Dear Eric: I have two daughters. One is in a long-term marriage with an established career. The other, who has less stable employment, recently moved in with her boyfriend of five years.
I am widowed and elderly. Rather unexpectedly, I find that my income, especially the required minimum distribution from my IRA, exceeds my needs by a substantial amount. So far, the account continues to grow annually by more than the distribution.
Each year, I have been giving the established daughter and her husband each a check. I have been putting money in a retirement account for the other one.
Do I grant son-in-law status to the boyfriend when distributing money? They are in a committed relationship.
The boyfriend is a bit sensitive about money. He’s still struggling to pay off debts from his first marriage. My daughter makes more than he does, and they live in her house. He contributes a set amount financially and does much of the upkeep of the house.
He bristles at any suggestion that he is not carrying his own weight financially. If they are going to be a long-term couple, I would like to contribute to a retirement account for him, but don’t want to cause problems.
I don’t feel that I know him well enough to ask. Any suggestions?
— Retirement Gift
Dear Retirement Gift: This is really thoughtful and quite generous.
So, I hope what I write next doesn’t come across as too curt. If you don’t know the boyfriend well enough to ask him if he’d accept the money, you shouldn’t give it to him. True, you don’t need to know someone to give them money. But, as you point out, it has the potential to cause issues in your daughter’s relationship.
The way to sidestep those issues is communication, but if that’s not possible, the money should stay in your account.
I like to say money talks, but it mumbles sometimes. This is especially true when it comes to inheritances and gifts passed down from one generation to the next.
Because you and the boyfriend don’t have a relationship in which you can comfortably talk about money, putting a large amount of money into that relationship is going to cause an issue, if only because you haven’t established a way to talk about it.
What you might do, however, is talk about the situation with your daughter and ask if there are ways you can help her that will benefit the household in general.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
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