My parents are in their late 50s and came to visit my wife and I over christmas. My mother no longer works, due to legitimate medical issues and my father has been a salesman for 30 years. Straight commission, so if he has a couple bad months, they get really behind.
My wife and I are early 30s and live 2000+ miles away from my parents. We both have good jobs, due to attending college, which we both paid for fully with no help from any parents. We also purchased our first home this year, also with no assistance.
Growing up, I always heard that my paternal grandparents had a lot of money. My grandmother was super cheap, but they always paid cash for houses, cars, and RVs and supposedly had money invested. They are now in their late 80s and have been retired for 25+ years, so that money (besides the house and RV) is supposedly dwindling quickly.
We found out about 6 years ago that, because my father has been 1099 for 30 years, he owed more than 100K in back taxes. To deal with this, he convinced my mom to cash out her small 401K (about 60K) and throw it towards their tax bill, leaving it at 50K owed. She did it and then had a stroke about two years later, which left her unable to work and she was unable to build up her retirement again.
Anyway, during their visit, my wife asked my father when he plans on retiring. His answer was "I'll have to work until I die." Wrong answer. We just watched my mother lose her ability to work in a second with no warning. Later in the visit, we saw a baby and his father at a park and were making comments about how it's funny that we all started as babies and my father said, "That's how it works, you take care of your kids and then they take care of you."
He has no money saved for retirement, any hope of some windfall from his parents is gone, and he sees us doing well. I love my parents, but a large part of us having a good relationship is me ignoring some onerous political and religious opinions that they have. I feel like my wife and I have brought ourselves out of poverty and are just starting to do well financially after a lifetime of bad examples. For him to drop those comments on us really scares me. We do have extra space here at our house, but "we have fallen on hard times, can we move in?" is not an option.
What would be the best way to get out in front of this? I have heard of long-term care insurance, but I think my father is prohibited from some insurances because of his tax liabilities.
I do have a sibling, but it is not possible for her to help my parents in any way.
I can answer any questions that might help clarify the situation.
tl;dr I think my father hopes that my wife and I will be his retirement plan. That cannot happen.
Submitted January 02, 2017 at 01:45PM by BP619 http://ift.tt/2hKQEbr
