Baby Boomers’ adult children are relying on their parents more and more for financial help — and some grandparents are even dipping into savings and retirement accounts as they’re forced to rethink their golden years.
Nearly two in five parents of young children expect to receive — or ask for — financial help from their own parents or grandparents over the next year, according to the BMO Real Financial Progress Index survey.
Among those expecting help, 47% said relatives would provide cash for day-to-day necessities, while a quarter expected contributions to 529 plans or other savings accounts.
Meanwhile, 11% of grandparents surveyed in separate research reported withdrawing money from savings or retirement accounts to help their grandchildren financially, according to AARP.
Haron Marlee — a 59-year-old semi-retired therapist who spent $24,000 in a single year helping support her grown daughter and grandchildren — is a prime example.
The cash covered expenses ranging from diapers and gas to car insurance, Bloomberg News reported.
The financial burden upended Marlee’s own retirement plans.
After moving from New Jersey to Florida, she expected to work part time, focus on her health and spend more time playing tennis.
Instead, she became a regular babysitter and even picked up bartending shifts to help her 36-year-old daughter’s family stay afloat after the younger woman’s marriage ended and she struggled to find work.
“Those burdens fundamentally changed my finances, my retirement plans,” Marlee told Bloomberg.
Eventually, she imposed firmer boundaries, even as they lived under the same roof.
The daughter began chipping in with cooking and cleaning, and eventually began contributing to rent and household expenses, too.
“It’s the norm,” Robert Laura, founder of the Retirement Coaches Association, told The Post when asked whether he was seeing more retirees and near-retirees helping adult children.
Laura said a brutal combination of housing costs, college debt and other expenses has made the traditional path toward financial independence increasingly difficult for young adults.
Instead of children graduating, getting a job, moving out and quickly buying homes of their own, Laura said families increasingly need to think in terms of “staged launches” in which grown children leave the nest over time.
“The idea is more around staged launches than whether they fail or not fail to launch,” he said.
The support does not necessarily stop once those children become parents themselves, though.
Laura said he has seen grandparents pay private school bills, cover medical expenses and step in for unexpected costs such as vehicle repairs needed to keep an adult child working.
Grandparents are already deeply embedded in the economics of raising American children.
About 21.8% of parents reported using a relative other than a parent for child care, according to Census survey data, while roughly 2.1 million grandparents have primary responsibility for grandchildren living with them.
Nine in 10 grandparents also spend money on their grandchildren, shelling out an average of about $2,654 a year.
AARP estimates grandparents collectively provide about $172 billion in direct financial support and another $731 billion worth of unpaid care annually — although the latter figure represents the estimated economic value of their time rather than cash coming out of retirement accounts.
For younger families, the savings can be substantial.
Parents receiving family help told the BMO survey they saved an average of $1,915 a year on child care and babysitting and $1,443 on groceries.
But for grandparents, Laura warned, what begins as a temporary rescue can easily turn into a permanent line item.
“Kids or grandkids can be a leaky faucet,” he said.
“If there’s not some framework for how they’re helping and the extent that they’re willing to help, it’s really hard to cut it off.”
The trend comes as Baby Boomers have been staying longer in C-suites, as The Post previously reported.
Boards at major firms have been hiring older and even previously retired chief executives — setting up a possible succession crisis across corporate America.
