How to Ask Your Parents for Money...AND Get Them to Say Yes
Listen and Follow Heir Necessities: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
We're renovating our basement…and my parents are shelling out the full cost: $350,000.
Before you judge, spend 10 minutes learning about the six-month conversation that got us here.
From exploring an $800k+ ADU to navigating retirement community options and locations - this was the best and cheapest option for my parents.
Spoiler: this episode isn't really about our basement reno.
It's about how my family practices radical money honesty.
It's about why multigenerational estate and wealth transfer planning matters.
And it's about how to ask your parents for money in a way that feels good for you AND for them.
I've been getting money out of my (equally bemused and reluctant) parents since the early aughts.
This is the episode you need to get on my level and learn how to ask your parents for money...in a way that actually works.
🗓️ Schedule a FREE call to talk more about how I can help you navigate a current or future inheritance.
Transcript:
How Do You Talk About Money With Your Parents?
Hey, I'm Katherine and thanks for joining me at Heir Necessities, the podcast that turns complex financial topics into real talk for Gen X, millennial and Gen Z inheritors. Each episode of the podcast, I break down a different topic related to generational wealth and inheritance. My goal is that you can stop asking Google or ChatGPT what to do with your money and come here instead for real talk, real advice and real solutions that you can start to implement in your life today.
In today's episode of Heir Necessities, we are diving into our $350,000 basement renovation. How we're paying for it, why it costs so much, what we're excited about, and what updates you can expect to hear along the way.
Before we jump into our renovation, if you are enjoying the Heir Necessities podcast and want to help support the show, I would appreciate it so much if you could leave us a review or just a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts—Spotify, Apple, wherever, it helps the show so much. And more importantly, it helps me connect with and support more inheritors like you.
What Are the Best Aging in Place Alternatives to Retirement Communities?
So let's start with a little bit of background on this basement project, which actually ties in more closely to end of life planning than renovation planning. My parents live about three hours away from us. They're still in the house that I grew up in.
It's an amazing house, but they're thinking forward to the future when they're a little bit older and there's a possibility that they don't want to be in their house anymore, that it's too big to maintain, the yard is too big to maintain, it's too much trouble. It's not an easy house to live in on one story.
So they've been touring a whole ton of different retirement communities and they can't find one that feels like that Cinderella glass slipper fit. But equally importantly, from my perspective at least, is a lot of these retirement communities put them further away from either my brother or I. My brother lives very close to them, 20 minute drive, we live three hours away.
Their favorite place right now is in between us. So instead of being close to my brother and far from me, they're now kind of far from both of us in an area that's not exactly a popping place to visit. So their favorite plan is not my favorite plan because I would prefer to be closer to them and candidly, we're not gonna move.
Should You Build an ADU for Aging Parents?
So we have been talking about this as a family a lot. This is a very open discussion. My parents have included us.
We know their thoughts. They know our thoughts. When we moved to the house that we live in now, one of the discussions we had because our yard is so big, we have an acre here in the city, is could we put an ADU on the property?
So we looked into putting an ADU on the property and we could but the central issue is that it would be extremely expensive to get an ADU at the caliber that my parents would be happy with. You're talking about eight hundred thousand to a million dollars at which point you might as well just buy a small house near us and renovate it to be the way you want it because it would be cheaper and also significantly faster and less headache. It would also take up less of our yard.
So we're exploring this ADU as an aging option, but it just didn't end up being like the right fit. And so we were back to square one, all of us together.
How Do You Plan for Your Parents' Future Care Needs?
So it was my parents aren't gonna leave their house anytime soon. No one wants them to do that. They don't want to do that.
But if something happens, where can they go? Do they have a place that's easier for them to live? And if someone dies and someone else gets injured, if these sort of terrible but statistically more likely scenarios that happen as you get older, what is sort of the immediate next step that becomes available?
And that is when we started looking at our basement. Our house is 5,300 square feet. And our basement is the full length of the house.
So our basement is 1,700 square feet. And equally or more importantly, it has pretty tall ceilings for a basement. It's unfinished, but the foundation has all been reinforced by us, part of that expensive 2024 and 2025 we have.
Why Should You Finish Your Basement for Multigenerational Living?
If you didn't catch my budget recap video, you should check it out. But it's functionally unfinished. And so we started talking about the possibility of the basement as a space where they could come and stay with us more now.
So they could have a space that was a little bit more private. It was away from our kids. They could come in and be comfortable and also a space that if something happened and they needed more care, they needed a place to go quickly, the basement would be there.
So it's kind of a win-win. You can come and stay more now since that's something they've expressed an interest in doing and we would love to have them as much as they're willing to be here. And also in the future, we have enough space in the basement that while it's not going to be totally ADA accessible, it is going to be a space where you can have a wheelchair in there.
