Best way to gift to grandchildren

[catherine]

My grandson just turned 2 and I haven't given him/his parents any money on his behalf, for many reasons. First, I don't have money to give until I"m out of debt; second, they changed his name when he was a few months old, so I didn't know what his name was officially until just this morning, when I was talking with my son.

[deleted the background]

You guys know my situation, and now you know my DIL's position on it, so what advice do you have? I told my son that I could squirrel away a wad of $100 bills under the floorboards and put a sticky on it with my GS's name on it, but that's probably not a good idea either :)





Edited: After thinking about it, I simply am taking gifts off the table for the time being. He won't mind. He's only two.

[sweetana3]

Totally agree with you. Your interest is more important at this point in their lives.

[Float On]

There is nothing that says you have to give...especially when in debt. Don't let them guilt you into it.
That being said, I'm super thankful my MIL was in a position she could invest $5000 for each grandbaby at birth. By the time college came around my boys had about $40,000 each in their funds.....meanwhile DH and I have not been able to help them (bad parents who threw everything into keeping the business going and then tanked in the economy and medical expenses/downtime and pretty much lost everything).

[bae]

My mother-in-law passed away recently. She was a lifelong advocate of women's rights, and a strong force for women's educational opportunities.

She left a large chunk of her estate in trust for my daughter. To be used for education and career establishment, so that my daughter doesn't have to worry much at all about supporting herself through grad school and post-doc efforts, but can concentrate on her studies.

This was all unexpected to me, but is a gift beyond compare. My daughter basically is Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, and her educational path of adventure archeology/anthropology is unlikely to ever be able to pay back the cost of her education, and being concerned with living expenses might direct her down paths that would detract from her ability to reach her academic peak.

So now my daughter is a person of independent means, not reliant on the kindness of her parents to support her. But she also can't decide to sit on a beach drinking umbrella drinks for the rest of her life, the trust intention and guidelines are pretty clear, and my mother-in-law picked a particularly hard-nosed trustee :-)

[iris lilies]

OP, i can't even imagine why you were contemplating gifts of size for this wee one.

you have many many gifts to give and large financial ones may not be in that basket of girfts. Look how much you yourself appreciate the gifts of knowledge and wisdm from your elders! See, its not all ahout money.

[catherine]

OP, i can't even imagine why you were contemplating gifts of size for this wee one.

you have many many gifts to give and large financial ones may not be in that basket of girfts. Look how much you yourself appreciate the gifts of knowledge and wisdm from your elders! See, its not all ahout money.

You are right, and thank you for reminding me! It's not about the money.

[ctg492]

Your grandchild will love you the same gifts or not. Love is unconditional, period.

[mschrisgo2]

I gifted my grandsons with time and experiences. They all three have fond memories of sitting on the bar stools, watching me cook pancakes for them...and hunting for Easter eggs in my weed-filled garden (I let the weeds grow until after Easter, so I'd have some place to hide eggs)... and running across the grass and then the sand into the cold water at shoreline park... going to the shelters with me to pick up rescue dogs... painting the fence...laying in the grass, under a sheet to keep the mosquitoes off, to watch the 4th of July fireworks... making cookies really from scratch... jumping into the big piles of leaves, then helping rake... piling into my car to drive around and look at Christmas lights and decorations... When they talk about "being kids"* -- those are the things they mention. Along the way I have spent plenty of time with them.

I also funded Disneyland trips 3 times, and LegoLand, and SeaWorld, and Wild Animal Park, but those are not the things they talk about.

I gave my daughter the money for their school pictures every year, and bought their school supplies. It was a big enough job for her to keep 3 active, growing boys in shoes and clothes.

All 3 boys are working now, and the 2 oldest make almost as much as I do, with 7 years less education and 40 years less experience. They are all still living at home, contributing to the household expenses, spending plenty, and saving lots. I doubt they will go to college; they are in tech and IT, continually learning on the job. So it turns out there really wasn't a reason to gift them money and/or savings accounts. I'm so glad I didn't make that sacrifice, and instead shared experiences with them.

* They are 17, 19, and 21 now.

[jp1]

Other than token gifts when I graduated high school I was never gifted money by any relative and frankly it never occurred to me that it should happen. I do, However, have fond memories of my paternal grandparents and paternal aunt who spent much time and effort during my childhood doing many of the types of activities that mschrisgo2 mentions. Those memories mean much more to me than any amount of money would have.

Edited to add: one aunt/uncle gave me an overnight bag for my graduation. At the time it didn't seem as exciting as the cash that others had given, but a decade later I was still using that bag, long after the other monetary gifts had been spent and forgotten.

[LDAHL]

My mother-in-law passed away recently. She was a lifelong advocate of women's rights, and a strong force for women's educational opportunities.

She left a large chunk of her estate in trust for my daughter. To be used for education and career establishment, so that my daughter doesn't have to worry much at all about supporting herself through grad school and post-doc efforts, but can concentrate on her studies.

This was all unexpected to me, but is a gift beyond compare. My daughter basically is Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, and her educational path of adventure archeology/anthropology is unlikely to ever be able to pay back the cost of her education, and being concerned with living expenses might direct her down paths that would detract from her ability to reach her academic peak.

So now my daughter is a person of independent means, not reliant on the kindness of her parents to support her. But she also can't decide to sit on a beach drinking umbrella drinks for the rest of her life, the trust intention and guidelines are pretty clear, and my mother-in-law picked a particularly hard-nosed trustee :-)

I think it was Warren Buffet who said he wanted to leave his children enough to do anything they wanted, but not enough to do nothing. I can see the wisdom in that. I'm not in a position to create a large trust fund, but I'm structuring my pension so that my daughter will have a decent income through age 30 if my wife and I are gone. At that point, she'11 get the corpus of the estate, the size of which will vary depending on what we experience in our later years.

[messengerhot]

Hi Catherine, I totally agree with mschrisgo2 about the whole time and experience thing. It's fairly important for your child once, it's the same thing that would help your grand kids remember you a lot.

I don't have grand kids of my own but my parents are already grandparents to my 2 sons and I don't guilt them into giving my children gifts. I feel like I'm burdening them by pressuring them to give my children what I'm supposed to give to them. Instead, we visit my parents every weekend and have lunch or dinner and stay the night or the entire weekend at my parents' house. Your grandchild is still quite young so giving him material gifts won't really make a difference. Maybe give them a photo of you to paste on the fridge or have it framed and place it somewhere in their house. :)