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My mother-in-law is in her 50s and has worked as a horse trainer her whole life. She doesn’t own property and instead rents a house at the barn where she trains. She has no assets or retirement plan and is getting to the point where doing the job is becoming more difficult for her physically. My husband has tried to talk to her about her fiscal future, and she shuts these conversations down; she likes to talk about “someday” winning the lottery and buying her own place.
My parents, meanwhile, have invested in their retirements and are financially secure. Generationally, my family has made it a priority (and has been privileged to consider) that parents shouldn’t be a financial burden on their children. They believe that aging parents should rely on their children only for emotional care, i.e., helping to facilitate spending time with grandchildren.
I can’t help comparing my mother-in-law’s attitude with my family’s and consider her choices selfish. My husband and I are the only financially stable family members on his side, and every time my mother-in-law makes a comment about plans that would require a miracle windfall, I get anxious and frustrated thinking about how that financial burden will likely fall on us when she inevitably can’t work any longer.
To be clear, she has never even hinted that she expects us to care for her. But we don’t see what other options she has, so it feels as if she has her head in the sand.
Do we have a right to know what her plans are or make sure she has a plan? If she won’t discuss them with us, does that absolve us of the future responsibility?
It sounds as if her reluctance to discuss the future reflects a reluctance to face up to her bleak financial prospects. Such procrastination isn’t unusual. In fact, it also sounds as if you and your husband may have put off making a serious attempt to figure things out with her — that the situation gained urgency only after her physical difficulties became evident. At this late date, though, what do you think she should be doing? Given her job history, is she going to be able to earn a lot more doing something else? No doubt she should have put away money over the years — perhaps, in the usual way, by making payments on property — but she can’t do so retroactively.
Still, there are better and worse ways of playing a bad hand. That’s a reason to offer to pay for her to see a financial planner now. Assuming her employer paid FICA taxes, Social Security payments would be in the offing. If a physical condition prevents her from working, would she qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance? Should she take her regular Social Security benefits at the earliest eligibility (currently age 62) or wait longer? Are there catch-up contributions she can make to a retirement account? Are there employment possibilities that aren’t so physically demanding? What public assistance (e.g., SNAP) might be available, given the eligibility thresholds? Those are the sort of issues that an expert could hash out with her. But your mother-in-law is more likely to be open to this if your husband makes the proposal in a positive spirit, stressing his desire to help her navigate the shoals ahead.
Does her refusal to talk about her dire situation absolve you from all responsibility? Your anxiety makes it clear that you don’t think it does. You and your husband needn’t compromise your own financial security, but if she finds herself in straitened circumstances, you’re going to want to help out, even if in a limited way. Your own family’s ethic of independence is admirable, but a history of improvidence can’t be undone; comparisons here aren’t so much odious as pointless. Facing reality — for you as for your mother-in-law — means looking ahead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/magazine/mother-in-law-retirement-savings-ethics.html
My parents, meanwhile, have invested in their retirements and are financially secure. Generationally, my family has made it a priority (and has been privileged to consider) that parents shouldn’t be a financial burden on their children. They believe that aging parents should rely on their children only for emotional care, i.e., helping to facilitate spending time with grandchildren.
I can’t help comparing my mother-in-law’s attitude with my family’s and consider her choices selfish. My husband and I are the only financially stable family members on his side, and every time my mother-in-law makes a comment about plans that would require a miracle windfall, I get anxious and frustrated thinking about how that financial burden will likely fall on us when she inevitably can’t work any longer.
To be clear, she has never even hinted that she expects us to care for her. But we don’t see what other options she has, so it feels as if she has her head in the sand.
Do we have a right to know what her plans are or make sure she has a plan? If she won’t discuss them with us, does that absolve us of the future responsibility?
It sounds as if her reluctance to discuss the future reflects a reluctance to face up to her bleak financial prospects. Such procrastination isn’t unusual. In fact, it also sounds as if you and your husband may have put off making a serious attempt to figure things out with her — that the situation gained urgency only after her physical difficulties became evident. At this late date, though, what do you think she should be doing? Given her job history, is she going to be able to earn a lot more doing something else? No doubt she should have put away money over the years — perhaps, in the usual way, by making payments on property — but she can’t do so retroactively.
Still, there are better and worse ways of playing a bad hand. That’s a reason to offer to pay for her to see a financial planner now. Assuming her employer paid FICA taxes, Social Security payments would be in the offing. If a physical condition prevents her from working, would she qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance? Should she take her regular Social Security benefits at the earliest eligibility (currently age 62) or wait longer? Are there catch-up contributions she can make to a retirement account? Are there employment possibilities that aren’t so physically demanding? What public assistance (e.g., SNAP) might be available, given the eligibility thresholds? Those are the sort of issues that an expert could hash out with her. But your mother-in-law is more likely to be open to this if your husband makes the proposal in a positive spirit, stressing his desire to help her navigate the shoals ahead.