You can have a ground level entrance that doesn't have any steps ultimately. So while still a basement, a comfortable space.
How Do You Ask Your Parents to Pay for Home Renovations?
So this is where we started the conversation with my parents is, okay, this basement is potentially a good idea. And then because my parents and I have radical honesty around money, my next thought was, okay. Well, if this is gonna be a benefit for you, then you should pay for it.
And this is a long-term theme in my relationship with my parents, right? They know that I'm gonna hit them up for money, I'm gonna have a carefully crafted plan. They might say yes, they might say no.
There's never any hard feelings. But they know that I am not shy for asking for money to do the things that I think would either significantly benefit me in a way that they would appreciate or that would just benefit them. So we went through the process with the amazing design build firm that did our whole house renovation to get bids.
The bid came in around $300,000. And then we put another 50 on top of that to buy all the things that aren't included in the bid, like shower heads and windows and exterior doors and cabinet pulls and furniture.
What Are the Tax Benefits of Gifting Money for Home Improvements?
And so we put all that together and we got a budget of $350,000. And then my ask to my parents was, okay, I know that this is gonna cost $350,000. And the next best option that you have is potentially entering this retirement community at some point.
This retirement community is an hour and a half away from both of your kids, not ideal. You've come closer to us, but not really enough closer for it to be easy for us. You have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for your initiation fee into this retirement community.
And that is money that you are never going to get back. So when you think about it from that perspective, paying for our basement remodel is actually a cost savings to you, right? Because you are getting money out of your taxable estate.
They live in Washington state, so they will have a taxable estate, certainly, regardless of what the federal exemption does. So you're getting money out of that taxable estate. You're helping us out, and you're helping yourself out, and you're not giving money away to this retirement community where you're never gonna see that money back.
How Long Did It Take for My Parents to Give Us $350,000
So when we first proposed this idea, it was over the summer. We were talking about the potential of putting in an ADU over the summer. And so it has been over six months that we have been talking about this and iterating this and having different conversations about, okay, well, if they give us $350,000, what happens if the cost goes over?
They don't want to spend more than $350,000. Who pays for that? And we have had all of these discussions openly and honestly and maturely, which I say on my part, obviously they're always mature and wonderful, but I have behaved myself as an adult in these situations and that is because we have been having these open, honest money conversations my entire life.
So as I kind of get to the end of this episode, I'm realizing it's not really an episode about the basement renovation at all. It's an episode about how my family talks about money and hopefully it's inspiring to you a little bit as well to understand that there are families out there. Yes, I asked my parents for $350,000 and they are giving it to us and they are remodeling our basement and I'm grateful, extremely grateful and it's going to allow us to spend more time together and it's going to let them spend more time with their grandkids.
Does Getting Money From Your Parents Make You Spoiled?
And I still run a successful business and I still work and I still save a ton of money. Getting money from your parents or conversely giving money to your kids, it doesn't make them spoiled. Yes, objectively, I am spoiled.
I am incredibly, incredibly privileged. And I would never, ever deny that. And I'm still a hard worker and I want to make my own way in life.
So in my view, having parents with money or if you're the first generation parent who's made the wealth, being a wealthy parent, it's not about holding off on that money. It's about giving your kid opportunities that they wouldn't have within their own means. And to me, that is something of incredible value that really brings families together.
What Should You Expect From a $350,000 Basement Renovation?
With all of that being said, I'm also gonna be walking you through the nuts and bolts of this basement renovation as we move through it later this year. So my mom and I are making all the design decisions together, which should be fun and also maybe a little hair raising at times. No one knows.
She has a really strict budget to stick within, which is definitely going to be problematic. Mom, if you're listening to this, I love you. So it should be fun.
It's fun for me to do this with them. I think it's fun for them to do it with me, at least, you know, they're my parents, so they have to love me.
And I think it's fun to share with you all not only like renovation costs because I know that's something that a lot of people are really curious about like why is your basement gonna cost $300,000? Well things are expensive. So we'll talk about that.
We'll talk about the cost. We'll talk about kind of the continuing conversations, how we have conversations, how the three of us talk about money, how my husband's involved, how the four of us talk about money. And hopefully it's something that's interesting to you.
If you want to reach out about anything after listening to this episode, you can catch me at katherine@sunnybranchwealth.com, on Instagram at @sunnybranchwealth. And if you'd rather just follow along with my life via the podcast, I will catch you on the next episode of Heir Necessities.
Let’s take the next step together
Understanding how to manage, invest, grow, and/or give away multi-million dollar inheritance isn’t easy. Inheritors can encounter a wide variety of different situations requiring knowledge and finesse to manage. If you need more help, reach out to Katherine Fox, CFP® and CAP®, financial planner for inheritors, to learn how Sunnybranch can help you evaluate your financial situation and build a plan for your financial future.
