When becoming a parent, your sole responsibility is to ensure your child is looked after and nurtured from birth until reaching adulthood. However, once your child becomes an adult, there are many ways that they can get into debt such as through student loan debts. Here are 5 ways you can help your adult children with debt.

Support Your Child

Being in debt at any age can bring vast amounts of stress and anxiety, however for your adult child who may be just starting out, the financial burden can seem much worse. One way to help your adult child is to offer full support and guidance. Knowing they have someone to talk to can be massively reassuring, ensuring they know that if things get too much, there is always someone willing to listen to their problems.

Share Experiences

If you have been in a comparable situation yourself, share your experience with your child. For them to know they are not alone will give them a huge sense of relief and will help them think more clearly on how they plan to tackle the debt. Whilst the details of the debt will naturally differ, being able to relate to your child’s feelings will help you get a clearer understanding on what they are going through. However, it is important that you are realistic with your child and let them know that you do not have all the answers to their questions.

Offer Your Services

If you are fortunate enough to have some free time, consider offering to look after your grandchildren for one or two days a week. This will help to considerably reduce your child’s childcare bill which in turn means they can put more money aside to pay off their debts.

Skills and Wisdom

There are many skills and wisdom that you can teach and share to your child which could have a positive impact on their finances. Whilst your child is paying off their debt, giving them tips and tricks to help save money such as cooking from scratch as opposed to buying ready meals as well as mending clothes rather than buying brand new items can significantly reduce the cost of living expenses and give your child more money towards paying off the debt. Sharing your wisdom and knowledge can be incredibly beneficial and help give your child a different perspective on the situation they are currently in.

Options

As a parent, you will not want to see your child struggle in any situation. If you can offer financial help towards paying off their debt, there are many factors you need to consider such as your annual income and taxes. There are a variety of routes you can go down such as debt consolidation which allows you to take out one loan to help pay off many other existing ones.

Make sure that you sit down with your child and thoroughly analyze and identify how much debt they are in, so you can come up with a well-structured plan to help reduce the cost or solve the problem altogether.