My comments on a may 2011 article on u.s. adults largely reliant on parents through their lifetimes
I apologize for the lack of a link, but I'm hoping you'll b able to google for it. (forbes)
In my life experience the situation is far more profound and serious then what the Forbes article claims.
If you include things like parents who paid their child's way through college, give them trust funds ,inheritances such as free houses , cars, vacations at least once a year, then I only know one American adult who has been able to support himself without any help from family! (or government programs.) He is 52 and has worked 20 years as doctor of engineering!
of the reasons why parents are supporting their children throughout the lifespan is because the housing costs are outrageous, wages inefficent; but one of the biggest is love and because they feel they can afford to.
Given the fact that both my adopted family and my biological family have and had the financial means to keep me from falling homeless in 1994 and chose not to, absolutely makes me bitter!
The fact that Emanuel*, my friend in Indiana was handed a quarter of a million dollars in cash from his elderly father , chose not to give me one penny of it even though Emanuel "adopted" me as his sister! How cruel! I haven't seen him since.
I ve been left out of all of the wills.
Mommy dearest stole every penny of what I had in my account throughout my entire childhood which could have easily been tens of thousands of dollars when you look at the fact that some of my relatives likely gave me birthday and Christmas money annually. (mother told me to never spend any gift money but to put it into an account and I know realize she used it all up on mink furs and the like.
you already know that my parents forbade me from going to college when I told them at 19 that this was what I desperately wanted.
I actually know a woman my age who from the time she was 16 years old her father has literally bought her a brand new car every two years. (and her husband is a millionaire)
I know another man 3 years younger than me whose parents just bought him a upscale home in a suburb of Ohio. They give him a huge monthly subsidy in addition to the disability money that he gets, pay for all his bills and pay for him to be included in posh vacations and cruises multiple times a year.
Laura* is my age she also lives exactly like this and does not have to work.
Lena is 32, high functioning autistic has been in college for 14 years. The average annual tuition is approximately what you would pay as an out of state resident forYale or Harvard. She goes on vacation three times of the year fully funded by her parents and they are international vacations. Her average monthly spending money is likely thousands.
I know dozens and dozens and dozens of people who do not need to work and will never know the pressure of having to come up with the rent, etc. pay their own rent or their own mortgage, need I go on?
And lastly, Daniel is 66, lives in the same house since he was 6, has his disability money, part time deli job money, free house, free cars from his brother, and bi annual expensive vacations provided by the woman he knocked up 24 years ago who is very well to do but lives in another state.
My last vacation was 22 years ago I have not had a safe non-toxic place to live until about a year ago.
I do not know of anyone who is middle class!
I can't really explain this but even when I knew that I was going to go to college ;despite mother forbidding it, it never crossed my mind to ask a single family member a single penny. (I paid for my entire college education, with exception of some student loans for housing costs.)
I don't think most Americans have a self sufficient mindset in the least.
I've been on other internet forums where the question was asked: do you know anyone who is rich but wasn't born rich? The answer is always a big fat no!
