I got a ton of help from my folks in University, it just wasn't with tuition or money. Mostly being from a blue collar family, I ended up paying all of my tuition myself. But I lived at home rent free, ate their food, had dinners ready every night. When they could see that school was getting stressful and I was at school super late every night, these delicious two sandwich lunches would show up in the fridge for me or they'd have washed my kitchen whites for work on the weekend. Summers I'd have two jobs, and generally between or after shifts, there'd be leftovers in the fridge for me.
As we got older, and my parents started getting a little bit put away, they'd help out with things like selling me their old car for the generous parent discount (or they didn't want there grandchild in my crappy 89 accord), or when christmas rolled around they'd offer to buy my sons bed or something like that. If we vacation together, mom is super sneaky about paying for more than her share of dinners or accidentally paying for both rooms in the hotel.
Money isn't the only way you can help out your kids, I know they wished they could have, but to me they set a pretty solid example on how I can show my kid I care without buying trips, cars or houses for him.
Personally, I just want to be in a position so my kid doesn't have to pay for all of his tuition when he gets there. As far as buying a house or down payments for a car, FTS, he can pay (cheap) rent when he's done school or drive a crummy used car until he can afford something nice for himself. Making choices like that help people prioritize what's important for them at any given moment...
nice car or trip around the world.
Down payment on a mortgage or find work in other cities... (actually after writing this down maybe i'd buy him his house to tie him down to the same town as me so he doesn't do something stupid like move my future grandchild to sweden or something)
|
