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“I’ve got this, Mom,” proudly declared my twenty-one-year-old youngest when the two of us went for lunch, as he then proceeded to whip out his credit card with a bit of bravado. I couldn’t help but feel the pride and gratitude of knowing we did something right in our parenting. Here he was, on the eve of his senior year of college, extolling his independence and possibly his own gratitude for what we have provided him. As an aside, what we provided him was a credit card in his name with the statement mine to pay. “ But that’s tangential to the point,” as I tried to explain to my husband, a financial advisor no less, who found my take on it to be quite humorous if not a bit naive. “ Do you really think you’re teaching him financial independence by paying his bills, ” he rhetorically added. A real mood killer… Financial independence is one of the primary markers used to define adulthood, according to a 2019 study by Merrill Lynch of 2,700 young adults, ages 18-34, coincidentally, the...

Can you feel any older than when sitting poolside at a very boutiquish hotel in a very trendy part of Miami and not know one song that the DJ has played for the last 2 hours? Yes. Yes you can… especially when sitting poolside and unable to extricate yourself from the chaise because it’s only an inch off the ground and you don’t have the leverage to elevate yourself up. I know what you’re thinking… how in the hell did I get myself down there in the first place. It took some soul searching and a little handholding, literally, handholding. You know it’s a deep plummet when you drop your belongings onto the chaise, and they bounce back up from the kinetic energy of the fall. My goal was not to bounce back up. After scoping my surroundings to confirm no one was staring in my direction… who am I kidding… no one was staring in my direction… and with my own self pride at stake, I grabbed my husband’s hand and gently lowered myself into position. It was more of a squ...