You have to realize American culture and society is one based on greed and selfishness. We're bombarded with the philosophy that we should all be Rugged Individualists, or Got Mine, F@#k You. The Powers That Be think everything is transactional, and everything should have a monetary cost. Selfishness is a virtue, kindness is weakness, and empathy is for women and the weak. So, dump grandma in a nursing home with employees being paid $10 an hour, and go live your best life! YOLO!

That said, not all Americans are this, or believe these things, at least no consciously. But it's all pervading in our culture.

There's no one right answer. It totally depends on you, your parents, and your dynamic. Did/do your parents treat you like shit? Did they blow through their all of their retirement money in 5 years? Are they in a 800k empty house but refuse to downsize for no good reason?

It really should be contextual. Every family is different, and each familial relationship is different.

I've heard him say children don't owe their parents money just because they're their parents, and I'd agree with that statement. The parents are the ones who decide to have the baby, how to raise them, etc, so i think it's wrong if parents think they're entitled to their children's money.

But that doesn't mean a child should never help their parents out financially. Morally, if you love your parents and can swing it, I think the right thing to do is help your parents if they need it. But there's a big difference between asking a child to help and feeling entitled to a child's help.

No most Americans do end up supporting their parents. On the other hand, I think most Americans would agree that their parents don’t deserve financial support merely for being their parents. You support your family because you like them and not because it’s a requirement.

Also, I think a lot of younger people begrudge their parents for not handling their own financials better, especially as the younger generations see how much harder some things are than they used to be.

For example, my in-laws collectively make over 6 figures and inherited a house decades ago that’s worth almost a million dollars due to housing inflation. They absolutely could have a reasonable retirement plan, but they don’t. They spend money as fast as they get it and won’t be passing their house down like their parents did because they have multiple large loans against the house. They use this money to go on vacations every other month and own more vehicles than they really need. They also mentioned to me recently that they would like it if we could try to buy a house with extra rooms for when they get old and need to be taken care of.

I’m not going to let my wife’s parents be homeless when they inevitably can’t work, but I do find it somewhat infuriating that their lack of planning is going to cost me potentially a huge amount of money.

Last, just to add more confusion to this, there are a number of US states which have familial responsibility laws. These laws mean that you can be found legally liable for certain debts accumulated by your parents. This is the exception rather than the norm but it does demonstrate that Americans aren’t actually as independent as they would have you believe.

Middle, upper-middle, and upper class=wealth flows down.

If you're poor, and sometimes just not white, wealth flows where it's needed. Coworkers were very confused why I'm trying to save money to help my parents -- who do and have always rented -- when they're too old to work.

Like they literally struggled to wrap their minds around the idea that a) not only can my parents not afford to retire, b) they can't afford care when they can no longer work, c) they currently take care of my grandma who is in that position right now, d) I don't, haven't, and won't be receiving some sort of windfall in the form of property or money when they die, e) the best off of me and my siblings are who tries to help out financially for the siblings that are having tougher times, not our parents.

They looked at me like I had grown a second head, but I work around almost exclusively upper middle class white people.

Dave Ramsey is typical right-wing evangelical cult leader, but instead of dipping directly into religion, he is a conservative financial coach. He’s the human manifestation of “stop eating avocado toast” and “get a third job.” He has fired employees for being gay, being pregnant, being non-Christian, and for having premarital sex. He forced his employees to remain in office during the pandemic.

So it should be no surprise that his advice involves becoming a selfish, heartless jackass. He wants his working class followers to be good boot lickers who are self-sufficient and satisfied with their economic ceiling, and not believe in the potential for progress that would benefit society but may be detrimental to grifters like himself. That means his followers need every one of their hard-earned pennies to pay their bills and grow their nest egg, rather than waste any bits on generosity or compassion.

TLDR: If you’re poor and you support mom, you might become too poor to perceive success from Ramsey’s advice. That’s what it comes down to. Fuck him.

Australian millennial here: most parents are richer than us and will continue to be until they pass

Don't listen to that right-wing idiot Dave Ramsey. He says stupid shit all the time, like never ever go into debt for anything ever, which is just unrealistic.

For example, according to him it's preferable for you to get a 500$ clunker that you will undoubtedly have to continuously repair over a reasonably priced reliable used car that you take a small loan out for. There's a middle ground with debt, even credit cards.

It depends. My mom wanted to break even when she died. Not leave us money, and not cost us money, but did rely on my sister to help out, not financially much but with some care. I sent maybe $500 total towards that, so pretty close to what she wanted.

