For years, Pat Bearce had a message for his daughter Andrea: After her college graduation, she would be on her own financially.
It has been three years, and she isn’t quite there yet.
After studying broadcast journalism at Texas Christian University, Andrea decided to pursue a career as a chef, choosing a pricey culinary school in New York City. The restaurant jobs she landed didn’t come with health coverage, so, in addition to guaranteeing her apartment lease in Manhattan, her parents covered her health-care costs for a couple of years. They paid her monthly cellphone bill, too. And she still has a jointly held credit card with her mother, Catherine.
“It’s pretty hard to get them launched,” says Mr. Bearce, a pilot at Boeing Co. in Seattle, who now says he never actually intended to enforce the deadline. “The real bottom line is that when they’re done with school, they’re not really done.”