Is Your Adult Child Sending You to the Poorhouse?

The word is out – parents nearing retirement should NOT sacrifice their financial stability by absorbing their adult children’s debt. Yet that advice – as sound as it is – bumps up against a starting reality. Today’s millennials – those born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s – are saddled with more debt than the generations before them. And many are turning to their parents and grandparents for help.

There’s a societal cost that goes with that mounting debt, which goes beyond steep monthly payments. Many millennials try to cut costs by moving back in with their parents. That slows the real estate market. They put off marriage and families. That slows independence. And they feel less financially secure than their Boomer and Gen X parents; a trend that goes against the very fiber of the American dream.