Turn off funding faucet

Dear Amy: Our adult daughter “Clare” asked us for $4,000 to help her daughter attend a very expensive college ($75,000 a year). We had just given Clare $5,000 for another purpose, and we offered tuition and housing for community college. She refused.

My husband and I are retired public school teachers. We sent our three children to universities. They graduated debt-free.

Our monthly expenses exceed our teachers’ retirement, but we have some savings and a little bit of income. Things are tight.

Clare has not managed her money well. When she was in college we sent her $500 a month and she immediately quit her part-time job. She has squandered millions on pricy schemes and expensive homes. She’s now divorced and close to penniless, yet she refuses to find a job and relies on us for help.

Now her daughter is making similar choices.

Clare and her daughter have not been close or kind to us, and have never stepped up during those rare times we’ve asked for physical assistance.

Both have ridiculed our gifts and lives on numerous occasions.

I feel used when they come asking for financial help. Yet I feel obligated! How do we say, “This is not the kind of help we can easily continue to give?”

Tapped-Out Teachers

Dear Teachers: If you saw a student whose parents always swooped in to complete their homework, you would see how destructive this behavior is and how it impedes the child’s ability to handle challenges.

YOU have the spending problem.

Your lifetime practice of enabling Clare has helped to create an entitled, incompetent, needy and angry adult who lacks basic judgment — and now she is passing this on to the next generation.

You enable her because you are too anxious or afraid to face the discomfort you would feel if you stopped.

Clare isn’t nice to you when you give, and she won’t be nice to you if you don’t.

You launched all three of your children into a debtfree adulthood.

Your duty at this stage of life is to take care of yourselves. (Will Clare take you in when there is nothing left?)

All requests should be met with: “We’re not giving you any more money. You can solve your own problems — we believe in you!”

Dear Amy: I chat with my sister a few times per week on the phone. More and more, she multitasks while we are talking: making and eating a snack, driving, etc.

These activities create a lot of noises, some of which are quite distracting or even grating through the phone.

She has called while at a cafe, then asked me to hold on while she orders or pays.

If I am in the middle of something when she calls, I ask her if I can get back to her in a few minutes.

If I notice she’s multitasking when I call, I offer to call back later, but she usually says no and carries on with what she is doing.

What is accepted modern phone etiquette?

Hanging on the Line

Dear Hanging: Basic good manners means that you don’t talk with your mouth full of food, initiate a conversation when you’re in the middle of a transaction (or vice versa) or choose to contact someone when you can’t pay full attention.

Don’t offer to call back. Ask your sister if she could call back when there isn’t so much background noise.