When Helping Your Adult Child Costs Too Much: A Practical Guide to Money, Boundaries, and Your Own Future

You can care about your child and count yourself in.

What began as a little help with rent, groceries, or an unexpected bill may now be affecting your savings, health, and plans for the years ahead. You want to remain a loving parent. You also need a way to decide what you can sustain—and explain it without turning the conversation into a judgment of your child.

Written for older parents, When Helping Your Adult Child Costs Too Much offers a calm, concrete approach to this difficult balance. Martha Everly takes you from understanding the support you already provide to making a clear proposal, discussing changes, and responding when the next request arrives.

Inside, you’ll explore how to:

• Recognize the full cost of financial and practical support, including help that has become automatic.
• Give your own needs and retirement plans a place in the decision.
• Choose what to continue, change, or stop, with clear amounts, responsibilities, and review dates.
• Talk through guilt, disagreement between parents, and difficult conversations with your grown son or daughter.
• Address shared housing, urgent requests, and promises that become hard to keep.
• Adapt support when illness or disability changes what is needed.

Illustrative family stories, reflection questions, small next steps, and six reusable planning worksheets help you turn a difficult subject into decisions you can put on paper.

The goal is a sustainable way to care for your child while making room for your own life—even when your child disagrees.