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One in three parents forgoes savings to support adult children
April 19, 2012
British parents are risking their financial security in retirement by continuing to support their children well into adulthood.
Many of Britain's parents are giving up large chunks of their own pension savings to support their grown-up children, a study has found.
Standard Life commissioned a YouGov poll of more than 2,000 adults, 1,318 of whom were parents.
Researchers found that 30 percent of parents were making financial sacrifices for their children, even though they were over 18 years of age.
On average, parents forgo around £15,490 for the sake of their adult children, even though this could boost their retirement income by around £38,500 if invested wisely.
John Lawson, a spokesman for Standard Life, said that parents' desire to support their adult children "is increasingly coming at a huge cost to their own future financial security".
And he predicted that the situation is likely to get worse as a result of high levels of unemployment among young people.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that unemployment fell by 35,000 to 2.65 million between December 2011 and February 2012.
However, the rate of youth unemployment remains high at over 22 percent.
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