Husband's parents are loaded, but if his mom needed care I'd help because she has been so nice to me, I was not close with my mom but have been lucky in mothers in law. I don't expect anything from them, think their plan is to skip us and leave some to the grandkids, but in any case they are rich-ish and do not expect anything in the way of financial help.

I took time off to raise my kids, so don't expect to retire but no, I would hope to not need financial help and don't expect it from them. It's a win if they don't need any financial help from me!

In your case, if your parents sacrificed their future income to raise you, I understand why you feel you owe them, but I don't really think that way, you don't accrue debt for being raised. It's more like whoever ends up best off helps the others, so my most successful daughter wants to be "the rich uncle" who can do that, she helps out her sisters, and my hope is like my mom's - to not burden them and to die with close to nothing.

Americans are not a monolith, but instead all over the place with regard to a cultural practice like care for the elderly. If you had to summarize it might be fair to say that there is more of a sense of freedom from obligation to care for elders than in some other places, which is also driven by the baby boomer generation being so entitled and the current younger generations encountering ever worsening economic prospects which the boomers are stereotypically blind and unsympathetic towards. Also, there is a greater recognition of abuse and sometimes that leads to the recognition that ones elders have been abusive and therefore can go fuck themselves.

You are basing so much on a YouTube video.

Jeez this is a good reminder of how people get influenced by media.

Finance Bros are not normal people. They tend to be pretty sociopathic.

In America, the older folks tend to have more money than the younger folks. So culturally speaking, we don't really think to send money to our elders.

The first way is pensions used to be common, so older folks get that. There are also retirement accounts that people would pay into their whole working life. (These are very commonly offered and are pretty set and forget.) Cost of living used to be a lot lower too, so they also had greater opportunity to save up as they aged.

Another way is that established people tend not to have to spend as much money. If you live in your own house and have for a while, your home goods are typically handled and you only need to replenish as needed. (I'm talking things like furniture, small fixtures... Stuff that would be a pain to move or replace if you are not as established.)

Also in the United States, current working age people pay into social security, which older folks can draw from. (There are rules and exceptions, but for the most part, this is how it works.)

So here, the older folks are in a better financial position overall. (There are of course exceptions, and with their advanced age it is harder to dig themselves out.

For myself, I am doing well. But even though I'm ahead of many of my peers, I'm still not doing as well as my parents when they were my age. The cost of my schooling was much higher than that of someone that graduated 30, 20, even 10 years before me. (But it did allow me to get a very good job.) The cost of living rose quite a bit higher than wages, so I wasn't able to save and invest like they did. I've had to take on second jobs to pay for healthcare. (My parents did not have to.)

I might be a bit biased though, because I was also told I would get no financial help from my parents after I became an adult. I would be far more inclined to help if they invested in my education, which would have made me be way more far ahead financially.

However, I do help my mom when I can. I visit. I help her fix things. I don't help her financially though.

The main thing rubbing me wrong is forcing to support the parents - parents decide to have a child, so they do owe the child support during its live. The child didn't have a choice in this, and therefore owes the parents nothing. Now if the parents were decent people there's a high chance the kids want to help out because of that - and that's a perfectly good thing to do. But there should not be a forced obligation by society.

Completely depends on if your parents are in your life, if they're good people and treat you with love and respect.

Also depends on your parents financial status, as well as your financial status.

Most people my age (Millenial) are not as well off as our parents so it wouldn't make sense to support them.

There is no single answer to your question other than "it depends"

Ramsey has some views that don't align with everyone. The important thing to keep in mind is that America is so diverse, your neighbor could be a different religion and most of us (despite what media will lead you to belive) don't give a fuck.

If I were to re-work the advice to be less extreme, I'd say don't put your self in a finacial struggle trying to help your parents.

You went off to a different country and things are much different.

In the US, generally, parents by retirement age have paid for their homes by then, have retired with benefits from their employer that will give them some money every month, have social security that also pays them every month (both of these are taken out of each paycheck throughout their career lives) and don't have many bills.

So by the time they're old, if they were responsible and held ok jobs, they should need money less than you need it. Our US system is basically set up to make you work hard for 40 ish years and then you're taken care of when you're old, for the most part. If your parents need money and you have money to give, there's nothing wrong or against it. It's still a common thing. But ideally, doing that shouldn't be needed.

