How to Help Your Adult Kids Without Hurting Your Retirement

saysFor the past several years, Jody King and Jim Vozar have made it their practice to give their four adult children a sum of money annually to help with their expenses. The "kids" — the couple each have a son and daughter from their first marriages, ranging in age from 25 to 38 — all have jobs and can cover essential bills on their own. But the financial assistance from Mom and Dad makes a meaningful difference.

"Everything is more expensive these days, from groceries to rent to cars; it's harder to buy a house, harder to save money," says Vozar, 56, who owns a real estate development and construction company in Nazareth, Pa. "We're happy we have the means to help our children, to create a good foundation for them moving forward, so they're not sweating every payment."

The couple hasn't placed any strings on how the children use the money. "There are really no ground rules, other than our encouragement that they buy something they've wanted but maybe couldn't easily afford and to invest the rest wisely," says King, 58, a commercial real estate broker with CBRE in Allentown, Pa.

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So far, the kids' purchases have included a computer, a treadmill, professional coaching services, and new windows for the oldest child's home. All four have invested some as well — money that Vozar expects one day will help them buy a car or house and build long-term savings.

"We'd know if one of them put it all on black or was driving a Porsche," says Vozar, who adds he has warned his kids not to spend the money on anything stupid. If that happened, the couple say, their no-rules philosophy on gifting would change — although they make it clear that the children all work hard and want to forge their own way. Vozar says, "I'm a firm believer in a hand up, not a handout."

A growing number of parents these days are following a similar path, helping their adult children with money in greater amounts and for longer periods than previous generations, research shows. More than six in 10 parents in an Ameriprise survey last year, for example, said they were covering some ongoing expenses for a child 21 or older, from phone bills to everyday living costs. (Participants in the survey had, on average, more than $500,000 in assets.)

More than three-fourths were helping to pay for a big one-time goal, such as a wedding or the down payment on a home.

The average amount of cash support to children 18 and older, according to a 2025 AARP study, is about $7,000 a year, with higher-income households that earn $75,000 or more giving over $10,000 annually.

Studies show that ongoing assistance drops sharply once adult children hit their late twenties, but it doesn't end entirely for many families.

About one-third of Americans ages 30 to 34 still get some financial help from their parents, a 2024 Pew Research Center study found, most commonly for household expenses such as groceries and utility bills, and for rent or mortgage payments.

"Younger generations today are in a very difficult situation in terms of affordability," says certified financial planner Mary Clements Evans, author of Emotionally Invested and founder of Evans Wealth Strategies in Emmaus, Pa.

"It's not just about the price of eggs and gas for them; it's the price of education, housing, health insurance, child care, you name it. A lot of boomers have the financial means, and these kids really need the help."

Still, many parents helping adult children with money are feeling the strain. Studies also show that for some of them, lending a financial hand to kids in their twenties and thirties has cut into their ability to save for retirement, pushed back the timeline for when they can stop working, or necessitated belt-tightening their own lifestyle.

Meanwhile, many parents, whether the help they're giving is comfortably affordable or not, worry they may be inadvertently hurting their child by fostering dependence. Or they worry that people may judge them as helicopter parents, concierge parents, snowplow parents (forever clearing the path of obstacles for their child) or whatever trendy but vaguely disparaging label observers bestow these days.

If you're helping an adult child with money and wondering whether you're doing the right thing for both your child and your own financial health, or simply looking to close the Bank of Mom and Dad for good, these insights and moves can help.

Consider the circumstances

Trend data going back at least 50 years from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan confirms that parents today are indeed providing more financial support for adult children than previous generations of moms and dads.

Parents themselves agree: Six out of 10 people helping an adult child with money are providing more support than they received at the same age, the AARP survey found, and nearly half are giving larger amounts than they anticipated they'd need to provide.

That many of these kids really need the helping hand is evident too, with recent economic data documenting the financial strain on young adults compared with what their parents and grandparents experienced in their early grown-up years.

The typical student borrower now graduates from college with over $35,000 in loans, more than double the average amount that new grads owed 25 years ago, according to the Education Data Initiative. More young people are also getting degrees, which delays their launch as wage-earning employees who can support themselves.

When they do get jobs, the salary isn't what it used to be either, with wages for young workers eroding in real terms, especially for those who don't have a college degree — that is, if a young worker can find a job, given that the unemployment rate for college graduates ages 22 to 27 recently hit 5.6%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

That's the highest rate in a decade, outside of a brief pandemic-era spike, and a reversal of the longstanding trend of young grads being able to land jobs more easily than workers overall.

Meanwhile, good luck to many young people hoping to buy a home on their own, with housing prices up 50% since the pandemic, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index.

