There is a lot of interesting talk going around the PF community about giving money to your parents once you are established in your career. Here are some more detailed recent posts I have read:

• Him at Make Love, Not Debt
• Mapgirl at Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge
• Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist

It seems that its ingrained in Asian culture particularly that the children will take care of the parents in retirement as appreciation for raising them. The children feel its necessary to send back what most of the comments indicate is something in the range of $200-$500 a month. This is even if the parents do not need it, or the children are on the border of poverty.

I’m third generation American and a mix of different backgrounds – Scottish, Russian, French-Canadian, Native American, among others. I would most definitely be described as Caucasian, and I grew up what would best be described as lower-middle class. My parents are still together and now they have better jobs plus my sister and I are out of the house, so they are more middle-middle class or even upper-middle class. My father is retired and my mother has about 3 more years before she can and receive all her benefits. They take 3-4 vacations a year and I would say are very comfortable financially.

My parents would never take money from me if I sent it to them. If I gave them cash on a birthday or holiday they would be disappointed that I did not put the effort into finding them a gift.

I certainly respect the importance of giving back. If my parents were worse off financially or in a bind I would have no problem helping them out. However in my family, the way we were raised they would feel embarrassed to take money from me.

I think its more of American working class culture that every generation wants their children to be better off than them. So most parents work to provide their offspring the best things they can when raising them. And once their children are grown, they want them to provide for their grandchildren more so than they provided for them so that is where the parents expect the money to be spent rather than go back to them.

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