Category Archives: News

Adult kids staying at home longer, costing parents more

In the UK, nearly 25% of adults aged 20-34 live at home, according to a recent piece by the BBC. That percentage has been increasing for 15 years.

The length of time those adult children stay at home has also been increasing, along with the cost. The average stay at home is now 10 months, up from 9.7 months last year. Parents spent about £1,640 on extra costs like water and electricity, along with £1,886 on redecorating and upgrading wi-fi.

Read more: Learn my #1 tip for financial planning when adult kids move home.

Canadian census data shows (surprise!) more adult children living at home

The latest Canadian census data shows the number of adult children living with their parents is on the rise again.

As of 2016, 34.7% of adults aged 20 to 34 were living with their parents, up from 33.3% in 2011.

 

But that number varies quite a lot across the country. In Ontario, 42.1% of adults in this age range live with their parents, and in Toronto specifically, nearly half do so: 47.4%. In Quebec, on the other hand, less than a quarter of 20-to-34-year-olds live at home.

Twenty to 34 is a wide age range that includes university students all the way through established adults. Not surprisingly, more people in their early 20s live with their parents (62.6%) than do people in their early 30s (13.5%). The majority of those in their early 20s who were living with parents said they had never left home, where as most of those in their early 30s had left at some point and then returned.

Living with a parent the most common situation for 18- to 34-year olds

Research from Pew Research Center based on U.S. Census data shows that for the first time in more than 130 years, 18- to 34-year-olds are more likely to live with their parents than with a spouse or partner. In fact, living with their parents is now the most common living arrangement for adults in this age group.

Living with a parent is the most common young adult living arrangement for the first time on record

But this statistic gets most interesting when you break it down by gender. Living with their parents has been the most common living arrangement for men aged 18 to 34 since 2009 – that’s seven years of living with mom and dad being the most common situation for sons in this age group. But for now, daughters in this age group are still more likely to live with a spouse or partner than with their parents.
Young men are now more likely to live with a parent than to live with a spouse or partner; not so for women

What if the adult kids never leave?

That’s the question posed by a Globe and Mail article published yesterday that features my advice for parents whose retirement is being threatened by adult children living at home:

“A family needs to sit down ahead of time and work out a budget … look at what their existing costs are in terms of paying for their home and things like heat, electricity, insurance and food, then estimate how those costs will be impacted by having another person living at home.

“It’s easy for adult children to go in expecting that it’s not going to cost anything or to be completely unaware of what the costs are.”

Read the rest of the article on the Globe and Mail’s website.

More Canadian seniors declaring bankruptcy

New information from Statistics Canada shows that the number of Canadian seniors in declaring bankruptcy is climbing. More than 82,000 people declared bankruptcy in Canada in 2014, 10% of them seniors. That’s a substantial increase from 8.3% in 2010.

Even more worrisome, Scott Hannah of the Credit Counselling Society told CBC Radio’s BC Almanac that the proportion of seniors among the society’s clients has increased from one in 20 fifteen years ago to one in five today. He told host Gloria Macarenko that boomerang kids are a factor in seniors’ increasing debt problems when the adult children don’t pay their fair share of the living expenses.

Delaying adulthood, changing the brain?

New research shows that delaying major life steps like moving out, getting married, and having children is actually changing the brains of young people today. According to Beatriz Luna, a professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, that’s actually a good thing, because it gives the brain longer to specialize before it has to stop engaging in “novelty seeking and exploration” to start dealing with the reality of day-to-day life responsibilities. That extra time could result in brains with more “variability and plasticity.”

You can read (or listen to) the whole interview with Dr. Luna, from CBC’s Day Six program, here.

Canadian contest offers a prize package to get kids out of the nest

adult children living at home contestWell, here’s something interesting.

I should start by saying that AdultChildrenLivingatHome.com has no affiliation with this contest whatsoever — I just thought it was something you all would want to hear about. In fact, I’m definitely interested in knowing what you think.

Here’s the scoop. The Canadian rate-finder website RateSupermarket.ca is having a contest for the “Ultimate Mother’s Day Gift.” What’s the prize? A prize package worth about $5,400 designed to help get your adult kid out of your house. They don’t specify what the prize package includes, other than to say it’s “full of grown up goodies” and that it’s designed to “get yourself or your grown child out of the house.”

So, what do you think? Is this really the ultimate Mother’s Day gift? Is $5,400 really enough to get an adult kid out of the house? Will you be entering?

You can find the contest details (and enter, of you’re a Canadian resident and you’re so inclined) here.

Airing Tonight on CBC: Generation Jobless

In 2011, I appeared in the documentary Generation Boomerang about, well, the boomerang generation. Tonight, the makers of that film are premiering their new documentary — Generation Jobless — on CBC’s DocZone at 9 p.m. PT/ET. I know I’ll be watching, and if you’re in Canada, I’d suggest you watch, too, especially if your adult kids are struggling with unemployment or underemployment. Here’s some information about the new documentary from the filmmakers’ press release.

UPDATE: Generation Jobless is now viewable online within Canada at http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/ID/2330990900/

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Today, the unemployment rate for Canada’s twenty-somethings hovers just under 15%, which is nearly double the national average. Why are so many of today’s college and university graduates unable to forge their way into the job market? The new CBC documentary Generation Jobless takes a critical look at the growing problem and the serious ramifications it will have on the lives of every Canadian regardless of age, gender, education or income. Can we fix a broken system or are we destined to betray an entire generation?

Generation Jobless explores the harsh realities Canada’s twenty-somethings face when they try to gain a toehold in the workplace: unprecedented competition from their parents’ generation, and an economy that is being transformed by globalization and automation. Generation Jobless also looks to Switzerland for a solution, where youth unemployment is 2.8% — the lowest in the developed world. In this country, a strategic alliance between government, educators and employers ensures that almost all young people find their place in the job market. If Switzerland can achieve this, why can’t Canada?
Several experts weigh in on what many are calling the most important social issue of our time.
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You can watch the trailer for Generation Jobless below.

Infographics: Plummeting youth employment in Canada

These infographic from The Globe and Mail show two things. First the huge drop in employment for young people aged 15-24 over the last five years. And second, how the average cost of housing compares to the median household income. They are part of a very interesting story looking at the challenges young people in Canada are facing today. You can see the whole piece here.

India court rules adult children have no right to stay at home

Here’s an interesting story. A court in Mumbai, India, recently ruled that adult children “can live in the house of their parents only with the consent of their parents and not otherwise.” This ruling was the result of a case in which a 35-year-old woman and her husband were arguing that they had the right to live in her 73-year-old father’s apartment even though the father wanted them to leave. It’s not clear yet what the long-term effects, if any, of this particular ruling will be in India. You can read more about this story on the BBC’s website here.