To Support Family, Gen Z Is Raiding Retirement

For most of modern history, family money flowed downhill: parents helped their kids. That current has reversed. According to a survey of 1,000 American adults released on October 6, 2026 by My Guide to Retirement, four in five respondents gave money to a relative or loved one over the past year, and the youngest givers are taking the hardest hits. Nearly a third of Gen Z supporters have pulled money out of a retirement account to support family, trading decades of compound growth for this month's bills.

The scale of the giving is striking. More than half of supporters handed over at least a thousand dollars in the past year, and about one in seven gave more than ten thousand. The money goes to unglamorous essentials: groceries top the list, followed by housing costs and utilities. And 44% of supporters say the generosity has hurt their ability to save for retirement, the very future they are supposed to be building. It fits a pattern of young adults who look fine on paper while quietly falling behind, as we explored in The Gen Z Wealth Paradox.

The sandwich generation is getting younger

The classic sandwich generation — adults squeezed between raising kids and caring for parents — is getting younger fast. The survey found 38% of Americans support family in both directions at once, financially backing a child and a parent at the same time. That includes 46% of millennials and 39% of Gen Z, compared with just 20% of boomers. Pew Research Center's August update tells a similar story: one in four American adults now meets its definition of the sandwich generation, with the share peaking above half among people in their forties, according to a summary of Pew's August findings. A Federal Reserve analysis published September 30, 2026 adds a wrinkle: the desire to have children has fallen most sharply among Gen Z specifically, which suggests the squeeze is about more than delayed timing.

How does a generation on starter salaries afford it? Mostly, it borrows. Nearly half of supporters fund the help from regular work income, but more than a quarter have put family expenses on a credit card, others have drawn down emergency savings, and about one in nine took out a personal loan. The retirement damage is the quietest part: close to a quarter of supporters has reduced or stopped retirement contributions, 13% delayed starting them at all, and three in four say they often feel stressed about money because of family obligations. The full survey results put hard numbers on a trade-off millions are making quietly.

What it really costs to support family at 25

Pulling money out of a retirement account in your twenties is uniquely expensive, because the dollars you remove are the ones with the most time to grow. Financial planners have a grim shorthand for this: every dollar withdrawn early can cost several times its value by retirement age, thanks to lost compounding. Add credit card interest on top, with so many supporters carrying family costs on plastic, and the true price of the decision to support family compounds in the wrong direction. Almost half of those supporting an aging parent said the costs came in higher than expected, which means many young givers are budgeting blind for bills that keep growing.

The case for keeping the family safety net

There is another way to read the same numbers. For millions of families, this is not a crisis but a value system working as designed. research on multigenerational households found that close to a third of adults ages 25 to 29 live with multiple generations under one roof, and that the arrangement measurably buffers residents against poverty. In Pew's earlier work on young adults who moved back home, almost nine in ten said they helped with household expenses, with support flowing both ways. The new survey captures something real about obligation, but obligation is not the same as victimhood: the vast majority chose to give, and most would do it again.

The pressure is only building. The holiday spending season is weeks away, and open enrollment will force millions of young adults to price health coverage for themselves and sometimes their parents. The old script said the bank of mom and dad would carry Gen Z into adulthood. The new script says Gen Z is the bank now, funding two generations on one starter salary and quietly draining its own future to do it. That is not a failure of budgeting. It is a generation doing the math and choosing to support family anyway. For more stories on how young adults are actually living, browse our Voices coverage.