I’ve to run out now so don’t have a lot of time, but it’s something that’s got me thinking, even though my parents are still relatively young, within the next few years we’re going to have to sit down and discuss what their plans are for retirement and look at their finances.
Breaks my heart to see the old lady in the story with four children, and none want anything to do with her. However, that isn’t uncommon in Taiwan now is it? With “filial piety” and Confucian values drilled into every child’s head, I hear stories like this all the time. I think much has to do with parenting decades ago where the son was spoiled, girls weren’t treated as equally as the boys, so a lot of resentment in adulthood led girls to leave their widow parents to fend for themselves. The sons never had to work hard for anything, so grew up never having to think for themselves or work very hard. Et cetera et cetera, you know the drill.
Yes, it’s very sad. And all too common. I do hope some of the Fcom crowd who think Taiwan is stuck in some never evolving social system read this.
However, I disagree with the law to punish such children with jail time. As there are plenty of negligent and abusive parents who don’t deserve to be supported. A good friend is in this situation. Her father left her when she was little, taking all the family money, and then came back years later, only to do the same thing. My friend and her mother then clawed their way back to some level of comfort, attaining a nice apartment along the way. A few years ago the asshole shows up again, trying to make sure he gets a cut of the apartment should the mother die soon (as she is very ill). Also he took my friend to court to force her to pay him a monthly allowance from her salary. She has tried to take this to court to essentially get approval to “abandon” her father (as the law now allows) but it is very difficult. The dinosaurs still roam the halls of justice in Taiwan.
What probably happened is she gave away the family money to the elder daughter and the druggie son while giving nothing to the other two. She could also have abused them or neglected the daughters when they were younger, notably they don’t have an education. This kind of shit is really common here. Many daughters were given away to other families.
The woman in this story could hardly afford the Western notion of a nursing home. I was taking a ferry yesterday near where I live and was eavesdropping on a conversation three 40-something guys were having about their parents’ medical conditions/care facilities (as we were waiting for the ferry to dock).
One was complaining about the quality of assisted living within the old folks home which costs $US3000 or 90,000NT a month. Said the nurses didn’t even bother to learn names, that it was often Zoo-like conditions. Family is the best support network–sad that some Chinese are neglecting this obligation.
There’s already a lot of nursing homes. You see them everywhere in Changhua. Then there are the (il)legal Indonesian caretakers. My FiL’s brother has one.
That said, from personal family experience, I say let them rot. I tend to dislike anecdotes due to the one-sided heart-string pulling nature of the damn things. Old people can be a pain to explain or do anything with. There was a great article about how a woman just wanted her father to die. I wish I had the link. The shame is they never planned out there retirement, acted badly and just happened to live too damn long. Both of my parents can claim 2 out of 3 of those. They’ll also be seeing little in the way of help from me.
Old people problem is just going to get worse as time goes on for awhile. You sometimes get stories of pensioners in the UK burning books to stay warm in winter in the UK papers.
It may not be a bad idea to buy a long-term assisted living insurance policy if it’s possible to get a fixed plan. From what I’ve heard, they start raising the rates on you when you get into your 50s and 60s. Then again, I don’t even know if these policies exist in Taiwan.
Nevertheless, if some families around here stopped giving so much money to their grown children, they could afford a higher standard of living later in life.
Punishing a child with jail time for a moral obligation isn’t the solution. Maybe there should be a mandatory course on Retirement & Finances 201 for people when they reach 55! I know many women who, after their children have grown up, think of themselves as useless and can’t do anything and are just waiting to get old and live with their children and take care of grandchildren. There is no independence in the senior citizen crowd. They mope around criticizing things their children do, choices their children make, insulting their spouses and grandchildren, are not proactive in seeking out hobbies and interests, complain how old they are (anything younger than 75 is young now), following blindly what the news is spouting off. It’s insane to witness. It’s really naive to expect your children to care for you when you’re old and they have families of their own to take care of. You should know your children’s personalities to know what to expect of them in your old age. :eh:
It’s a never ending cycle, but the current generation should be smarter to not expect anything from their kids when they get old. I always believe to go in with low expectations, but there’s a chance I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
It’s a never ending cycle, but the current generation should be smarter to not expect anything from their kids when they get old. I always believe to go in with low expectations, but there’s a chance I’ll be pleasantly surprised. [/quote]
I agree 914, but as a Chinese that has lived large chunks of your life in Vancouver and Frisco, you have developed Western sensibilities. Traditional Chinese, my wife included as one of these, often still expect their kids to provide money/support in old age in addition to public, private and RRSP pension plans! She clings onto these Chinese traits even outside of China or Taiwan. Over 5000 years of glorious history to reprogram.
My wife is probably older than most of the wives of my friends here, and certainly older than 914. She is I think of one of the first generations of Chinese to be caught between old and current new ideas. Her folks, we joke, are basically of Ching Dynasty culture, and while she understands their culture, she is of the more modern thinking, the first generation off the farm. My wife has always maintained that she does not want to be a burdon to our boy when we are older, and she is doing all that she can now to make sure that she and i do not need help from our boy. At the same time, she tries her best to treat her parents the way that they expect and want to be treated in their old age.
