I’ve seen everything from parents buying adult children a house to adult children subsidizing their low-income parents in retirement. Bogleheads status unknown in most cases.I'm curious what the story behind "finally" is.My 22 year old daughter finally landed a job. It doesn't pay much but does offer a Roth 401k. Does anyone here choose to have their child max out their 401k to the extent possible and then gift them the money to offset or do you stay out of it and just give annually to their after tax account and have them contribute to a Roth IRA?
Bogleheads seem to have established that even jobs with six-figure incomes now constitute "don't pay much" so you might want to specify.
The phrases "choose to have their child" and "have them contribute" screams "controlling" to me.
I'll guess that most people outside of Bogleheads don't give their grown kids money.
Barring a significant inheritance at a young age, Bogleheads have to be savers in order to have money to invest. But you don’t have to subscribe to the Boglehead investing philosophy to be a serious saver. My parents and in-laws ended up with significant savings without the benefit of low-cost index funds.
As to the OP’s question, we’ve been subsidizing our kids’ Roths since they were teenagers and first had earned income. Back then, we made the deposits directly into their IRAs. Today, we gift them funds to compensate for a portion of their retirement deposits. No difference that I can see in terms of what they have available to spend. Now if I didn’t trust that my kids were putting money in their retirement accounts, that would be different.
Statistics: Posted by delamer — Sat Sep 06, 2025 10:50 am — Replies 9 — Views 471