A single mother holds her son while she waits to receive her diploma during her graduation ceremony… [+] from college. Getty Images
We love our kids, but they can ruin retirement. As we face the consequences of a systemic failure of our retirement savings system, near-retirees have an average savings of only $15,000. When you couple parents’ inadequate savings with their children’s increasing costs for tuition and housing, you have a dangerous cocktail. While an act of love, raiding your retirement funds for adult children can leave you dependent on them in old age.
Housing is one area where older people are likely to provide their children with help financially. If you have millions saved, it may not matter. But if you are like most people with less than $2-3 million saved for retirement, taking money out of these funds to help an adult child may be bad for you both down the line. Adult children’s financial dependency on elderly parents can even come with the fault lines of regret and tension.
The Bank of Mom and Dad study by the for-profit online rental company Apartment List found in a nonscientific sample that 8% of non-student millennials (the 70 million+ American adults born between 1982 – 2000) have family members pay for their monthly rent. In addition, 17% expect financial help from family towards a down payment. Those numbers aren't large, and the poll isn't scientific, but I worry from other research that retirement accounts are tapped for family needs to the peril of the retiree. But, I stress it is the system at fault here, not the saver. Prices of homes where the jobs for young people are out of sight. Facing high housing costs is not the fault of the victim.
High housing costs is not the fault of the victim who can't afford to buy a house like some argue. For example, a millionaire Australian started a meme in May 2017 excoriating millennial adults for their profligacy. Avocado toast was the stand-in product, implying an entire generation sacrifices home investment for short-term luxuries. The meme was quickly disabused a few days later. The BBC calculated the avocado toast index, counting the avocado toasts equal to a down payment for a starter house located outside various city centers. In Johannesburg, it was 3,700 avocado toasts. 11,000 in San Franciso. You get the picture.
Most observers do not blame the low rate of home purchases on millennial spending. Rather, they point the finger at a combo of the current state of home ownership with the state of the labor market for millennials. For example, since 2000, home and rent prices increased by an average of 67%, while millennial’s income increased only 31%.
Nicole, an employee of Apartment List, told me she works hard and is a cautious spender. But recently, she asked her parents for the first time for the deposit and down payment she needed for a small room in a big house in San Francisco.