Traditional relationships between adults and their parents can be pretty stifling, no doubt about it. I also find it pretty shocking sometimes when I see how much is put into the kids here and then how much is expected of them when their parents need to retire with little saved. However, I think a lot of westerners in east Asia ignore the fact that retirement saving options that include low-risk inflation hedging are a very new thing in this part of the world, and even now are not really available to most at a reasonable cost.
In the west, many have come to take it for granted that they will have some sort of state or employer-provided pension, or lacking that, have gotten used to the fact that we have relatively low cost equity and fixed-income investments that cover the full spectrum of risk. The availability of AAA ( or close to it) government debt to put in your retirment portfolio is taken for granted, and can now be bought in inflation-protected flavours. Low-cost, diversified equity investments are easily available to anyone who is willing to do some very basic reading on what to buy and how to hold it.
Developing and middle income countries still do not enjoy these choices; they are lucky if they have financial markets that are transparent and cheap enough transaction-wise to do ANY long-term investing. The average Taiwanese doesn’t exactly think of it in these terms, but these factors dictate how they save, and how they plan to retire. If the family relationship is good, relying on your children for part of your day to day retirement expenses in exchange for a bit of child care is a pretty good inflation hedge. If interest rates and/or return on equity in the US and other developed countries remain at present levels for a long period, we may see a bit of a change in the way we think about all of this.
On that note, it astounds me how so many younger people have to support their parents pretty much straight out of university. I have a friend who’s 26 and making around 40,000/month (because he works his ass off) but he never has any of that to show - 10,000 goes to uni loans, then he has to give mum some money because mum quit her job and doesn’t work and then he has to pay to keep the household running. He works 7 days a week, usually from 9am through to 11pm with a couple of breaks in between.
And it’s ridiculous. If she bothered to get a job (she’s still young enough) he could save some money, maybe develop his career a little bit and find a better job. He teaches mostly 1 on 1 guitar lessons but could earn a lot more if he could get into small classes - but he’d need to take time off to arrange and develop the classes and he can’t do that because mum wouldn’t survive. I haven’t seen the poor guy go out in forever.
I’ve got quite a few friends in similar situation. Their twenties should be the time when they’re trying out things, making connections and gaining the experience you need to make serious money in your thirties, but instead they’re spending them trapped in mostly dead-end jobs that they’re going to do forever… because 50-year-old mum and dad decide ‘Hey, you’re out of uni, time for you to pay me back!’ Most of the time if they waited and let the kid get established it would probably be better for all involved, but oh well. :loco:
Tons and tons of short term thinking is the problem.
Also, one poster suggested some sort of financial education for people at the age of 55. That’s too late. That’s far too late. I actually think financial education should be taught in school. I don’t mean the two weeks on simple and compound interest in year nine mathematics. I mean that it should be a major subject taught all the way through school. It wouldn’t entirely mitigate against human stupidity, but it would go a long way. I’d put financial literacy third only after literacy (first) and numeracy (second) in what should be taught in school, yet it receives little to no attention. I intend to make financial education one of the most important things I teach my children.
As for the woman in that article, I suspect she was a really bad mother. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. People get unlucky and end up with deadbeat kids despite their best efforts, but I think luck plays a very, very minor role in people’s lives.
Chewy: My grandfather did various jobs in his life, but primarily worked as a policeman (I think he only ever got to the rank of sergeant). My grandmother typed for a while, babysat for a while, and ran a milk bar for a while, but largely didn’t work. My grandfather died some seventeen or eighteen years before my grandmother. She got dementia and ended up in a nursing home (one of the best in our state, appartently). My grandfather had been prudent enough with money in his lifetime that my grandmother was financially secure until the day of her death. Even after her death, there were several hundred thousand dollars left over for my father and his brother.
Women live longer than men, on average, and my wife is also younger than me. I intend to provide for my wife as my grandfather provided for his. Like my grandfather, I won’t expect my children to take care of their mother. Failure to prepare is preparation for failure.
This is the way it worked for their generation because at that time families had far more children so the burden was shared and the rising economy meant that the younger generation could almost bank on making better money than their parents. Now the asset rich are the older generation, there are fewer young people to share the burden and wages haven’t kept up with inflation. But the older generation think, I did it for my parents and I raised you so now it’s your turn.
It’s up to the younger generation to explain in no uncertain terms that the world has changed and it’s not possible to do things the same way anymore. My wife was also asked to do something similar, she had to explain very clearly how her parents were actually far better off than her (she was living away from home in Taipei) and that she needed the money for her own living expenses and to look after her own family. A lot of the older generation just plan on becoming glorified babysitters by the time they are 50+, conveniently forgetting they could live for another 50 years!
HH: Indeed. Some are responsible though. My father-in-law will retire (his wife doesn’t work) within the next few years and he’ll fund that himself. He’s done various things in his life, but for the past decade, I think, he’s driven a blue truck. He’s not a high-flyer by any stretch of the imagination.
