Helping your children buy a home without eating into your retirement

Friday dinner. Your eldest describes a flat she saw with her partner: three rooms, fourth floor, no lift. She says the price quietly, the way people do when they already suspect the answer. And someone across the table says what a great many Israeli parents say: "Don't worry, we'll help."

It is a sentence made of love, and it has no number in it. Nobody at the table knows how much it means, when it will happen or where the money will come from. When the day arrives, the contract is already on the table, and the money comes from whatever is easiest to reach: the bank savings, the keren hishtalmut (קרן השתלמות, a tax-advantaged savings fund), sometimes money that was meant for the years after work.

If that has happened in your family, or you can feel it coming, it does not make you careless parents. It means the help never had a place of its own.

Helping children buy a home: why "we'll help" stays a sentence

Part of you wants to give them a good start; part of you would rather not put a number on it. Each is protecting something real.

You want to feel that your family is building something that carries on. That isn't pride or show. It is part of what makes you the parents you are.

And in the same breath you are wary of what a number might reveal. "Putting a figure on helping my kids feels cold. If we check, we might find we can give less than we said, and that our retirement saving is smaller than we thought." As long as nobody writes a number, you can promise without checking and never open the pension statements. That silence protects a picture you hold dear: parents who will always be able to.

The problem is neither the generosity nor the caution. It is that they never sit down together over the same page.

A large sum with no name goes to the nearest pocket

Not carelessness: this is how any sum without an address behaves. Help with a home is a large sum arriving on a date nobody knows. It fits no monthly budget, because it is not monthly. It fits no goal, because nobody gave it a name. So when it comes due, it comes out of the easiest place to reach, not the place you would have chosen.

Dilip Soman and Amar Cheema (2011) found that money split into separate pots, each with its own name, was kept better than money held in one pile. The name does quiet work: it turns "money we have" into "money that already has a job".

Retirement saving has the same weakness: no near date, no name in the current account, so it too looks like "money we have" under pressure. Two sums without names compete with each other. Two sums with names can sit side by side.

Many parents feel that helping the children comes first and retirement can wait. The feeling is natural. But the years after work belong to the family too, and what supports you then is part of what you give your children.

Help for the children vs retirement saving: two lines on one page

The aim is modest and precise: the help you want to give is written down as a savings goal with an amount and a rough date, and both partners' long-term funds are written down right beside it. No promising the children a figure you haven't checked. No dipping into retirement money without knowing.

How much to give, and in what form, gift or loan, is something parents describe weighing with a professional. The decision is yours.

One reference point helps the conversation, as context rather than a target: under Bank of Israel directives, as reported by Mashkanta Guru, a first home requires 25% equity.

One more sentence first. Choosing a track, transferring, or withdrawing from a kupat gemel or keren hishtalmut is pension advice under Israeli law when given to a specific person. This article describes how these things work; a licensed pension adviser can look at your own case.

Saving for your children's home: from a sentence to a goal to a conversation

First, one sentence per child

Before any arithmetic, a sentence. "For Noa, roughly 80,000 ILS, in about eight years, as a gift." "For Itai, a similar sum, as a loan repaid slowly." Your numbers, your form. How a gift and a loan differ on paperwork, tax and agreements is covered in the article on parents helping with the down payment; your specifics are a conversation with a lawyer.

One sentence per child: what to check before promising

• Roughly how much: a sum you can stand behind
• Roughly when: an estimated year, even if it moves
• In what form: a gift, a loan, or not decided yet
• Both of us agree on this sentence
• The amount and date are saved as a goal in the child's name

0 of 5 done

Then a savings goal in the child's name

The sentence becomes a goal: a name, an amount, a date. Move the monthly amount and watch the date move with it.

Months until the help is ready

Monthly deposit₪700

Time to the target

100 months

In AlphaHome: create a savings goal for each child, say "Noa's flat", with an amount, a date and a progress bar; the dashboard shows how much each goal still needs per month. The savings plan can also hold it as one large future expense and work out the monthly deposit.

The long-term funds, in the same view

Now the second line. Type in the balances from the latest statements of both partners' pension funds, study funds and provident funds, and look at the two lines together. The question is not "how much do we have". It is "is the help quietly leaning on these funds without our having decided it should?" If it is, now is the time to talk, not the day the contract arrives.

To compare fees, the Capital Market Authority runs public tools, Gemel-Net and Pension-Net; why a small gap matters over years is in the article on management fees.

In AlphaHome: the pension page gathers both partners' long-term accounts, each with its owner, as typed in from the statements. It projects no pension and gives no advice; it shows what is there. The children's goal sits on the savings-goals page and the dashboard.

Only then, the conversation with the children

Only now do you talk. Not "we'll help", but "we've put aside roughly this much for you, until roughly this year". The number gets written on their side too, so they can plan around it instead of around a sentence from Friday dinner. How it looks from their end is covered in the article on money promised by parents.

Tax and pension figures are as of September 2026; ceilings update yearly.

When life doesn't wait for the goal

Your child finds a flat before the goal is full. It will happen. What you saved is what there is, and that is far more than an empty sentence. Today's step is not to rush: look at the goal and the long-term funds together, and decide what else is possible. A pressured withdrawal from a long-term fund is exactly the decision to ask about first, not understand afterwards. Next time, set the goal's date a little more conservatively.

Two children, one goal. One pot "for the kids" is convenient until the first child uses it and the second discovers theirs is empty. Split it into two goals, even if the amounts and the dates differ. Each child sees their own line.

A month when nothing goes into the child's goal. That is part of the road. The goal shows what is missing, and next month starts from there. A smaller deposit beats a pause.

Parents who help, and who look after themselves too

Once the help sits beside the long-term funds, Friday dinner feels different. "We'll help" is no longer a sentence in the air; it has a name, an amount and a date, and both of you see the same number on the same screen.

Help without a number will come, as before, from whatever is easiest to reach. Help with a number comes from the place you chose. The generosity stays exactly as it was. What changes is that it has a page, with two lines sitting side by side.

We help our children, and we look after ourselves for their sake too.

This week, write one sentence per child, "how much, roughly when, and in what form", and create a savings goal in that child's name with the amount and date you chose.