I’ve seen clip of that financial advice show “The Ramsey show” on YouTube and the things that old man say are shocking to me. According to him I shouldn’t give a single cent to my parents…

A youtuber that is being a narcissistic, uncompassionated asshole? I'm shocked, shocked!

Well, not that shocked.

First of all, Ramsey is an asshole. Second, the kind of USAmericans that do this are the ones that have bought the American Individualism^TM^ propaganda.

Yeah don't listen to Dave Ramsey. I remember hearing him speak on TV as a kid and something just felt off about him, but not quite as bad as Suze Orman.

I don't think he's a scammer, and some of the stuff he says is perfectly sensible and useful, but he (a boomer) also gives advice that isn't how he got rich, to millennials and co, who will never ever get rich following it. Structurally that makes him pretty out of touch, and suggests anyone who listens to him should do so critically.

That's putting aside that he's also kind of just telling people to do capitalism harder, and everything that comes with that.

In the UK unless your parents are particularly poor it is not that common to support them.

We have a socialised pension that most should be able to live on. And most people have private or government pensions as well.

Some things are common within a culture, but even in places where most people are inclined to help their aging parents, like various countries in Asia, there are still children who reasonably choose not to do so. Cultural tendencies are simply that, tendencies. If your country doesn't have a law requiring you to provide support, it's because lawmakers know that in some situations it might be reasonable not to do so.

Did you notice how you wrote that you would be seen as downright evil, but you didn't say by who? I feel like that's something you ought to consider more carefully.

You gave an example of sending your father money, but you haven't seen him for 17 years. This raises many more questions. Does he need your money? Is your money helping? If you found out that he didn't need your money and it's not helping, would you stop sending it? Are you sending the money to make yourself feel good, even though it's not helping him? How do you think he would feel if you found out you were sending him money even though you're jobless?

Finally, you used the word "unnatural" knowing that it's just not true. That was certainly an antagonistic approach to the issue. Is that what you intended? Was it accidental? If it was accidental, what word did you actually mean instead?

I'm American and I haven't given a penny to my folks. If they needed financial help, of course I'd help them out, but they don't need my money. By the same token, I've told them several times that I don't want an inheritance. I'd rather they enjoy their money while they're alive.

Speaking as someone in the upper middle class and barring any catastrophe, I think it's poor planning on the parents' part to have to be reliant on financial support from their adult child. I understand it's not that way for everyone, but in our case, my parents worked for the State. They had good benefits including a very generous pension, plus they both receive social security. If they needed my help financially it would mean they'd been really irresponsible with their money.

I do help them in other ways - e.g., moving heavy furniture that they can no longer lift, or being there to help my mom when my dad had surgery. They know that I'm there if they need me. Maybe in our case that's what matters more than giving them actual money.

I would be seen as downright evil if I do that.

Being downright evil is the secret ingredient to becoming rich. It doesn't work for everyone, but all the richest people are evil.

It is a sound financial advice, but also a morally terrible one. It's your call which of these is more important to you.

I'm not American, but in my culture it is not that deep rooted, that you have to care for your parents.
Maybe because we have a public pension system. But when the pension is not enough and a person has to relay on social security authorities will check the income of all direct relatives. Depending on your income you are obligated to support your kids and parents.

I think it's a north American thing. In a lot of cultures around the world you are expected to take care of your parents, either financially or in terms of letting them live with you. Because... You know... They took care of you when you needed it the most?

Are you really Americans like that?

No, not really.

European here, if my parents needed assistance I'd do my best to help them 100%. But that's because they're my parents, they can be thrifty, I know they're not gambling addicts or spending it all on booze etc. Having to ask (not outright, but no longer strongly refusing my help or no longer dumping money on us at every opportunity to avoid inheritance taxes) would be an indicator that they're already pretty desperate.

Lots of people aren't as lucky regarding their parents.

I've never heard of the show that was referenced. I know many Americans that have financially supported their elder parents. Basically the quality of care that their parents receive is based on how much the adult children can afford.

I feel like some American seniors have more money than their adult children, and the children expect to receive an inheritance once their parents die.

If someone has reasons for not financially supporting their parents, like a deeply strained relationship due to past trauma caused by the parent, I suppose I could understand that.

But America is a big country. I'm sure there are assholes that tell their 90 year old parent to get a job when they could afford to help. But I feel like most Americans would recognize this as cruel.

Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and can't afford to give much.

I think it's lazy advice to tell people they can save money by not giving their family financial assistance.