When Your Biggest Fear Isn’t Your Own Retirement

When Your Biggest Fear Isn’t Your Own Retirement—It’s Your Kids’ Future

You’ve worked hard your whole life. You’ve built a nest egg. You’re comfortable. But something is keeping you up at night, and it’s not your own financial future—it’s your adult children’s.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. According to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, 72% of Americans believe children will be financially worse off than their parents. In Canada, the numbers tell a similar story—a TD Bank survey from 2024 found that 70% of Canadian parents believe their child will face greater financial challenges than they did.

That’s nearly three out of four people on both sides of the border sharing the same worry that’s probably crossed your mind at family dinners or during late-night conversations with your spouse.

The Numbers Tell a Story You Already Know

The statistics paint a picture that matches what you’re seeing in your own family. A 2024 Bankrate survey found that 61% of parents with adult children have made financial sacrifices to help their kids financially. According to Savings.com’s 2024 report, 50% of American parents provide regular financial assistance to their grown children, averaging $1,474 per month.

North of the border, the situation is equally challenging. TD Bank’s 2024 survey revealed that 57% of Canadian parents expect to support their children as adults financially, yet 61% don’t feel confident in their ability to do so. Among Canadian parents who believe their children will face greater challenges, 77% specifically worry about home affordability.

The impact goes deeper than monthly checks. The Intuit Credit Karma survey reported by Newsweek in 2024 revealed that 27% of American parents are actually postponing their own retirement to help their adult children. Meanwhile, a majority of those supporting adult children worry about setting themselves up for a comfortable retirement, according to Newsweek.

Why This Generation Faces Different Challenges

Your children aren’t struggling because they’re lazy or unmotivated. The economic landscape has fundamentally changed. LendingTree’s 2024 Household Financial Insecurity Report found that 36.4% of American households reported difficulty paying for regular household expenses. For young adults aged 18 to 24, financial insecurity increased by 25% between 2022 and 2024.

The traditional path—get a degree, find a stable job, work for 30 years, retire with a pension—no longer exists. Companies downsize without warning. Artificial intelligence threatens entire career fields. The Federal Reserve’s 2024 survey found that only 65% of parents with children under 18 said they were doing at least okay financially, down from 75% in 2021.

In Canada, parents surveyed by TD Bank identified specific challenges their children face: 53% worry about increasing grocery costs, 57% about saving for retirement, and 49% about having the financial stability to raise a family.

There’s a Path Forward You Might Not Have Considered

Here’s where the story takes a turn. While the corporate world becomes less stable, another model of building wealth and security has quietly proven itself. Career ownership—taking control of your professional destiny through business ownership—offers a different equation for financial stability.

Career ownership means moving from being an employee subject to someone else’s decisions to becoming the decision-maker. It’s about building equity instead of just earning a salary. It’s about creating something you can control, grow, and eventually pass on or sell.

The numbers support this approach. Small businesses that follow proven systems and models have significantly higher success rates than those starting from scratch. When you combine a tested business framework with proper guidance and support, the path to financial independence becomes more transparent and more achievable.

Why Career Ownership Works When Employment Doesn’t

Think of career ownership as taking the best parts of employment—structure, systems, proven processes—and combining them with the control and equity-building potential of business ownership. You get:

• Control over your income potential and career trajectory
• The ability to build sellable equity, not just earn a paycheck
• Protection from layoffs, downsizing, and corporate restructuring
• Multiple revenue streams instead of a single-source income dependency
• Tax advantages are not available to employees
• The flexibility to scale up or maintain based on your goals

Unlike traditional employment, career ownership puts you in the driver’s seat. You’re not waiting for promotions, hoping for raises, or worrying about the next round of layoffs. You’re building something real, something valuable, something yours.

This is where having the right guide matters. A Career Ownership Coach™ from The Entrepreneur’s Source® isn’t trying to sell you anything. Instead, they help you explore whether business ownership aligns with your goals—and if it does, which model fits your situation.

Think of a Career Ownership Coach™ as a translator between two worlds. They understand both the corporate mindset your children might be stuck in and the entrepreneurial thinking needed for business ownership. They’ve guided hundreds of people through this transition, helping them see possibilities they didn’t know existed.

Your Career Ownership Coach™ will:

• Help identify transferable skills from current careers
• Explore various business models that match individual strengths
• Clarify financing options that protect existing savings
• Connect you with successful business owners who’ve made similar transitions
• Guide the entire discovery process without pushing any particular direction

The process is about education and self-discovery, not sales. It’s about understanding all options and making informed decisions based on individual goals, resources, and lifestyle preferences.

You don’t need to hand your children a solution. In fact, that rarely works. You can introduce them to a different way of thinking about their future. When they understand that career ownership is possible—that regular people successfully run businesses every day—it changes their entire perspective on what’s achievable.

Your Role as the Catalyst, Not the Hero

You’ve spent years being the safety net. It may be time to help your children build their own. A Career Ownership Coach™ can show them how business ownership creates multiple streams of income, builds equity, and offers more control over their financial future than any corporate job ever could.

The beautiful part? You don’t need to be the expert. You don’t need to have all the answers. You need to introduce someone who does.

Career ownership isn’t about taking massive risks or gambling everything on an untested idea. It’s about following proven paths that others have successfully navigated. It’s about getting the education, support, and guidance needed to make informed decisions.

Taking the First Step

If you’re tired of watching your children struggle in an economy that seems stacked against them, exploring career ownership through The Entrepreneur’s Source® could open doors you didn’t know existed. Your children deserve the same opportunity for financial stability that you achieved—it just might look different than the path you took.

The Entrepreneur’s Source® has helped thousands of families transition from financial uncertainty to business ownership. Our Career Ownership Coaches™ understand both the challenges your children face and the solutions that actually work in today’s economy.

Your children’s financial future doesn’t have to be your biggest worry. With the right guidance, they can build something sustainable, profitable, and entirely their own.

Ready to explore how a Career Ownership Coach™ can help your family? Visit The Entrepreneur’s Source® to learn more about turning career uncertainty into an ownership opportunity.