Cutting the purse strings

 

In today's economy, young adults are finding it harder to land that first job, which means that more of them will need your help to get started in life. Parents, on the other hand, need to strike a balance between the instinct to protect their children and their own financial needs.

The best way to achieve that balance is to plan, well in advance, exactly when your kids will be expected to support themselves. The earlier you figure that out, the better. "When you take off their financial training wheels, you run the risk they will fall off, skin their knees, and cry, making you feel guilty," says Ken Clark, a psychotherapist and certified financial planner in Little Rock, Ark., and author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Out of Debt" (Alpha Books, 2009). "But the payoff is that they learn to ride unassisted."