My Baby Boomer Parent is Poor

I have a ticking time bomb in my family, and it’s ticking in the background of every financial and life decision I make.

Namely, I have a baby boomer parent who has absolutely nothing saved for retirement. In fact, they're loaded with debt. That includes student loans and who knows what else. I don't have a full picture of how bad the situation is, but I don't really need it. It's bad.

And I don't know what to do about it. I keep hoping for some miracle to arrive to salvage the situation, but that's looking increasingly unlikely. The last set of potential miracles have to do with inheritances from a very elderly relative, but even then it's a long shot, and whatever inheritance there is might not cover them for any more than a decade or so.

The trouble with relying on inheritances is that they can vanish quickly due to medical costs. A person may have assets, and then suddenly they don’t any more due to the high costs of end-of-life care. Additionally, my parent has proven that they aren't especially good with money, and I don't exactly see why that would change with an inheritance.

The most likely solution is that my sibling and I will have to subsidize this parent. We're both working and earning decent middle class incomes. But adding in another recurring expense isn't something I'm relishing exactly, and it will absolutely jeopardize other life goals that I/we have.

We're Probably Not Alone in This

I think there are a lot of us millennials who are facing similar realities. It's funny: there's a lot of worry about how it's hard for young people to afford housing in modern America, but it's also true for those entering retirement age without any real assets or income streams. If you got into a home in the 70's or 80's and held onto it, you're probably sitting pretty, but if you didn't or uprooted yourself as my family often did, you might be facing serious hardship to afford housing.

Add in the fact that we millennials are behind other generations in terms of wealth due to various factors, and a poor parent becomes another financial stressor.

Potential Strife in the Family

But it is more than financial. It’s a relationship stressor. It’s the kind of thing that leads to resentment.

For example, I don't think my parent could stay where they currently live because it's just too expensive. But then where to go? And who gets to decide? And what if they refuse? And the parent lives near my sibling now, but after a move they’d have to be substantially further away due to COL issues. I don’t want them to feel banished in any way, but how can we afford the current location? It's an overwhelming series of questions, frankly, and none of the answers are likely to make anyone happy.

Naturally, this is also a potential recipe for marital strife. If one spouse wants to subsidize their parent, but the other doesn't, then who wins in that scenario? Or does everyone lose? Luckily for us (ha ha) we each have one parent who will likely be in a similar situation.

Because we're abroad, we're spared in some sense from the immediacy of the challenge, but we're also limited in the help we can offer. I can't just run over and repair something or move something. I do a fair amount of tech support over chat or FaceTime, when I could more easily just fix those problems myself were I there in person.

This naturally puts a lot of pressure on my sibling back home, and I recognize how unfair it is. However, because of my strange career, I'd be less financially helpful if I dropped everything and moved back. When I followed my current career, I couldn’t see the future and plot just how little the parent's financial situation would improve. Had I, I might have done something different. I love this person. I do not want them to suffer.

Self Sacrifice Within Limits

With that I have to say: I still have my life to live, and I don't want the latter half of my life primarily dictated by subsidizing a parent.

To sum up, this is one of those known/unknowns in my life. How bad will this be, and when will the hammer fall? I could find out any day now.

Please forgive my vague pronouns. I'm trying to maintain anonymity for myself and everyone around me while discussing this stuff, so I try to be as precise as possible about the situation and as vague as possible about the identities.