Accordng to the US Census Bureau, 65% of college grads move back home with their parents. Yes, that’s 2/3 of young adults with college degrees returning to the nest after graduation.
This article explores how the situation is working for some families in the Arizona area.
This new article points to the rising number of adult “children” in their 40s and 50s moving back home when life throws them a challenge.
Kim Foss Erickson, a financial planner in Roseville, California, north of Sacramento, said she has never seen older children, even those in their 50s, depending so much on their parents as in the last six months.
“This is not like, ‘OK, my son just graduated from college and needs to move back in’ type of thing,” she said. “These are 40- and 50-year-old children of my clients that they’re helping out.”
Parents “jeopardize their financial freedom by continuing to subsidize their children,” said Karin Maloney Stifler, a financial planner in Hudson, Ohio, and a board member of the Financial Planning Association. “We have a hard time saying no as a culture to our children, and they keep asking for more.”
Over 80,000 household in the UK now have 3 generations living in them, with the middle generation supporting both their parents and their children (including adult children), according to insurance provider Prudential.
Other interesting facts from their recent survey:
UK parents with adult children living at home may be able to get a break on council tax if the adult child is on income support or income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, or if they’re a student.
When parents and children live through tough times together, a bond forms that can make it difficult for either the parent or the adult child to deal with the idea of living apart from one another. This phenomenon is called “enmeshment.”
But in the end, adult children must eventually strike out on their own and build independent lives.
U.K. newspaper columnist Dr. Cecilia d’Felice gives some advice to families in this challenging situation in her column this week.
From Money Magazine:
“If you were to invest the $2,200 a year that the average parent gives to a child and earn 8% annually over 20 years, you’d add $78,000 to your portfolio – money you might desperately need one day. Meanwhile, your openhandedness could be hurting, not helping, your kids by keeping them everlastingly immature and ill-equipped to deal with financial challenges or setbacks on their own.”
Maybe it’s time to cut the purse strings and set some guidelines for the amount of financial support you’re willing to give.
The financial support parents are giving to adult children has reached record levels, at least in the UK.
Last year, 39% of parents had given or loaned their adult children or granchildren significant sums of money. This year, the same survey — performed by UK insurance firm Scottish Widows — found that number had soared to 55%. The average amount parents said they gave their adult children or grandchildren was over 12,000 British pounds (over $24,000!).
How much of your retirement savings are you willing to hand off to your adult children living at home?
In one area of Sydney, Australia, 71% of 17-28-year-old adult children still live at home, prompting one television producer to create a documentary about the phenomenon.
Today’s “Classic Ann Landers” features two questions on dealing with adult children, including one 21-year-old stepson who lives at home and sometimes has his girlfriend sleep over.
If you have adult children living at home, you’ve got “kippers”.
The acronym, created by a UK insurance company, stands for:
Kids
In
Parents’
Pockets
Eroding
Retirement
Savings
Sounds a bit more serious than what North Americans tend to call adult children living at home: boomerang kids.
So what can you do to get your kids out of your pockets and make sure your retirement savings is still there when you want to retire?
It can be tough: The simple truth is that more people in your house = more dollars. With an adult child at home, you’ll be using more heat, hot water, and electricity. You’ll need to buy more groceries. You’ll need more gas for the car.
You need to work out a budget for your household and ensure it’s something everyone can live with. If you don’t know where the money to make the situation work will come from, you need to think long and hard about whether you can help your adult child by having them live at your home. Otherwise, as the acronym says, it can be easy to let your retirement savings be eroded away.
With some simple budgeting strategies you can get a good overview of the situation before your child moves home – and keep those kippers out of your pockets!