> it’s time for parents to “enjoy their best lives”.

Personally, spending money doesn't bring joy to my life above a certain threshold. Research agrees with this sentiment [0]. I don't believe that a $400 camping trip near my house is 10x worse than $4000 trip to Europe. Likewise, you moving to FL (reducing lifestyle costs by 20%) doesn't make your life 20% worse than wherever you were living before.

My issue with broad national or global surveys is they are largely meaningless on the individual level. You could be double the national income/wealth, but you still can't retire in Manhattan (if that is where you want to live due to being near your kids). Also, why stop at national? Why not compare yourself to global income/wealth?

But circling back to the original point: If the next generation wants to live in a good area [2] in a tier1 city, the either need to the top 10% of their field or their parents need to lift them up. If someone wants to skip college to pursue plumbing, great! but they will never be able to compete with DINK tech/finance/medical households or trust fund kids bidding on properties in Buckhead.

Land isn't growing, but population is. Even if only 1% of the parents each year subsidize their kid's housing, as t approaches infinity, cities will be filled with DINK and trust fund families.

[0] - https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/does-more-money-correlate-g...

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Die-Zero-Getting-Your-Money/dp/035856...

And most people don’t live in a tier 1 city and they are fine. It’s not our responsibility as parents to fund extravagant life choices.

They don’t have to live in Buckhead either. I have one son that lives in North Cobb and the other lives in Gwinnett.

Heck when I lived in metro Atlanta, I lived in Marietta, Decatur, John’s Creek and finally outside of Cumming. I’m looking at the apartment I use to live in Marietta that I paid $700 a month for in 2003 and it’s now $1100 a month and still gets decent reviews.

And why would an older person want to live in Manhattan? You remember I live in Florida the state where a lot of retirees come to get away from cold weather, their expensive homes, etc.

And as you can tell, I’m not attached to my children I loved them. But we feel no need to be under them constantly. Our jobs are done. It’s up to them to find their own way in life. I moved from my parents the week after I graduated from college. They helped me launch and subsidized me to live to Atlanta early on.

People can’t always have what they want - thst goes for children wanting to be in an expensive city or parents wanting to be near their kids. Even though in my social circle of mostly 10% of earners, we aren’t really that tied to our grown kids wanting to live near them. We want to have our own lives. Admittedly, most 50 year olds don’t have the freedom we have with low expenses, only one person working and working remotely.

As far as money, we don’t spend much on things. But we do spend on experiences, travel by ourselves and with friends and crossing off our bucket list.