to buy charity cards that support a good cause and when Christmas is over I make sure to recycle my cards, or cut them into gift tags for next year.

Christmas Memories and Traditions (Old and New!)

Eventually the great day arrives and with it come memories of putting a tot of whisky on the hearth for Santa along with a carrot for the Reindeer. Memories of not being able to sleep and then waking up to the crackling Christmas stocking lying at the end of the bed. Memories of creeping into the sitting room and finding a pile of presents beneath the twinkling tree.

Later, perhaps a brisk walk while dinner cooks and then coming home to the appetizing smell of turkey roasting. Listening to the Queen’s Speech at 3pm, more food and then an evening of party games with friends and relatives.

Each family has its own timetable of events, and they all differ slightly, but we tend to hold onto these traditions and keep them alive over the years, passed on to our children and then our grandchildren. But as the younger generation takes control you may find you are drawn into a sporting challenge on a Nintendo Wii as I was. Playing virtual 10-pin bowling got some getting used to, but raised a laugh.

Party games are obligatory in the evening and our family has a selection that goes back to our parents’ time when there wasn’t much, or any, television. Acting and drawing games, guessing games and party tricks all go down very well with the younger generation once they have been persuaded to put their devices down for a while. Silly prizes add to the fun.

As a contrast, with so much choice on TV, it can be enjoyable to just kick back on the sofa with a good film or TV box set that everyone can enjoy. The extended holiday time is great for picking up a good book, or as in my case, settling down with a jigsaw puzzle. It is important to find time for yourself at this busy time of year.

The Holiday Kitchen, Then and Now

Food is such an important part of the celebrations, and as Christmas approaches, a selection of well-thumbed recipes are dug out. In my family, I have always made a Christmas pudding and that is a job for October – I am pleased to say that this year it is made and safely stored in the larder.

If time allows I like to also make my own mincemeat for mince pies, but if time is short I buy it in a good quality jar and add some dried cranberries and a little brandy to make it my own. Then there is my family trifle recipe, which has been passed down over the years, and my kids say no Christmas would be complete without a big bowl of trifle for breakfast on Boxing Day!

These days we need to be mindful of food allergies and be aware of gluten-free diets and vegetarian choices, so it is worth checking up beforehand and making sure you have some alternative options to please everyone.

The women’s magazines are full of new twists on familiar classics, but on the whole I stick to my own tried and tested dishes. I always laugh at the “timetables” they print each year – instructing you to get up at 6:00 am and put the oven on, then account for every minute until lunch is served. No time to relax with a quick glass of sherry if you follow their regime! I prefer to go at my own pace and the meal is ready when…. it is ready!

Making Time for Memories

How fortunate our family has been to enjoy so many memorable Christmases. Of course there have been sad years, but on the whole our memories are good ones and I like to think our traditions will survive long after we have gone.

It is the time of year when families and friends come together and despite the fact that so many of us are spread across the world, we now have Facetime and Skype to help us keep in touch. Plus, Christmas is the perfect time to connect via the internet.

However you chose to spend the holiday season I hope it is all you wish it to be.

Please Join in:

Do you look back with nostalgia at Christmas past, or enjoy Christmas present? What Christmas traditions have survived the years in your home? Do you have any favourite family recipes for the holidays or do you prefer to experiment with new ideas? Please share in the comments below.