Parents are your adult children living at home? Adult children are living at your parents home?

[mi*vida*loca]

I can understand single people in the cities leaving to go back home, but full on married couples with kids? Seems a bit ridiculous to me. But, I've never been the type to go run to my parents when things get difficult.

City living with kids during a pandemic must be awful. Trapped in a small apartment with no where to go. I grew up in city life. Our place was small with no yard but we had places to go. The park, museums, etc. With none of that open, and if my parents had a decent sized home with a yard, and they were ok with it, I would definitely move home to ride it out. My son was super active and hyper as a kid. I couldn’t even imagine living in a small Apartment with him for months without being able to leave. Then add in working plus trying to do virtual learning. IMO with family is the best place to be.

But again, this is normal in my culture. It’s really not a big deal and actually the elders get excited when they hear of “kids” and grandkids moving back home. It gives them a little spark. They usually love it.

 

[Hikergirl]

My 2 young adult kids are currently in college, 1 in campus housing and one in an apartment off campus.
My dd is finishing her BS this semester and will go to Grad school for another couple of years.
My ds is in his last year of his program. He won't have any issue getting a job so I'm pretty sure he'll move out ASAP.
My door is always open for them to live here but I hope they don't have to take me up on that.

 

[Colleen27]

Now some of my family is getting into this zone of “you’re done school so get out” and it’s leading to their kids going to bad living situations. Living in a horrible (dangerous) neighborhood because it’s all they can afford or living with a bf/gf they really don’t want to be with (or feel trapped with) but it’s the only way they can afford to live in a nicer area. The parents say “I had to struggle so you can struggle too. You’ll be ok.” It’s a crappy situation and once you start out life 5 steps behind it’s hard to catch up.

This is something I've seen a lot of in my young adult kids' social circles, and it is one of the reasons I'm open to them living at home a little longer to be able to move out on solid footing. I've also discouraged my kids from thinking of significant others as potential roommates, because I really don't want them feeling stuck in a bad relationship because they can't pay the bills without the other person or because they're both on the lease. And I've noticed that's where a lot of their peers who move out under deadlines or pressure or who have a lousy home life that they're desperate to escape end up.

 

[barkley]

i think that whatever works and is mutually agreeable to all the involved persons is fine. what DOES concern me though are the situations i'm aware of where the parents are either turning a blind eye to or unwilling to share with their adult children when their living in the home totally or largely 'free' is having a tremendous negative impact on the parent's current budget/ability to save for retirement. i know how much my utilities and household expenses dropped when one of my adult children moved out-going from 4 to 3 DID result in a net savings of about 25% in our utilities/groceries/misc cleaning and household products so when i see households that i know have voiced concerns over meeting their empty nest expenses/how they will meet their expenses when they have no choice but to retire i am concerned for them when their adult children move back in and contribute little or nothing financially. yes, it's the parent's choice to have this arrangement but i wish they would be forthcoming to their adult children about how it's impacting them financially b/c i've seen a couple of cases where those adult children benefited tremendously in their younger years by having parents who paid in full/large part for their educations then let them move in for a few years to save for a down payment for a home........only to learn a couple of decades down the road that their parents are now in need of THEIR financial support to so much as get by.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

i think that whatever works and is mutually agreeable to all the involved persons is fine. what DOES concern me though are the situations i'm aware of where the parents are either turning a blind eye to or unwilling to share with their adult children when their living in the home totally or largely 'free' is having a tremendous negative impact on the parent's current budget/ability to save for retirement. i know how much my utilities and household expenses dropped when one of my adult children moved out-going from 4 to 3 DID result in a net savings of about 25% in our utilities/groceries/misc cleaning and household products so when i see households that i know have voiced concerns over meeting their empty nest expenses/how they will meet their expenses when they have no choice but to retire i am concerned for them when their adult children move back in and contribute little or nothing financially. yes, it's the parent's choice to have this arrangement but i wish they would be forthcoming to their adult children about how it's impacting them financially b/c i've seen a couple of cases where those adult children benefited tremendously in their younger years by having parents who paid in full/large part for their educations then let them move in for a few years to save for a down payment for a home........only to learn a couple of decades down the road that their parents are now in need of THEIR financial support to so much as get by.

In every multigenerational family situation I personally know details about the kids pay a big portion of the housing bills. The older generation pay their own expenses and their part of living expenses and the rest of their money is theirs to do as they please.

