Brandon Moss is a 36-year-old financial advisor whose mother-in-law moved into a retirement community this year. Although her daily living expenses are covered, Moss and his wife, Shelby, are paying for her cell phone, car repairs and other incidentals while hoping she doesn’t fall ill.

“If she does, we will probably end up paying for an assisted-living facility out of pocket,” Moss told Financial Advisor.

Moss is among the 62% of caregivers between the ages of 25 and 54 and among the 52% tending to a parent in need of care, according to a Genworth study called “Beyond the Dollar.”

Moss, who works as a financial advisor with United Capital Financial Life Management in Dallas, is preparing for the worst, hoping for the best and helping his young adult child clients do the same.

“As a generation, we are beginning to understand that longevity means our parents will likely still be alive as we age and that they will need our help,” he said.

Although it’s too late to purchase long-term-care insurance for his wife’s mother, Moss is exploring it for his own parents in order to ease the burden of having to care for two sets of aging loved ones. He advises his millennial and Gen X clients to do the same.

“You grow up thinking your parents are invincible and that nothing will happen to them and then these changes start happening and fast,” Moss said.

Younger caregivers are no doubt filling a much-needed gap, but they are also drawing on earnings and resources, which could be detrimental to their own retirement. Some 62% are paying for care with their own savings/retirement funds and 38% are reducing contributions to their savings and retirement accounts, according to the Genworth study.

“You cannot allow your clients to forgo retirement savings to take care of someone else because there’s a good chance that there won’t be a family member there to care for the caregiver in 14 years,” said Jamie Hopkins, associate director of the Retirement Income Program at the American College in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

That’s because the availability of family caregivers is expected to vanish over time.

In 2030, the ratio of potential caregivers for every person over 80 years old is expected to drop to four from its 2010 number of seven, and by 2050 there will only be three family members available to provide care to relatives 80 years and older. Those figures come from an AARP study called “The Aging of the Baby Boom and the Growing Care Gap.”

As a result, Hopkins suggests that financial advisors use a 1035 exchange to trade in a whole life insurance policy for a hybrid product, such as a fixed-indexed annuity, that includes a long-term-care rider especially for adult children in their 40s and early 50s.

“They don’t have to stop caregiving for their aging loved one,” Hopkins told Financial Advisor. “You just need to advise your clients to care for themselves at the same time.”

Advisor Rianka Dorsainvil, 28, advises clients to set aside earnings for the specific purpose of assisting aging loved ones. Ideally, money to fund a family emergency, such as long-term care, is withdrawn from 30% of an adult child’s take-home pay.

“I recommend that my clients create a family fund with their discretionary cash flow, but only after they have paid money into their retirement accounts, investments and savings accounts that fund their own goals,” said Dorsainvil, founder of the advisory firm Your Greatest Contribution in Maryland.

The Genworth study further found that younger caregivers who help provide financial assistance for the care of their loved ones estimate that they pay, on average, about $10,000 in out-of-pocket expenses annually. That’s up from an average of $7,285 in 2010.

Financial expenses can include everything from household sundries, personal items and transportation services to payment to home nursing staff and long-term-care facilities.

“Even though they had guaranteed income sources, we are seeing the beginning of a new trend where an early wave of baby boomers who don’t have long-term-care planning or insurance in place start to reach those years where they need significant long-term care,” Hopkins said.