With 54% of retirees struggling to make ends meet, research from Engage Mutual Assurance reveals that families are stepping in to provide a financial lifeline to their elderly relatives.

Nearly one in 10 British adults, the equivalent of more than 1.7m adults, are helping with the costs of their parents’ retirement. Of these, 22% have given money to their parents to help them to make ends meet on day-to-day expenses, 22% are paying towards their parents’ care and 33% have taken their parents into their or a relative’s home in order to reduce their costs of living and care.

Overall, 3% of adults with parents over 65 (more than 500,000) have brought their parents to live with them or relatives to cover the costs of their retirement. As parents get older, the need to move them into the family home in order to provide care increases significantly.

Of Britons with parents between the ages of 85 and 94, one in 10 are accommodating their parents in their or a relative’s home in order to reduce their costs of living and care. One in four Britons with parents over 65 are concerned about how the family will cover the costs of their parents’ retirement or that their inheritance will be spent by their parents in paying for their retirement.

Karl Elliott, spokesperson for Engage Mutual Assurance, said: “As costs of living increase, retirees are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. In hard times people often turn to family members for support and, as our research shows, this is the case for elderly relatives as well as young adults who are finding it increasingly difficult to disconnect themselves financially from their parents.

“With the size of Britain’s retired population growing, and costs of living increasing, it is important that people save little and often towards their retirement in order to reduce the pressure on themselves and their family to make ends meet in old age.”