OP again... ok, I will (sort of) bend my own words here, to close the loop on some communication that I think may have been left unsaid. Sorry for length.
First, I agree with the many who say there is no "owing" to adult children. The exception might be if you neglected them as kids and as a result, they ended up holding the short stick in life.
In our case however, DW and I, both with advanced degrees (I say this to underscore that we value education), gave a lot of time to both kids, whether for school, play, or other things. Even A still admits this, notwithstanding the issues we are having. Don't want to oversell this point, but we made our sacrifices, and plenty of them, early and often. For both kids. We continued to help them in early adulthood, with college, weddings, financial advice, job searches, moving, and a host of other things. Taught them fiscal responsibility and instilled the value of not living beyond their means, which thankfully seems to have stuck. Obligations done, as far as I can tell.
So: We owe NOTHING but love, and love (which can be manifested in many ways, including monetary) is in the end based on reciprocation. If anyone thinks they are capable of true love without expectations, or love in the face of shabby treatment, I'd say they need a shot of truth serum. This is simply how the human mind is, and maybe some elevated minds (Dalai Lama, Gandhi, etc) may transcend that, I don't know. Rest of us, I call BS.
To continue the story: Both kids ended up with advanced STEM degrees and related careers, and A is doing particularly well, as is her spouse, who did the same (it's how they met). DD B less so, but is no slouch and has a good income by any standard, as does her spouse (they also met in school, just at a younger age).
To address the grandchild issue, we have little to no emotions tied up in this child (and probably future kids) for one simple reason: A's spouse has manipulated/managed our contact with the child to seemingly ensure we are not too involved in anything important, beginning with his birth (his mom was the one attending, but we are the new mother's parents and were told to "come a few weeks later", despite this being our first grandchild and the other side's seventh), important life events like birthdays, religious ceremonies, etc. We have been held at arm's length or worse, while his family (even extended family) gets ringside seats to everything. After the birth (really, weeks after the birth), we have not seen the child for almost two years, only recently doing so, and briefly at that. Not, I repeat NOT, because we have wanted it this way. He has also managed our relationship with our daughter, to the extent of restricting our contact with her to only those times that he is present. So we have not felt involved in the child's life, through no doing of our own, and have been kept at arms length from our daughter as well. I could go on. How then is love/affection supposed to appear? Just from genealogy?
On the subject of Blow That Dough, although I have not visited that thread yet but intend to do so, mostly out of curiosity, DW and I think that could expose us to penury in later years, and the problems that accompany it. Dunno what inside info you guys have on this subject, but we have no idea how long we'll live. So our approach has always been to save, save, save... so much so that we don't even know how to spend much money any more. Just the other day we were bemoaning the fact that our favorite pizza place raised their prices, after 3 years, by $2... for the entire pie. Logically, this is just plain stupid, and yet. Some will call this sad, I just say it is what it is and I know many retired/older people have a similar thing going on.