If an adult kid is living home and saving to buy a house they still contribute to the household. It’s much less than living on their own and they still get to save a substantial amount. If my son takes me up on my offer to stay home and save for a house I will have him contribute to the household in some way.

Right now my grandmother and mother live together. I think my grandma may pay the utilities and groceries but my mother pays everything else. It’s not a hardship for her since she’d be paying all of that alone anyway. It actually benefits my mother in a way too.

My aunt “charged” her adult son $100 a week once he was done college. When he moved out she “gifted” him all of his furniture with the “rent” he paid.

The only people I know that have moved back home and lived completely free had just came out of an ugly situation. House fire, job loss, divorce, etc. But that doesn’t last forever. They eventually contribute.

If a kid is just living home to mooch and are screwing their parents over in the long run then that’s a whole different issue.

 

[easyas123]

My aunt “charged” her son $100 a week. When he moved out she “gifted” him all of his furniture with the “rent” he paid.

HAha! That is our plan! When eldest vacates the basement apartment I'm sending the sectional with him, along with the $$ he pays us monthly for utilities. New furniture for Mom! I might even have the carpet replaced....

 

[Kestryl]

Almost everyone in my family (grandparents and their siblings, parents and their siblings, cousins, my sibling) lived with their parents until they were at least engaged. I have an aunt that bought a house around age 25. And I moved out when I went to grad school. But that’s it.

So it doesn’t seem that weird to me for adult children to be living with their parents.

 

[barkley]

In every multigenerational family situation I personally know details about the kids pay a big portion of the housing bills. The older generation pay their own expenses and their part of living expenses and the rest of their money is theirs to do as they please.

If an adult kid is living home and saving to buy a house they still contribute to the household. It’s much less than living on their own and they still get to save a substantial amount.

i think there should be a contribution unless there is some type of extraordinary circumstances but it's just not what i'm seeing with a number of college grad/fully employed living with mom & dad young adults. i'm seeing friends/neighbors shortchanging retirement savings and in some cases going into debt by having their adult children live with them. no, it's none of my business but when i hear them repeatedly worrying about how our new property tax assessments will add another 2 or 3 hundred per year in 2021 and 'how will we manage to pay for it/ever survive as retirees?' i think of the hundreds upwards into the thousands per month they are spending providing perfectly able bodied and employed adult children with housing, utilities, meals, household goods, wear and tear, satellite, internet...and with some still paying their cell phone and car insurance as well as a young adult who lived with mom until my late 20's i was acutely aware of her income/household expenses and i paid enough to cover my cost to her-i honestly don't think that many young adults in these shared housing situations take into consideration what their savings in living with their parents cost their parents (and may cost them in the long term if mom/dad can't self support in retirement).

 

[elaine amj]

@barkley it's a very good point. Parents sometimes don't realize just how much their adult children are costing them.

When DD turned 18 but still lived at home, I started charging her a geared-to-income $200/mo rent. That basically just covers her food and share of utilities. Not all the other little things I was still buying for her.

However, the MAIN reason I charged her rent was so she would gain a more realistic picture of the amount of money she had to spend. I didn't want her to be too "rich" and enable her to fritter away all her part-time job money on nonsense.

She wasn't earning much - maybe $300-400/mo. But if I didn't charge rent, she would have the entire $400/mo to spend on eating out / entertainment. Not a good thing to get used to IMO. It's too easy to get used to spending higher amounts. Not so easy to retract and live more simply.

Of course, my DD turned out to be super frugal, spending maybe $50/mo on average other than rent and textbooks (My deal is we pay tuition, she pays everything else).

At 19, she just moved out. She has about $20k in savings, an impressive amount at her age. Her rent is just $400/mo incl utils and internet (small basement room in a small house in a LCOL city). I counselled her to set herself just a slim budget of $400/mo for food, entertainment and expenses and see how it goes. I bet she will end up with extra savings at the end of the year.

We're not just tossing her out though. DH paid for her first week's groceries, she is free to raid our house for stuff she needs, I gave her a fully furnished (all used stuff) room and I expect I will pay for a new winter coat for her. So still plenty of little luxuries from home.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

@barkley it's a very good point. Parents sometimes don't realize just how much their adult children are costing them.

When DD turned 18 but still lived at home, I started charging her a geared-to-income $200/mo rent. That basically just covers her food and share of utilities. Not all the other little things I was still buying for her.

