the bank of mom and dad

i do it. you do it. almost everyone i know does it.

but why doesn't anyone in this article feel the least bit EMBARASSED or GUILTY about it?

"AT 23, Jason McGuinness lives a postcollege life in Manhattan that is very nearly typical. He works as a media research analyst, making about $30,000 a year. Sharing a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up building with a roommate on the Upper East Side, his portion of the rent is $1,100 monthly.

The walls are decorated with pennants and posters from Syracuse University, his alma mater. He orders takeout dinners, carries peanut-butter sandwiches to work and occasionally takes in a Mets game with friends.

And like many of his peers — educated, employed, urban-dwelling young adults — he receives monthly assistance from his parents, in the form of a $300 check and the payment of his cellphone bill.

This is not the largesse of wealthy families doled out through trust funds. Nor is the money a couple of $20 bills tucked into a card at the holidays. Mr. McGuinness and others like him are the beneficiaries of an increasingly common subsidy arriving regularly from Mom and Dad, something like a family fellowship.

It helps to pay for housing, bills and travel expenses, and the support has been increasing for the past two decades as education is extended, marriage is delayed and young people take the scenic route from adolescence to adulthood.

"Everybody I know is supporting their children in some way," said Gail Horowitz, Mr. McGuinness's mother, a vice president of the Zlokower Company, a public relations firm in Manhattan. Unlike young adults who "boomerang" back home to live with their parents — the subject of the recent comedy "Failure to Launch" — these young people live independently. But they need help to make ends meet, or put another way, to maintain a middle-class way of life.""

although, not going to lie, this sounds like something my mom would do:

"Eventually, most children outgrow the need for a stipend. But the instinct of parents to give — and of children to receive — can linger on. When John Maysles got a dog four years ago, his mother told him he couldn't leave it alone all day.

"So I pay for doggy day care," she said. "It is $16 a day. Probably he could afford it, but it has been on my credit card and I haven't changed it.""