Financial independence. It’s what most people want as adults, especially if you’re a parent of one. Being able to stand on your own two feet and take care of yourself — and your family — is a major accomplishment. But that is becoming harder and harder these days, especially for younger adults, and it’s forcing more parents of adult children to sacrifice their own financial situations so they can help their kids. For companies in the debt collection space that are not asking if there is a parent who can help a consumer repay his or her debt, you might want to add that into your repertoire, and maybe get used to hearing that people can’t make payments because they are too tied up helping pay off the debts of their kids.
More than two-thirds of parents of adult children are making some form of financial sacrifice to help their kids financially, according to the results of a survey conducted by Bankrate. That includes paying down debt and sacrificing their retirement plans. Nearly 20% of parents of adult kids have said they have “significantly” sacrificing paying down debt to help their kids, and another 31% said they are “somewhat” sacrificing paying down their own debts. Twenty percent of parents have accessed most of their emergency savings to help their kids, according to the results of the poll.
Lower-income households are making even bigger sacrifices, according to the report. Nearly 60% of households with incomes under $50,000 have made financial sacrifices to help their adult children, compared with 46% of those making more than $100,000 per year.
Perhaps not surprisingly, older individuals — like Baby Boomers — expect their kids to become financially independent much sooner than members of younger generations, like Generation X or Millennials. For example, Baby Boomers expect that people should start paying their own credit card bills and cell phone bills at 19, compared with 21 for members of Generation Z.