Does her refusal to talk about her dire situation absolve you from all responsibility? Your anxiety makes it clear that you don’t think it does. You and your husband needn’t compromise your own financial security, but if she finds herself in straitened circumstances, you’re going to want to help out, even if in a limited way. Your own family’s ethic of independence is admirable, but a history of improvidence can’t be undone; comparisons here aren’t so much odious as pointless. Facing reality — for you as for your mother-in-law — means looking ahead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/magazine/mother-in-law-retirement-savings-ethics.html
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LW sounds really young. This is a line said by someone who has never contemplated the realities of eldercare, of the sheer amount of time and logistical burdens involved in even the least financially strained situations. I come from a family where money is never a problem, but if LW thinks this means all my grandparents needed from my parents was "help facilitating spending time with grandchildren" she is very, very wrong.
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My spouse and I have similar feelings to her parents, so we have an additional savings fund that is intended for skilled assistance, quality nursing care, etc. when we become unable to take care of ourselves physically. We’ll downgrade from our home into living in a retirement-community condo so that house maintenance doesn’t become our childrens’ responsibility when we can no longer do it. We’ve done all necessary advance planning to make sure that our children won’t be forced to take us into their homes, move in with us to care for us physically, or have to make difficult medical decisions on our behalf; we both have advance directives that give guidance as to our medical wishes, will pursue euthanasia if dementia develops, and have Powers of Medical Attorney set up with trusted friends. (We’re only in our 40s/50s, but sometimes things happen earlier than one would anticipate.)
Many families aren’t able to do this kind of advance planning due to lack of funds, fear of confronting the reality of eventual illness, family members who refuse to do advance planning, etc. But the idea that one should take these burdens off of one’s children is definitely not a thing reserved only for the very young. It is, in fact, as a result of our current experiences with our parents that has made my spouse and I take such precautions to ensure we won’t cause similar issues.
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So let's spell out all the things LW apparently didn't want to say but I think they kinda believe:
1. LW's parents are not better people just because they have more money than other people.
2. The fact that they have more money, unless they are actually obscenely wealthy (which, if you ask me, is unethical in a whole different way) does not mean that their kids won't have to take care of them when they're older. What happens if the property they own turns out to be in a new flood or fire zone and they can neither offload it nor continue to stay there? What happens if one of them suffers a serious injury or illness that wipes out their retirement savings? They've been lucky, and it sounds like this started out by being lucky enough to be born to wealthier parents in the first place.
(Heck, putting money aside, what happens if their cognition declines and they can no longer make their own decisions? Even if they have the money for all their care their children will no longer be able to "only provide emotional support".)
3. LW does not accuse MIL of spending lavishly. What's her big crime here? It's not drugs or gambling. It's not child abuse. No, her only fault, as near as I can tell, is not owning a home or working in a well-paid office job. Well, not everybody can have that sort of job!
3a. And even if they do, some people - mostly but not entirely women - find their earnings severely curtailed due to other responsibilities. It's all well and good for LW's parents to say that they have a responsibility not to burden their children, but maybe MIL had to take a few years off from paid labor to raise her children, or to care for her own parents or other relatives. She's not a bad person!
4. LW doesn't need MIL to make plans in order to make their own plans. I mean, yes, MIL should probably have some sort of idea about what she'll do, but LW and Husband are capable of sitting down together and discussing how they'll handle things if either if their parents need a lot of assistance as they get older. Their parents don't actually need to be part of this conversation for them to have a general outline.
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Not having invested.
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But as a single person who was lowish income until my mid-forties, but also saved pretty assiduously all during that time because I believed that Social Security would be defunct by the time I needed it (and am happy to probably be proved wrong), I do have a certain amount of sympathy for frustration with the MIL's head-in-the-sand approach. It's certainly not unique, though.
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You can't weave a safety net while death-gripping the trapeze.
Even if so, has horse-training been a stable career (forgive me), and lucrative enough to allow for saving in the first place? Is it recession-proof, as there have been 4 of them over the roughly 3 decades of her working life?
Re: You can't weave a safety net while death-gripping the trapeze.
Horse care is something people do because they love it, but it doesn’t pay well at all and often it’s under the table. I actually laughed when the LW response suggested MIL should have been saving this whole time, because MIL was likely working for minimum wage and possibly a bit of rent reduction on the house. (Or she was working for well under minimum wage and the rent was comped as barter.) Plenty of people end up working as a barter arrangement; they get to keep their own horse(s) at the barn and not pay the stabling fees in exchange for X amount of hours doing grooming and/or training.