However, the MAIN reason I charged her rent was so she would gain a more realistic picture of the amount of money she had to spend. I didn't want her to be too "rich" and enable her to fritter away all her part-time job money on nonsense.

She wasn't earning much - maybe $300-400/mo. But if I didn't charge rent, she would have the entire $400/mo to spend on eating out / entertainment. Not a good thing to get used to IMO. It's too easy to get used to spending higher amounts. Not so easy to retract and live more simply.

Of course, my DD turned out to be super frugal, spending maybe $50/mo on average other than rent and textbooks (My deal is we pay tuition, she pays everything else).

At 19, she just moved out. She has about $20k in savings, an impressive amount at her age. Her rent is just $400/mo incl utils and internet (small basement room in a small house in a LCOL city). I counselled her to set herself just a slim budget of $400/mo for food, entertainment and expenses and see how it goes. I bet she will end up with extra savings at the end of the year.

We're not just tossing her out though. DH paid for her first week's groceries, she is free to raid our house for stuff she needs, I gave her a fully furnished (all used stuff) room and I expect I will pay for a new winter coat for her. So still plenty of little luxuries from home.

I find this interesting in your reasoning for charging rent. It sounds like it totally worked out well!

For me just because I had cash to burn didn't me I burned it. In fact I had the opposite problem and to an extent still do..I don't like to spend money especially on myself.

I don't know that the way we spend our money is about living more simply, we're just not comfortable spending a ton of money on things. You could be living simply and yet spend too much proportion of your money on something that leads to issues elsewhere.

We still have a home, furniture, we go on vacations, we do projects around the house, etc so we're not living with the bare minimum. Living rich in the context you framed it is really just an issue with not learning to spend what money you have wisely and realizing you need to balance what you spend; budgets are gives and takes but should be tailored to who you are as a person. We have friends that spend their money on food/dining out BUT they don't go on vacation. That's works for them for us we value more vacations over spending $70/meal every time. We used to go to the movies all the time BUT we have friends that have zero interest in that. Some of our friends love concerts whereas we're not about that for the most part. And so on.

FWIW I think nonsense is in the eye of the beholder. To some the books I bought in my youth from Borders and Half-Price Books was a waste of money especially because those people who said it hated reading for fun whereas I live for it (and still read virtually every day). I'm still very thankful I grew up in an environment where both my parents in each of their households fostered that love of reading and didn't make me feel bad for wanting to spend the money on I earned on books.

 

[elaine amj]

Good points. I am a big believer in spending on what you value. What I wanted to give DD by charging rent was a realistic idea of how much "discretionary money" she would have after some reasonable fixed expenses.

 

[wildride]

2 out of 3 out.
My DS owns his own house, wife, 1 kid, 2 steps- 36

Oldest step DS has own apartment, custody of his daughter - 33

Third step had to move in with us, restaurant worker. He is now back to work. 6 months to on his own.

 

[disykat]

Once you get past a certain age (for me it would be no longer in school til up to about 24/25) it all comes down to ...

1) are you living as an adult in a mutually beneficial situation
or
2) are you still living as a child in your parent's home

There is a difference. If it's mutually beneficial, you shouldn't need to defend it. If you realize that your adult child hasn't reached adulthood yet, you may need to do some more parenting and nudge him/her forward.

 

[elaine amj]

Once you get past a certain age (for me it would be about 24/25) it all comes down to ...

1) are you living as an adult in a mutually beneficial situation
or
2) are you still living as a child in your parent's home

There is a difference. If it's mutually beneficial, you shouldn't need to defend it. If you realize that your adult child hasn't reached adulthood yet, you may need to do some more parenting and nudge him/her forward.

True. DD is only 19 but we realized we just couldn't stop treating her as a child and for her own development, she needed to move out.

DH never left home. We married when he was 30 and I moved in (to help care for his aging grandma). He didn't move out until 32 when I asked to get some space from his family. He didn't pay any of the bills or cook his own meals or do his own laundry. Thankfully, he was a fully mature, capable and independent man. Plus he had saved all his life so this gave us a good boost.

 

[disneychrista]

He didn't pay any of the bills or cook his own meals or do his own laundry.

I am curious how many adult children living at home are in the same situation. I am also curious if it is because the PARENTS can't let go or if it the adult child expecting it.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I am curious how many adult children living at home are in the same situation. I am also curious if it is because the PARENTS can't let go or if it the adult child expecting it.