"The helicopter/snowplow parent analogy is way overblown," says Monica Johnson, a sociology professor at Washington State University who studies the transition to adulthood. "What's happening is driven by history and a shifting economy. It's not a personality fault of either the kids or the parents."

That said, Johnson notes, a shift in family dynamics, marked by what she calls the growth of “intensive parenting,” is a contributing factor. "We have fewer children, and we're very invested in them," she says. "We know they're hitting this new economy, this new world, in a way we didn't and our grandparents didn't, so the stakes feel higher."

She adds, "It does mean that some young adults are delayed in learning some of the independence that earlier generations may have gotten."

Understanding the impact of ongoing support

The good news, says Johnson, is that there is no sign that a helping hand from parents generally breeds long-term dependence. The trend data shows ongoing support drops sharply by the time most young adults hit their late twenties (keeping your kid on your family cell-phone plan doesn't really count).

The research also shows that most parents feel the level of assistance they're currently providing feels right to them, given their child's circumstances. Meanwhile, the economic benefits are clear. Young adults who get financial support from Mom or Dad are more likely, for example, to graduate from college and earn a livable wage later on.

Moreover, Johnson says, there's evidence of a strong reciprocity norm in families, so that parents who help young adults with money when they need it are more likely to get help from those kids later on — not necessarily financial aid, but perhaps a hand navigating health care needs, filling out government forms or arranging for home repairs. "It helps keep family bonds strong. There's a lot of give and take," she says.

Where parents are more apt to have concern: "They may be fine with the level of support right now, but worry about what will happen in the future," Johnson says.

"Most importantly, though, parents worry about what other people think of them, because we tend to judge parents a lot, and partly by how well their kids are doing," Johnson says. "It's less about what the parents are actually doing and more about how it will be perceived by others."

An even more pressing problem is the potential impact on some parents' long-term financial security. More than one-third of the parents in the Ameriprise survey, for instance, said that supporting their adult children financially could affect whether they'll have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, and 40% of the parents in the AARP study with at least one child 23 or older said it has given them some degree of financial stress.

"We see it with student loans, when parents take out parent PLUS loans or co-sign for private loans that will lead to debt that they are likely to carry into retirement. We see it when parents pay for credit cards or auto loans for their children," says Lori Trawinski, senior director of finance and employment at AARP.

"It is understandable that parents want to help, but they should consider whether they can truly afford it," said Trawinski.

Determine the best path forward

To help figure out what's right for your family, experts suggest asking yourself a few key questions about the kind of monetary help your child needs, what's affordable for you, the implications for your security in retirement, and your son's or daughter's ability to close their account at the Bank of Mom and Dad and forge an independent life.

How much can you truly afford to help?

Financial advisers like to use the oxygen-mask analogy when it comes to helping adult kids with money — you know, the one from airline safety briefings that tells you, in the event of an emergency, to put on your own mask first before you help others.

So if subsidizing your kid's rent or paying for auto insurance or helping with the utility or grocery bills strains your budget or hurts your ability to save what you need for retirement, don't provide a cash infusion, planners say. Instead, let your young adult go about the business of adulting and figuring out how to manage those expenses on their own.

Applying logic to the emotional tug of your child needing your help, though, doesn't always work in real life.

Consider the results of a survey last year of consumers with investable assets of at least $150,000 by LIMRA, a financial services trade group.

Among the 17% of respondents who were providing financial support to an adult child 26 or older, more than half said that doing so has affected their retirement savings.

Yet when asked what trade-offs they'd be open to making to stretch those savings, only 15% were willing to stop giving money to their kids or another family member who needed their help — dead last among the options given — compared with 58% who were willing to adopt a lower standard of living and 54% who were willing to return to work, either full-or part-time.

"Parents are used to making sacrifices for their children, putting themselves secondary to their kids' needs," says Kayla Fernandez, a CFP with California Financial Advisors in San Ramon, Calif. "Using math to evaluate such an emotional situation may not work."

Still, advisers say that running the numbers to evaluate whether you can truly afford to help your adult kids, considering both your current cashflow needs and the potential impact on your long-term retirement savings, can be an eye-opening exercise.

If you work with a financial adviser or have access to one through your workplace retirement-savings plan or financial services provider, you can run simulations to assess how various levels of support for your kids will affect the likelihood of your savings lasting through retirement. Or do-it-yourself-ers can use financial planning software such as Boldin (free for the basic version or $12 monthly for more advanced features) or Empower (free) to test different scenarios.

Then tackle the emotional part of the equation. Fernandez asks clients to think about what would happen if they hit an unanticipated setback or the money they're giving now causes their savings to dwindle so much that they end up needing a financial hand from their son or daughter when they're older.

"Think about how you'd feel," says Fernandez. "Ask yourself whether helping now could end up hurting your child more in the long run."

