How Much Do Your Kids Cost You?
Philadelphia PA
1985
My father is sitting at lunch
with three friends. They went to law school together and after 30 years, they
still remained good friends. They meet a
couple times a year for lunch and the conversation usually picks up right where
they left off from the last lunch.
This lunch Nick is complaining
about his daughter, his only child. “Jesus,” he complained, “she’s costing me a
fortune. And when is it ever going to end. I think she cost me about 25,000
bucks a year. And there’s no end in sight.
Jesus, Jim, you must spend a fortune with seven kids. How much do your
kids cost you?”
My father is a little baffled
by this question, “What are you talking about, our kids are adults now.”
“What”, Nick wants to know,
“You aren’t shelling out any money for them?
Is it just me. Joe, what about
you. What do your kids cost you.?”
Joe runs some numbers through
his head. “I pick up the car payments on
my daughter so that’s about $1000 a year.
And then I throw in grocery money.”
Bob confessed that he pays
rent for his one son. Nick complains
that he’s paying rent, car payment, car insurance, food and a clothing
allowance.
“Jim, you can’t tell us that
you don’t kick in something to your kids.”
“No”, he assures them. “I
don’t give them anything.”
They just can’t believe it.
The next time I see my
father, he replays this entire conversation with me, word for word, as if he
has memorized it, as if he plays it over and over in his head because it is
just too unbelievable to him.
“Let me ask you something,”
he says, “Do your friends’ parents still support them? How old are you, 34? Do your friends still
hit their parents up from money?”
I tell him, “No. I have one friend who depends on her parents. They give her money. But the rest of my friends are on their own,
just like me.”
“Good, that’s the way it
should be. You’re adults.” And with that
we went out to lunch and he let me pick up the tab.
