Financially Assisting Adult Children: Guidance and Considerations

Helping adult children financially should focus on one-time expenses and investments, not lifestyle subsidies, to encourage self-reliance and responsible financial management.

### Financially Supporting Adult Children: Creating Opportunities without Creating Dependency
* 💰  Before offering financial support, assess if children are struggling due to **external factors (e.g., inflation)** or **poor financial decisions**.
* 📊  Monitor how savings opportunities (e.g., staying on family health insurance) are being utilized by adult children, and **encourage them to save or invest these funds**.
* 🎓  Instead of subsidizing lifestyle, consider helping with **one-time expenses like education or experiences** to create **lasting memories**.
* 💵  Offer **matching contributions** for significant purchases (e.g., first car or house down payment) to encourage **responsible financial behavior**.
* 🏡  Avoid dictating how financial support should be used; have open conversations to **understand children's needs and priorities**.
* 💪  Be cautious not to "**prime the pump**" too much, as it may prevent children from developing **necessary financial skills**.
* 🏗️  Use the analogy of steroids in weightlifting to illustrate the importance of **developing the financial "tendons"** to support any additional support provided.

[Music] Because now we're getting to the other side of this. Assuming that your answer was Can I help? and the answer is Yes, what are actually the best ways to help so that you don't create a crutch system where they're relying on you to just live their life? Yeah, if the first thing you have to ask is how financially stable are they. Are they in a tight spot because they're in the messy middle, and frankly everybody in the messy middle finds themselves in some form of a tight spot? Or are they in a tight spot because of decisions that they are making that are not the sound decisions, they are the less than sound decisions? You need to assess, and you need to be honest with yourself. Are they struggling now because life is just hard? Interest rates are up, housing prices have increased, children are more expensive, groceries, is there inflation, is that why things are tight? Or are things tight just because they haven't made the tough decisions early on, and they have allowed their lives to

be subsidized for you, and you need to have a real assessment of which of those is true and which of those accurately defines where your kids really are. And I have a good example. We did a Q&A show, and I remember the question came in, Is hey, it was two things that kind of came to mind was my children, my adult children got their first job, they're still on my health insurance. Well, that might make sense from a financial standpoint because look, if you're already a family plan, you have they have younger siblings, it doesn't change your premium, but it might create some savings opportunities for them. I completely get that because with the laws now allow adult children to stay on your health insurance until age 26, might be a financial opportunity. Same thing, think about your Mobile plans or car insurance and things like that, there might be financial opportunities, but that is going to be a little different than self-reliance. But with all that shared, I want you as the parent, and I don't want you to get too nosy, but

you should pay attention to what are these opportunities creating in dividends from your children, and have these conversations in some way, in a very tactful way, because you have to be careful because they are now spreading their wings. They're going into independence of adulthood, but you should find out, is this savings that you're creating, maybe through the health insurance or the mobile plan or the car insurance, if this savings is it turning into saving and investments for the future, or is it just being consumed. And I would start internalizing some of that because you are paying attention to as an adult to see, have my adult children started showing dividends to good behaviors, good adult management of their personal finances. So because if they can be good with a little, they can probably be great with a lot. So as you give them more and more opportunity, but you do need to be paying attention to those dividends. All right, so let's talk about ways that we can help financially, assuming that they are

in the situation where it makes sense, we love the idea of helping with one-time expenses, not supplementing lifestyle. We love the idea of, okay, maybe I want to help with education, or I want to help with experiences. I want to be generous. What I don't want to do is say, Hey, you know what, go buy the new car, and I'll cover the car payment. Or, You know what, I'll help with the more, go buy the more expensive house, I'll help with a mortgage. That is different than you recognizing your kids saying, Hey, you know what, we're not going to be able to go on family vacation this year. We're going to make sure that we buckle down, we're going to make sure we tighten the belt, we want to be saving for the future. And you say, Hey, you know what, why don't we all go on a family vacation, and I will foot the bill. That's a wonderful way to be generous and create a huge opportunity that does not subsidize lifestyle, but it does create memories.

