How middle-aged parents get help with cash ... from the Bank of Kids!
FoRGET the Bank of Mum and Dad – middle-aged parents are increasingly being helped out of money difficulties by their grown-up children, a report suggests.
The study of family finances found the hardest-pressed age group are not young adults, or even millennials, but their parents – the so-called ‘squeezed middle’ generation.
They face the burden of supporting elderly parents as well as their own families, paying mortgages and high living costs.
The report from investment firm Brewin Dolphin challenges the widespread assumption that young people are worse off than their parents because they have to deal with debts from student loans while trying to meet high housing costs.
It claims that younger people are comparatively better off – and that more than a third of those in their 20s and early 30s have provided financial support to struggling parents.
Polling for the study found that 44 per cent of the young adult age group are financially comfortable, three-quarters say they are able to save, and four out of ten claim they are prepared to support their parents in later life.
By contrast, more than half of the squeezed middle generation – aged from mid-30s to mid-50s – are under heavy money pressure and, the report claims, ‘sometimes go without to provide for the rest of the family’.
More than a third, 37 per cent, are doing no better than making ends meet, and nearly one in five, 19 per cent, admit they are ‘struggling’.
Around one in seven say they worry about money all the time.
Report adviser Dr Eliza Filby said: ‘Millennials have been more financially dependent on their parents than any other previous generation, and they recognise that they will have to reciprocate this as their parents age and they themselves become more financially secure.
‘They want to offer the same opportunities and support to their children that their parents gave to them. This attitude towards financial inter-generational dependence is very different behaviour than we have seen from previous generations for two reasons: children are dependants for much longer and the elderly are living longer.
‘The family unit are more financially interdependent and emotionally tied than at any other time since before the Second World War.’
The findings – based on a survey of 5,000 people carried out by
‘Going without to provide for family’
opinium Research – come at a time of frequent demand for more support for younger people and greater taxation of the generation perceived as wealthy who are now reaching pension age.
The report states that among the 18-34 age group, the share bailing out parents has increased to 36 per cent from 23 per cent in 2016.
Despite their high saving levels, around a fifth worry they will not have enough money to pay for their own retirements and that they may have to work longer.
The new signs of wealth among young adults may reflect the growth of the ‘boomerang’ generation of those who return to live with their parents after university, some for years, at low cost.
Nearly a third of men between the ages of 20 and 34 live with parents, and one in five women in the same age group.