Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years—so we’re diving into the Pay Dirt archives to share classic letters with our readers. Submit your own questions about money here. (It’s anonymous!)
My parents love to travel. They are always off on one cruise or tour to another. My parents worked very hard their entire lives, so I don’t begrudge them traveling so much in their golden years. My wife, however, does.
We have one daughter and pay through the nose for private childcare. Most of my wife’s salary goes into it. We live in a high-cost area and it is something of a struggle to get by. Still, I don’t think this is my parents’ problem. But my wife constantly complains about costs and how “wasteful” my parents’ traveling is. She says that they could help pay for a nanny or even give a damn about their only granddaughter. I don’t think it is right or fair to expect that out of my parents when her own barely show any interest in our daughter unless it is to score points off each other. (Their marriage was toxic and their divorce of 20 years even worse.)
My parents are always bringing back gifts for our daughter and take her out when they visit us. I love my wife but I am afraid she is going to bring up the subject to my parents one day or another and it is going to damage their relationship permanently. I know in case of an emergency my parents would be there, but they married young and had kids young. They put in their dues. They deserve this. How do I get through to my wife?
I get your wife’s frustration with the cost of child care, and it sounds like she feels overextended, but her sense of entitlement about what your parents owe you is misplaced and selfish.
Grandparents are not de facto babysitters and they do not owe their adult children financial support. If or when they provide it, it should be viewed as a gift, not fulfillment of an obligation.
Your parents have every right to spend their retirement traveling—that’s what a lot of people save up for years to be able to do.
As for getting through to her, perhaps you can remind your wife, that eventually, you both might have grandchildren, and I imagine she wouldn’t like it very much if whatever she saved for retirement had to be used to support her grandchild’s private childcare instead. If you find that you’re paying through the nose for child care, it may be time to explore options besides a nanny, which is the most expensive option available and a very big luxury for most families. This is your problem to solve, not your parents’, and they have no obligation to financially support their grandchildren. Inasmuch as they have any obligation to their grandchildren, it’s simply to be loving grandparents, which it sounds like they are.
From: I’m Ready To Go To Court Over A Dog Attack. But No One Is On My Side. (September 15th, 2023).
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I am smart, but my husband is brilliant. We met during my postdoctoral when he was wrapping up an MD/PhD program in a different field.
He was offered an incredible job at a high-profile university, and as the trailing spouse, I was also offered a position. The university isn’t as prestigious for my field as it is for his, but it’s still significantly better and more secure than a job I would have been able to get on my own. Several years in, I’m happy here, with amazing research opportunities and a reasonable amount of service work that actually lets me research without being swamped in committees. I’m enjoying my professional collaborators and my amazing health insurance. If everything keeps going this way, we might be in the position to actually have a family and both stay in academia.
But I feel so guilty because I know I’m not qualified to be here on my own, and only got this job through my more qualified spouse. Many of my PhD and postdoc cohort friends are struggling right now and would be more qualified for this job than I am, including ones who were pushed out of academia for the industry job market. I think about it constantly, even though no one in my department has said anything. I try to give back by putting effort into teaching, which tends not to be a priority in research schools, but I think about it all the time and feel like I can’t share it with my husband. Is there anything I can do? I don’t want to quit my job but it feels like I’m a fraud here.
Even truly talented people have imposter syndrome, and it sounds like that might be true in your case. Even if we take for granted that you got the job in part because of your husband, you would not have gotten it if you were completely unqualified, and since I’m assuming you don’t have tenure, you wouldn’t keep it if you were underperforming.
What you bring to the job is up to you. If you’re concerned that you had a little bit of an advantage vis-à-vis some of your colleagues, I assure you that some of your colleagues also have advantages you don’t have and no amount of beating yourself up will remedy those inequalities. I don’t think you’re as under-qualified as you state or you’d be struggling right now, so you need to examine whether your guilt is really about distrusting your own fortunes. You should be able to talk about this to your spouse, who would probably understand better than anyone why you’re feeling the way you do.
Lastly, if you are putting effort into teaching, that’s to be celebrated by itself. It’s not rewarded in any way in research universities and sometimes faculty are punished for being too involved in teaching if they’re not producing enough on the research front. But what you do in the classroom influences future generations of people in your profession and that is incredibly valuable and important by itself.
From: I Only Got My Highly Coveted Job Because Of My Brilliant Husband. (September 15th, 2023).
My boyfriend and I are at an impasse. I own my own place and he was trying to get back on his feet after the divorce. He has two small kids. My place is small and not child-friendly. He pays no rent and half of the other bills but thinks it is completely OK for me to give up my home office for a bedroom for his kids. And pay for all the new furniture. And help with other expenses like private tutoring and sports activities.
The thing is I can only introduce myself as dad’s “friend” and we need to sleep separately when/if the kids come over. We aren’t even talking about marriage. Honestly, I think that he should give up overnight visits and stick to seeing his kids in public places. Even just picking them up and dropping them off every day seems more doable than this. However, he is a great and devoted dad. When his eyes are on me, I feel like the most special woman in the world. He has had a hard time of it. Am I wearing rose-colored glasses here?
You don’t owe your boyfriend and his kids anything. You did not agree to support them. It is your boyfriend’s responsibility to figure out how to make physical room for his children and to pay for their expenses, not yours.
It’s understandable that you’d want to help him get back on his feet, since you care about him, but part of being a great and devoted dad is taking care of your own kids, financially and otherwise. Right now he is trying to outsource an important part of that to you while offering you no real relationship with the children or guarantees of commitment. I think you just have to say no.
It’s also understandable that he wants overnight visits with his kids, but that doesn’t obligate you to host. Your place is not his place, and he should not be asking you to modify it when he’s not even paying rent. He needs to figure out how and where to see his kids, and how to pay for private tutoring and sports and other things himself. It is bizarre and inappropriate that he is asking you to help support his children when you are not their mother and have no real relationship with them. He needs to figure out how he is going to make it work, and his plan cannot be you financially supporting his kids. He should be doing that.
From: My Boyfriend Wants Me To Completely Float His Kids. But They Can’t Know We’re Together. (September 22th, 2023).
More Money Advice From Slate
My brother-in-law, “Bob,” and I have always been extremely close for the 25 years I’ve been with my husband. He is now one of our only living relatives and lives in another state. Bob’s wife died unexpectedly five years ago. He just retired recently and became an empty-nester. As a result, he’s lonely and bored. Normally he visits twice a year, we get along great, and we even take vacations together. But during his last visit at Thanksgiving, I realized Bob has become overly enamored with me.