that can ultimately blossom over time well, and also, sometimes there might be opportunities for you to help fund things. Maybe you're not paying for it outright, sure, but um, and I'll give two examples. I think about like my daughter's first car. I did a matching contribution, meaning that I will give you whatever you save up for your first car. I'll match it up to this limit because you hear about these horror stories where you have an entrepreneur kid that all of a sudden is buying a Lamborghini because they're cutting so many, you know, yards of grass. That's not what situation I ran into, but it is one of those things where it was, it worked. She saved up enough so we could buy a very reasonable used car. She paid for half of it, maybe that if you, if you age that up, maybe that first house down payment if you know your children. I, I, I know people in my life that, that parents have seen the good work of their adult children, and they said, hey, you know why.

don't we offer a $10,000 match on your contribution towards your house down payment? It can be life-changing. And if you see the fruits of good behavior from your children, there's nothing wrong with you helping with those big one-off life decisions. But one of the things you also ought to do is consider the need of your kids and what's actually important to them. Don't decide, hey, you know, I'm going to help my kid, and so I'm going to tell my kid, hey, I'm going to help you with a down payment on your first house, and I found a house that I think you should buy, and it's a great deal, and here it is, and here's your down payment. Well, maybe your child isn't going to stay in that location for 5 to 7 years, or maybe they want to have a f, maybe there are other things, other areas where they need help. You should have a conversation with them. Open communication is going to be the key. Just because something might have been helpful to you when you were

in their situation, does not necessarily mean that it will be helpful to them. And the last thing you want to do is offer some form of generosity, or offer some form of gift that falls flat, that wasn't actually something that helped them where they needed it. So make sure you have an open line of communication to lean into the areas that are actually truly going to be helpful. Well, and I don't want you to prime the pump so much where you create these opportunities, and this is what you're alluding to Bo, where they never actually develop the skill set to be able to even maintain it. It's kind of like, you know, if you, and you love this boat 'cause you think about weightlifting, oh yeah, let's go. I mean, everybody thinks about, everybody thinks about the key muscles. But if you do like steroids or other things that might give you big gains very quickly, the problem that nobody ever thinks about is all the tendons, all the things that are around it that are holding the structure of these muscles. So you as a parent with

your your horsepower your extra muscle power you might be able to give your kids some outsize performance or extra muscle. But if they never develop the tendons or the skills to support it, all it falls apart. So if you get, if you help your your kids buy a house that's way outside of what they should be buying, meaning that they they should be buying a starter home, but you gave them two steps ahead and put them in a solid middle raising four kids and and now they can't afford the insurance, they can't afford the landscapers or whatever else is going on in that neighborhood, you might have created a problem. So make sure you're not letting them get bigger than the structure of what their financial life can support. Dynamite analogy would not guess you're going to pull steroids out on. I like that, that was not in the show content meeting, good.

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Supporting Adult Children Without Creating a Crutch

When offering help to adult children, it's important to assess their financial stability and the reasons for their tight spot.

Consider whether they are facing challenges due to external factors like inflation and increased expenses, or if their own decisions have led to financial difficulties.

Providing financial opportunities, such as staying on the family's health insurance plan, can be beneficial, but it's essential to differentiate between creating savings and fostering self-reliance.

Financial Support for Adult Children: Encouraging Responsible Management

It's important to tactfully discuss with adult children whether the savings created from financial support are being turned into investments for the future or simply being consumed.

Paying attention to the dividends of good financial behavior in adult children is crucial, as it can indicate their ability to manage larger sums of money.

When providing financial help, it's beneficial to focus on one-time expenses, education, and experiences rather than supplementing a luxurious lifestyle, in order to encourage responsible financial management.

Supporting Your Children's Major Financial Decisions

Offering a matching contribution can help your children make major purchases responsibly, such as their first car or a down payment on a house.

It's important to consider their needs and priorities, and have open communication about how you can best support them.

Instead of making decisions for them, it's crucial to understand their desires and provide assistance accordingly.

The Importance of Offering Effective Support

Maintaining open communication is crucial in providing genuinely helpful support to others.

It's important not to create dependencies but to help develop the necessary skills for long-term success.

Offering meaningful assistance in the right areas is more valuable than just providing temporary solutions.

The Importance of Financial Structure for Your Kids

Providing your kids with extra support beyond their means can lead to financial problems in the future.

It's crucial not to let them outgrow the financial structure they can support.

Overextending their housing situation, for example, can create long-term difficulties.