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Nearly 1.4 million Canadians missed a credit payment in the second quarter of this year. One of them may have been your kid. Now what?

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Delinquencies are stabilizing, but not for consumers under 36, according to credit agency Equifax Inc. The average non-mortgage debt climbed two per cent to $14,304, and the non-mortgage balance delinquency rate for more than 90 days was up 19.7 per cent from a year ago for these gen-Zers and “late” millennials.

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Before we mock their profligate ways, Statistics Canada said the unemployment rate among returning students aged 15 to 24 was 20.1 per cent in May, a 3.2 percentage point jump from a year ago. It’s tough to find a job and pay down your expenses when your shelter and food costs have been rising for years.

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Rebecca Oakes, vice-president of advanced analytics at Equifax Canada, said some people are doing better at lowering their borrowing, but others not doing as well and struggling wth rising debt.

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“We start to look at some of the younger consumers and they are increasing their credit card spending, while some of the older consumers are cutting back,” she said, adding some of the increase may be a necessity. “It is the only way they have to pay for certain things. It is difficult to adapt. And if you don’t have a job, what do you do?”

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Brian Doyle, president of Ottawa-based Doyle Salewski Inc., a licensed insolvency trustee, said he is regularly seeing clients with maxed-out credit cards.

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“They are in with the payday loan people and dealing with these high-interest rate lenders. Lower-income people are desperate for any money,” he said. “We can take care of the debt. But the budgets still don’t work.”

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A consumer proposal is an option, but it is usually structured under a five-year repayment plan with your creditors. Even after repayment, it is part of your credit history for three more years, and some life plans could be impacted by the increased difficulty of borrowing. Bankruptcy is even harsher.

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It’s no surprise that parents will help a child, but adult children also help elderly parents. One solution, common in some cultures, is having multigenerational households.

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“I have a relative moving back in with her parents and she makes $70,000 a year, but her rent was going up and she couldn’t afford it,” Doyle said, adding this woman was carrying $24,000 in student debt and a car loan.

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Statistics Canada earlier this month said 2.4 million people in Canada lived in a multigenerational household, which amounts to about 6.5 per cent of all Canadians living in a private household. Of those households, 52.7 per cent were what the agency called racialized and 40.5 per cent were born outside Canada.

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Doug Porter, chief economist at the Bank of Montreal, said the data is from 2021, but rising shelter costs and food prices will only encourage the trend.