The financial abuse of low-level employees in the equestrian industry is endemic and widespread, and often people aren’t even making minimum wage; they’ll get a set fee for the month (say, $2000) in exchange for full-time work plus some free lessons (that may or may not materialize). Spend time on forums intended for horse professionals and you’ll see it over and over, with people arguing hard on both sides. Stable owners will argue that nobody is forcing the workers to work, and the horse industry is getting more expensive all the time and they can’t afford to pay more than they do. The workers will point out that an industry that has to survive based on exploiting people doesn’t deserve to survive, and it’s hard to argue that horse owners can’t pay more for stabling when many of them are spending $5000 a month or more to do competitions.)
Anyway, the short answer is this: no, these horse trainers are not making bank, and the horse industry isn’t recession-proof. The ultra-rich aren’t going to be affected, but all the lower-level folks - middle-class people who have a single horse and no property of their own to keep it on, so they have to stable it elsewhere - do get affected, and some of them will have to sell or euthanize their horses. Other equestrians like me (who can’t afford their own horse and pay for lessons on other people’s horses) may have to stop paying for lessons when times are tighter. When this happens, stables that are unable to maintain enough boarders and/or paying students will close down. I’ve had two of my lesson barns close permanently for that reason over the past three years. The stables that cater to the ultra-rich will be fine no matter what, but there’s a lot of stables that serve a more middle-class clientele.
Re: You can't weave a safety net while death-gripping the trapeze.
Re: You can't weave a safety net while death-gripping the trapeze.
Re: You can't weave a safety net while death-gripping the trapeze.
The worst part of it is that the stables that cater to the ultra-rich do the same shit. The horses being stabled there cost $50k-200k each, the horse owners often spend their winters in Florida to do the competition circuit there (easily $25k or more per month for the multi-month season, and they do this every year) yet they’re also pretending they can’t afford to pay grooms and/or trainers properly.
As with any industry, the trainers at the very top do just fine financially, and all the other trainers are scrabbling by as a way to stay in an industry they love. I just wish the industry loved them back.
Re: You can't weave a safety net while death-gripping the trapeze.
Re: You can't weave a safety net while death-gripping the trapeze.
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LW, that's a choice she made, and likely one she's made over and over. You can judge her for it all you like, but that doesn't change the thirty years she had of doing a job she loved.
The jokes about the lottery aren't an actual plan, I promise, they are her acknowledging that her elder years aren't going to be easy and she might need to start thinking further ahead and she's not sure how. It sounds like it might actually be a good time for you and your husband to discuss what kind of support you'd be willing to give her, and also have a discussion about it with her.
But that said! She's only in her fifties, she's very much not at the end of her working life, even if she might be at the end of training horses. And there are plenty of people in her situation who manage who don't have kids who can support them. She might not be able to transition into the kind of retirement that your parents will have - but she didn't have the kind of working life they did, either.
If her job was paid above the table, she should have social security, which may not be enough to move into a nice retirement community and go on cruises, but will probably be enough to not die. She will get medicare when she's old enough (which also pays for in-home care and nursing if needed - maybe not the best in-home care and nursing, but just enough) and medicaid if she needs it before then. If she truly can't work before social security age, she can get SSDI or SSI, which again, is not really enough, but it's enough to not die. If she hasn't been paying in to social security because she was paid under the table, what people in her situation generally do, at about her age, is transition to a less active job that suits their health level. Ten years working as a receptionist or office manager or something like that, starting age 60, is enough that she will have social security by the time she's seventy. (It's also likely that she's worked at least a few jobs here and there in her life that did pay in social security, so she may not be starting from scratch.) (It's also quite likely that a lot of her comments recently are about knowing she's going to have to finally quit working directly with horses and get one of those other jobs, and wanting to put it off - she's surely watched coworkers have to go through that transition.)
Likely as part of the horse people community she has a lot of connections among the people she works with and for, which could both help her get a sit-down job if she needs one, and also be people who are willing to do things like drive her to a doctor's appointment and stop in when she's sick, if her kids aren't up to it.
That said - you and your husband may not want to see her eke it out on $750 a month benefits sharing a two-bedroom rental with three other seniors, doing odd jobs, and using every community support and safety net she can find to get by, and if that's the case, you and your husband can discuss what kind of help you'd be willing to provide. But honestly, the sort of person who spent her working life as a horse trainer might actually prefer the shared rental and part-time church secretary job and community support to a shiny and sanitized "retirement community" full of rich people she doesn't know and doesn't like.
(Also wtf, "facilitating contact with grandkids"? You parents honestly have a lot more right to expect a few drives to the doctor's office, which is frankly basic human kindness to anyone, than they do to you "facilitating" them grandkids.)
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