I am very proud to say that all four of my children are college graduates and, in fact, two have their Master’s Degrees and have great jobs. The younger two are in the process of getting their graduate degrees; Ryan just finished his first year of law school and Sydney will be starting in September a combined program for her Masters in Special Education, Elementary Education with an additional certification in Applied Behavior Analysis. My husband and I are very proud of all four of them.

So, here’s the question that my husband and I are now struggling with, at what point do our young adult children come off of our payroll? I am not talking about direct payments of weekly sums to help them sustain themselves while in school but, rather, the indirect support they still receive. All four of them are still on our cell phone plan for which we pay. In addition, our oldest daughter, Danielle, recently came off of our EZ Pass account and we are pushing our next oldest daughter, Calli, to get her own account. So far, that hasn’t happened.

Some friends have told me that they still have their adult children on credit card accounts, which we terminated after each child graduated college. I was shocked to hear that a colleague, until very recently, was still paying for her adult daughters’ (both of whom are married with adolescent children) gas for their cars. That, to me, sounded extreme.

At what point did you cut off your kids?