“There is NOTHING wrong in your parents seeing you as their retirement plan. And some of you had better not forget the homes you came from, just for twitter banter. Don’t get carried away. They sacrificed everything for your success. You are their retirement plan.”
The above was the tweet posted by Japheth Omojuwa on his Twitter account sometime this February and as expected, it set off a lot of discussions on an issue many are afraid to talk about, consider or confront. The comments under the tweet which went viral were very revealing, educative, entertaining, practical, troubling, and sad and they raised several issues.
Suffice to say that people were divided on the subject. Some recounted all their parents’ troubles over them and affirmed the tweet, others quoting scripture stated it was the parent’s duty to lay up treasure for their children and that life was hard enough as it was, not to think of caring for one’s aged parents. Some said as a matter of fact, that they didn’t have any sense of financial or moral responsibility to parents who didn’t care for them or who had abused them physically or emotionally when they were young.
I found very enlightening a comment that found it to be ironic that parents who expected their children to be their retirement plan had failed at personal responsibility having lectured them about their generation having a sense of entitlement.
I must say that although most of the people that commented fell into the age range of 16 years – mid 30s, a reasonable number of them agreed with the tweet out of a sense of duty and obligation. Though many wished they wouldn’t have to, they reluctantly affirmed that they would undertake the cost of caring for their parents if they had no choice.
The responses, however, drove home the point, that our children and those younger than us do not have the orientation that we were brought up with.
For most of us in our 40s and above, we grew up with our grandparents living with us except for those who were fiercely independent and stayed in their own homes. We grew up with the understanding ingrained in us by seeing what our parents did for their parents that we owed our parents the duty to take care of them in their old age. We grew up counting it a privilege to be able to repay our parents for the sacrifices they made for us. It was a sacrosanct duty and not a choice, reinforced by the statements they made, the examples they gave, the stories they told. The alternative was an unthinkable aberration. As far as we are concerned, taking care of one’s parents in old age even though they may be financially stable was a service worthy of a blessing from God.
Most of us are now in our parents’ shoes; we are in the phase of the cycle of life known as the “sandwich phase” wherein, we are sandwiched between two different generations – our children and our parents, to whom we owe a duty of care. We can better appreciate the struggles our parents faced and the balancing acts they performed to fulfill their roles to us and their parents simultaneously. Most of us now understand how difficult it is to make a living, cater for our needs and that of our growing children and aging parents and still put aside something for our retirement.
However, even in our times, we are seeing a shift from the normal that we grew up with. I know people that are considering putting their parents in a retirement home either because they are sick and need professional care, they do not get along with them or their spouses or because they believe they will thrive better when they are in the company of people their age rather than sit lonely and idle when all occupants of the home go to their various work places or school.
The truth is that the dynamics of family life has changed as families are now spread all over the world and it is becoming common place to find parents who live with non -family members such as nurses and professional caregivers because gone are the days when relatives abounded in surplus in the hintherlands and were readily available to look after our aged parents.
Most of us are our parents’ retirement plan and we are undertaking the financial burdens of ensuring that they live out their lives in comfort with grace.
A lot of things are pointing to the fact that we will mostly be responsible for our own wellbeing in old age and it will be foolhardy to ignore the signs of the times. For the most part, our children are a lot more self-aware, self-centered and if I may say, more selfish than we are or will ever be. They believe strongly in the safety advice given on the airplanes before takeoff, that oxygen should be administered to one’s self first before helping others. Their mantra is that “they cannot come and go and kill themselves,” “they didn’t ask to be born” and they don’t believe that they exist to be anyone’s cash cow for life. They expect that with all the information available to us, we should be more financially savvy than our parents and take responsibility in caring for ourselves in old age notwithstanding that many of us sacrificed our future for their present.
Also, we cannot ignore the fact that due to the worldwide economic recession, our children are more dependent on us than we were on our parents at their ages. It is common knowledge that most of us are still burdened with taking care of them even though they have finished school either because they haven’t found jobs or because their take home is barely enough to cover their needs.
Although we should invest heavily in our children’s education and wellbeing, the truth is that, we must also plan for our future. Our tastes and outlook to life are different from that of our parents, we are more independent and unwilling to live out our years at the beck and call of our children as we have our own lives to live. So, it will be a pity if we find ourselves at the mercy of our children who may not be able to provide adequately for us even if they desire to do so.
Although my children are very responsible adults, I do not intend to burden them with being totally responsible for me in my old age. Old age comes with its own challenges especially as regards one’s health. It will be unpleasant to have one’s children deplete their resources to take care of hospital bills and caregivers, etc. To that end, I have told them that all I will be totally responsible for is their first degree from the university, after the first degree, they will be responsible for whatever degree they want to pursue and I will be at liberty to decide whether or not to chip in financially.
In addition, I am putting into place measures to ensure I have an income I can live comfortably on in my old age. This includes starting a hobby I can grow into a business and that I can do from the comfort of my home; investing in education and knowledge in areas within or outside of my profession that I can practice without needing any official paraphernalia, investing in long term investments such as life and health insurance, annuities or the purchase of property popularly known as land banking, which I intend to sell at a certain age and live off the proceeds.
I remember being told a story about a rich man who wanted to sell a house of his in a choice area and when he was asked why he wasn’t going to leave it for his children he retorted wryly that all he owed them was an education and that if he didn’t sell the house, they will since they all lived abroad and will use the proceeds to buy a Ferrari which he never drove.
As caregivers, we may put the needs of our children and our parents before our own, but we need to remember how important it is to stay focused on our finances, retirement planning, and our health. The truth is that nobody, not even our children owe us anything and if we really do love them we should take care not to burden them with taking care of us. At most it should be because they want to not because they have to.