I finally said I was not working so she didn't have to.. . . Once again, she lost a job, only this time she had a boyfriend to support her. After realizing she was not putting in any effort to find a job, we cut her off again financially, except phone plan, car insurance, and copays for medical so she would start getting therapy for her bpd.. . . I did offer to pay for a wedding (my mom paid for mine, so it seemed the right thing to do.) It's ample, but not ridiculous, $10,000 from a very small retirement fund. . . . What she may not realize is that when her dad dies (whether this year or 10 years from now), my income will be be almost half what it is now, and I may not be able to continue paying out the $600-800 a month in copays, or pay for a phone or car stuff.
Hi again,
I've been where you are, getting to the point of saying, my husband and I aren't continuing to work (into retirement) so an adult child doesn't have to. That's what it boils down to, right?
If I put on my CFO hat, I'd say, no way should you pay for a wedding out of a RETIREMENT fund. If you want some justification for this, here goes. You don't have any money to spare right now. Though you might have paid for your son's wedding, and your mom might have paid for yours, those situations were different. My guess is that you've already spent orders of magnitude more money on supporting your BPD daughter well into adulthood, when she refused to work consistently. Moreover, your husband is ill right now. There's no telling what sort of medical and related expenses await you. Maybe some medical treatments or ancilliary support services won't be covered by your insurance. So you really have no extra funds available. In addition, you yourself know that if you become a widow, your income will probably be halved, but your living expenses will remain largely unchanged. You still have to pay for your housing, utilities, homeowners insurance, groceries, your own health insurance, etc. Maybe you spend a little less on food, and maybe you can sell your husband's car and get rid of the associated insurance, but otherwise your living expenses are mostly fixed, barring downsizing. Do you want to be forced to downsize? Because of a wedding (which might not even happen by the sound of it)?
Here's another way to look at things. You have two other adult sons. My guess is that they are thriving, right? Would they not resent all the extra money, mental effort and bending over backwards you're doing, in a vain attempt to "save" your disordered daughter, when she's not working on herself? They might think that you're rewarding dysfunction, instead of rewarding all the good things your sons are doing. And how about this: if you continue to enable your daughter's dysfunction to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars over the coming years, and you run out of money to support your own retirement, will you ultimately be relying on your sons to help support YOU? My CFO perspective says, honor your sons by not becoming financially reliant on them in retirement. You can give them that gift. In my opinion, that is the right thing to do. If you don't save yourself for yourself, then save yourself for THEM.
If you absolutely must pay for the wedding, I'd say, you do it by not touching your RETIREMENT fund, which exists for your retirement only. You finance the wedding with the $800 a month which you're currently spending to support your daughter. You redirect those funds to her wedding, and by November, you'll have $3,200. I'd say that's your budget right there. Once she's married, you discontinue ALL monthly financial support, as your daughter and her husband become responsible for themselves.
Look, the reason your daughter isn't working is because she has a boyfriend for housing and your $800 a month for a phone, car insurance and co-pays. If you stop paying, she'll either be forced to work again, or she'll stay at home phoneless and carless. Her choice, but she gets a wedding that you can afford, if she goes through with it. If not, that's also her choice.
Just my two cents.