Wouldn't that be virtually the same thing (and I mean that without snark)?

If a parent is still doing their adult child's laundry, cooking their meals and paying all the bills the status quo is being maintained so the adult child may just expect it, and if the parent is still doing their adult child's laundry, cooking their meals and paying all their bills then they don't appear that they can let go and/or they are comfortable with the status quo staying the same. Basically both acting like why rock the boat, it's working out as is why change it kind of thing.

I'm not going to knock the cooking thing because in some families that's just the way it is. One person does the cooking and often because they really do enjoy it, Father-in-law's wife is a lot like that. She uses cooking as a means to show she can provide for the family and it's her source of pride to be able to always have a ton of food whenever we come over.

Paying bills and doing laundry are different IMO though. Funny speaking about father-in-law's wife...she looked at me like I was crazy when years ago we were randomly talking and it came out that my husband does his laundry and I do my own. She's like "you don't do your husband's laundry?" Why?"...because he's perfectly capable of doing his own...plus I take care of my clothing a lot different than he does his.

 

[disneychrista]

Wouldn't that be virtually the same thing (and I mean that without snark)?

I see the parent not letting go as the child WANTS to do their own cooking, laundry, etc but the parents do it for them anyway. The child EXPECTING it is the child assumes the parents are going do these things & has no desire to do it and the parents just go along with it.

 

[elaine amj]

I am curious how many adult children living at home are in the same situation. I am also curious if it is because the PARENTS can't let go or if it the adult child expecting it.

In DH's case I guess it just never came up. He contributed to the household in various other ways and in no way was a child dependent on his family despite the fact that they continued cooking and cleaning for him. Although I did giggle a little when I woke up as a new bride to discover his grandma made his breakfast and basically saw this 30yr old man off at the door with a packed lunchbag (at 6:30am to boot!).

I'm still deeply shocked it didn't stunt his maturity. Thankfully he is incredibly capable and uber responsible.

In my DD19's case, our "help" was stunting her maturity so I am very pleased she decided to move out (although its bittersweet - it sucks that she won't be able to save as much financially).

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I am curious how many adult children living at home are in the same situation. I am also curious if it is because the PARENTS can't let go or if it the adult child expecting it.

My SO didn’t move out until he was 28 and that’s when we moved in together. He contributed to bills and knows how to do all housework and laundry, etc. His parents taught him all of that. But his mother still did his laundry, almost all of the cleaning and she cooked. (Him and his dad worked and she was/is a SAHW/SAHM). They’re very old school and the woman does most of the cooking and cleaning. She’s an amazing cook and enjoys it. Now the laundry she did because she also wanted to. And I think she didn’t want “her baby” to not need her. She didn’t want to let go. When we moved out she would still ask him if he needed any of his shirts washed or ironed. She even tried to give me a tutorial on how to wash his clothes. Lol.

My kids are 20 and 14, one in college and one in HS, and have been doing their own laundry for years. They both started around 13.

Now that we live together my SO probably does 50% of the housework and all of the yard work. And I do about 50% of housework and cook. He even does my laundry !

 

[Pink Partridge]

i think that whatever works and is mutually agreeable to all the involved persons is fine. what DOES concern me though are the situations i'm aware of where the parents are either turning a blind eye to or unwilling to share with their adult children when their living in the home totally or largely 'free' is having a tremendous negative impact on the parent's current budget/ability to save for retirement. i know how much my utilities and household expenses dropped when one of my adult children moved out-going from 4 to 3 DID result in a net savings of about 25% in our utilities/groceries/misc cleaning and household products so when i see households that i know have voiced concerns over meeting their empty nest expenses/how they will meet their expenses when they have no choice but to retire i am concerned for them when their adult children move back in and contribute little or nothing financially. yes, it's the parent's choice to have this arrangement but i wish they would be forthcoming to their adult children about how it's impacting them financially b/c i've seen a couple of cases where those adult children benefited tremendously in their younger years by having parents who paid in full/large part for their educations then let them move in for a few years to save for a down payment for a home........only to learn a couple of decades down the road that their parents are now in need of THEIR financial support to so much as get by.

Or how about the parents that pay for the college. Pay for grad school. Then before they know it, they are paying for a wedding. And now they are approaching their 60s and they still have a mortgage. Now they are babysitting because their grown children want to save money on daycare.

I know more than one of these people that are in this situation.