Meet the Exhausted Matriarchs of the 99 Percent

To say that a mother’s work is never done is to state the obvious. Your children still need you long after the days when you spoon feed them applesauce, install training wheels on their bikes, or drive them to school early on a Saturday morning to sit for a college entrance exam. The most challenging parts of your job come when your children want you to give them parenting advice, but not too much, or to stay out of their business except when they need you. The holidays are just as much stress when you have to coordinate your holiday schedule around your children’s travel arrangements; somehow, this feels like even more work than when you had to stop your toddlers from eating tinsel or keep them from climbing the walls when they were out of school for winter break. The current generation of young adults faces persistent financial uncertainty, and they often rely on their parents for financial support, whether in the form of cash transfers or rent-free living arrangements. If a woman has a retirement account and at least one child, the chances are considerable that she will co-sign for loans for her relatives or take early withdrawals from her retirement account. Of course, matriarchs in a less fortunate financial position also carry entire families, sometimes even when they are past retirement age. If you are your family’s rock, but you are so stressed about money that you can barely enjoy being a grandma, contact a Washington, D.C. estate planning lawyer.

Grandparents Are the Open-Faced Sandwich Generation

You may have heard the term “sandwich generation” in reference to middle-aged people who acted as caregivers to their minor children and their elderly parents at the same time; maybe in your younger years, you were the filling that gave the family sandwich its coherent shape. Perhaps sandwiches take their shape based on where the economic opportunities are. In many families today, the financially healthiest generation is the oldest one.

Let us consider grandparents who are the main source of financial support for their grandchildren the “open-faced sandwich generation.” In its most aspirational manifestations, this phenomenon means that the grandparents establish a trust fund for their grandchildren’s benefit. More often, though, it means that three generations live together in a house that the grandparents own, but that the middle generation could never afford to buy on their income alone. The grandparents in the toughest situation are the ones who are the sole caregivers for their grandchildren, with or without a formal foster care arrangement. Many of them stay in the workforce for as long as their health will allow, because they have no retirement savings, and it is virtually impossible for Social Security income to cover the expenses of both a senior and a child.

Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C. About Stepping Up for Your Family Indefinitely

A Washington, D.C. estate planning attorney can help you strategize about a retirement you can afford if you are a grandparent raising your grandchildren full-time.  Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C.  in Washington, D.C. or call 202-362-5900.

Source:

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