It's possible that they don't mean anything else, but simply that they don't want to burden their children.
My parents and my in-laws often say this to us, and they mean it. My parents would naturally tell me how much their pensions are, and how much they can't afford to eat, because no one likes to play mah-jongg or sing or dance, and my dad likes to practice calligraphy, and my mom likes to sleep at home.
Previously they loved to buy expensive clothes, buy a watch buy a belt and so on, now they are you spend it, we are older no one to see. The most afraid of other people to invite dinner, feel at home to eat a white rice porridge what the most comfortable.
My parents also directly behind a high-end recreational community to buy a house (also urged a few pairs of relatives and friends of the same age couple bought together, after the old together to play), the community in the senior university, hospitals, a variety of fitness centers, all kinds of arts and entertainment clubs.
There are swimming pools, movie theaters and so on all in one place, but also in the construction of kindergartens (convenient for grandparents and grandparents with grandchildren to school), the entire district has steps next to the configuration of gentle slope (convenient wheelchair), I went to see a time, envy and jealousy. Then very disgusted with me said, I do not want to live with you in old age, you idle back to play on the line.
And my in-laws are even more direct, telling us that we don't need to retire, that we don't need to, and that we don't expect to, and that they will even call us to say that it's their retirement reserve.
My husband is dead set on graduating without parents money, my father-in-law thought of such a rhetoric, as an excuse to play money over every year, my husband actually really open a separate savings account, seriously give them to save down, so that my mother-in-law will often have to send a tweet to say that their money is our money, the money to us is an emergency to spend.
My mother-in-law's brother is an international student, mother-in-law followed her brother her parents also received a period of Western-style education, plus the designer engaged in the arts, very enlightened. Of course, to mention a few, she won't help me bring up my child or come to help me do my monthly.