One other aspect to think about: "Parents underestimate the financial compounding effect of ongoing support," says Rick Kahler, a CFP, certified financial therapist and founder of Kahler Financial Group in Rapid City, S.D. "Even small subsidies over 10 or 20 years materially reduce retirement assets."

The bottom line, says Kahler: "You cannot fund your child's 30-year-old self at the expense of your 85-year-old self."

Are you helping or enabling?

Kahler says that often the most critical question isn't actually whether you can afford to help, but rather, will providing support increase or decrease your child's growth toward independence?

Kahler has a simple litmus test. "Helping after a layoff, a health crisis, or during education can be stabilizing and wise," he says. "Helping fund a lifestyle beyond what someone can sustain on their own income shifts from bridge to bailout."

Focus your assistance on essential expenses, not such lifestyle upgrades, says Evans. You might, for example, lend a hand with the deposit on a first apartment and some basic furnishings to launch your baby bird from the nest (think IKEA or Wayfair, not Crate & Barrel or Pottery Barn), but only if your child can manage the rent on their own after that.

Assisting with anything that helps build wealth can also be a good use of your money if you can afford it, whether that's one-time help with a home down payment, say, or offering to match savings in an emergency fund or for other long-term goals.

Ongoing help that makes life a little cushier than they could otherwise afford? Not so much, advisers say.

"Learning to be fiscally responsible when you're young can be uncomfortable — and that's okay," says Fernandez. "If your child never feels the pain of telling her friends that she can't go out to dinner and drinks this week or buy those concert tickets because it's not in her budget, she's not going to learn to live within her means. That is productive pain, in my opinion."

Also, think twice about helping them out of a jam of their own making, such as racking up a boatload of credit card debt not related to a layoff or health care bills. If your child is otherwise typically responsible, you might match their monthly card payments to expedite getting the balance to zero. But if it happens again, offer your counsel, not your wallet.

"Be careful if a ‘one-time' situation continues to repeat itself," Kahler says. Besides the potential impact on your own finances, he says, "Repeated rescuing can quietly build entitlement, resentment and shame, and it lowers the child's confidence."

Have you set parameters for support?

Ideally, you will have worked out the basic details about the assistance you're prepared to give before the first dollar passes hands. That includes laying out the specific expenses you will help with, the amount you're prepared to pay, how long you'll provide support, and, if there's any question about it, whether the money is intended as a gift or a loan.

If not, have the conversation now, so there is no miscommunication and no surprise or hurt feelings on your child's part when you're ready to wind down the family aid plan.

In figuring out what kind of assistance to provide, invite your child into the process, rather than just informing him of your intentions.

"Ask, ‘How would you like us to help you? What would do the most good?'" says CFP Bobbi Rebell, author of the book Launching Financial Grownups and CEO of Financial Wellness Strategies, a financial education consulting company. "Give them agency. One of the mistakes we sometimes make as parents is treating our adult children as children, not adults."

One practical tool Kahler recommends to parents who anticipate needing to help their child with future expenses is setting up what he calls a child benevolent fund. Parents decide in advance how much they can allocate monthly without harming their own financial plan and regularly shift that money into an account earmarked for that purpose. When the child needs help, the balance in the fund sets the limit for aid.

"It removes guilt-based, in-the-moment decisions and protects long-term security," Kahler says.

Have you constructed an exit ramp?

Ongoing financial support for an adult child should generally be temporary, advisers say. One exception: if your child has a physical or mental health condition — true for about 30% of the parents providing financial support in the AARP survey — that may interfere with their ability to entirely make their own way.

Let your child know your intended end date well in advance so they have time to prepare. Experts also recommend tapering off gradually — say, reducing the amount you provide by 25% a quarter over the course of a year.

If you're looking to end support because it's no longer affordable or you're concerned about your long-term financial security, it's okay to let your child know that. The idea is not to pile on guilt (take care to keep the temperature low there) but to ensure they better understand the circumstances, which lessens the likelihood they'll feel hurt or resentful that they can no longer rely on you for money.

“Your children may feel very differently if they realize that helping them is a strain for you, because children love their parents and want to do right by them,” Rebell says.

Also, think about other ways to help that don't involve dispensing cold, hard cash — either to show you're still there for them after you've ended direct financial aid or as an alternative or supplement to giving money outright.

If, for instance, they're struggling with credit card debt, you might suggest seeing a debt counselor or allow them to move back home for a while to free up cash to pay down those balances.

Maybe you can help them set up a budget to get a better handle on their cash flow. If they're struggling with child-care costs, and you're retired, live nearby and are so inclined, perhaps you can babysit one day a week to alleviate the strain. "You don't necessarily have to write a check to help," says Rebell.

Adds Kahler, "Often what adult children need most is confidence, guidance and belief — not a subsidy."

Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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