Yearly Archives: 2009

How to Kick Your Kids Out of the Nest

I was quoted yesterday in a piece for CBS MoneyWatch on what to do when you adult kids move home — or just won’t leave. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

If you hope to ever get your kids out of the house, you need a plan in place before they move back. That plan should set a move-out deadline and define what they need to accomplish while they’re home, says Christina Newberry, co-author of The Hands-On Guide to Surviving Adult Children Living at Home. Newberry speaks from experience, having twice moved home to live with her parents in her 20s. She suggests families agree to a policy for everything from overnight guests to sharing the TV and the house computer. Do not baby your children, she warns. “If you treat them like a kid again, you’re not helping them — you are creating a lifestyle that they won’t be able to maintain when they leave,” she says. “Your job is to get them to where they don’t need you anymore.”

You can read the whole article here.

Still more stories of adult children living at home

I share a lot of posts with stories about families with adult children living at home, because I know it’s important for those who are living in this challenging situation to understand that they are not alone. Today’s stories come from the TheSunNews.com in Myrtle Beach. You can read about adults from 30 to 56 who are living with their parents again, since unemployment in their area is at 10.5%. Here’s the link to the article:

http://www.thesunnews.com/news/local/story/1100598.html

Clever insight from a boomerang kid

At 26 and with 2 masters degrees, Nicky Loomis has found herself rooming with her parents in Pasadena, while trying to maintain a social life with her friends in L.A. In the first post on her new blog, she shares some of the trials and tribulatons of living with her parents in her mid-twenties. Here’s a highlight:

Though the high-school curfew is gone, if I don’t call to check in, it’s the barrage of the voicemails again. My parents even learned how to text.

My friends have been looking at me kind of funny lately, though, and I can’t blame them: I’ve started repeating dorky 60-year-old jokes my father performs at dinner; I now drink half-decaf, half-regular coffee; and I think watching Sunday golf on TV is relaxing.

What kind of a boomerang have I become?

For more of Nicky’s story, check out her blog at http://www.sgvtribune.com/opinions/ci_13481454. You might get some insight into how your own boomerangs are feeling. If not, Nicky’s witty writing should at least be enough to make you smile.

Teaching your adult children about investing

If you’re planning on helping your adult children out with a financial gift, it can be a great opportunity to teach them about investing. After all, the goal is for your adult children to someday become financially independent, so any tips you can give them now to help them toward that path will benefit everyone later.

This article from Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. offers some great tips for how to turn a financial gift into a life lesson in financial management.

Giving financial assistance to adult children

Whether or not your adult children live with you, it’s likely you’re providing them with some financial assistance. Make sure you do so in a way that helps your adult children work towards the ultimate goal of independence, and doesn’t interfere with your own financial well-being or retirement plans.

This article from SeaCostOnline.com offers some good tips, and some reminders about what to consider when setting up a repayment plan for a loan to your adult kids.

Those Australian Gen-Ys are getting a great deal

More research on adult children living at home has just come in from Australia. This time, it’s from Bankwest, and the results are a bit scary — but even more so are the quotes from Gen Y kids in an article about the survey published in the Herald Sun.

First, the findings from the survey, as published in the Herald Sun:

  • Parents are forking out $6000 a year to support their stay-at-home children.
  • Only 42 per cent pay rent and of those, the average amount is just $70 per week.
  • 60 per cent of parents think their kids don’t pull their weight around the house.
  • Almost half of parents felt they were taken for granted by their children kids.
  • More than half of Gen Ys said they could not afford to move out and 39 per cent said they liked the extra perks of homemade dinners and getting their laundry done.

It’s that last stat that probably gets the hackles of parents up. If it’s got you fuming, check out this quote from a Gen Y-er from the article:

“It’s nice having somebody take care of you a bit: laundry, dinner, a clean house, not having to do too much and obviously the money side.”

You can read the entire article here.

50% of Australian parents reducing financial support to adult children

A new survey from St George Bank in Australia shows that 50% of parents are unable or unwilling to provide as much financial support to their kids than they did before the global economic crisis.

Jason Rose, a real estate agent in Australia provides some interesting analysis of this situation on his blog. He says that among the impacts are the fact that adult children will live at home longer, and adults will be much older when they buy their first homes.

You can read his blog post here.

31% of older British parents have boomerang kids at home

A new survey from Saga Home Insurance shows that 31% of over-50 parents surveyed have adult children living at home who had previously left the nest. I’ve talked before about how the most common reasons for adult children to return home are the end of schooling, a breakup of a live-in relationship or marriage, or a financial crisis like a job loss. Numbers from this survey back that up. Among the findings, as reported by the Telegraph:

  • 10 per cent said they had made room for their children to help them cope financially.
  • 17 per cent ended up with their offspring back under their roofs after they had gone through divorce or separation.
  • 15 per cent of young adults were either unwilling or unable to contribute to the household bills.
  • 17 per cent said their children had ended up living with them for more than a year.

You can read an article about the survey on the Telegraph web site here.