Surviving Adult Children
I came across an interesting press release about a new website for parents who are dealing with immature adult children, called SurvivingAdultChildren.com. It sounds funny that there is now a support group for parents whose adult children still live at home with them, but as we’ve heard it is more and more common for Gen Y’ers to come back home and sometimes never leave. This is an interesting debate for me, because it is one I can see both sides of.
To illustrate the website’s purpose, there was a video that shows a mother vacuuming, and then her 26 year-old son comes out at noon and basically says “I’m still sleeping Mom! Can you stop that!? Oh and can you help me with my car payment and cell phone bill this month too?” Eek!!
Now that I do NOT understand! But the point is that there is enough of this happening in America for there to be a whole community created around it. According to the website, adult children who are living at home are causing a serious financial strain on their parents. It also says that some parents are afraid to let go out of “fear of rejection, losing contact with grand children and even physical abuse.” Seems a bit strange, no?
So my boyfriend and I got into this debate yesterday as we both have friends and relatives who still live with their parents. Luckily none of our friends or family are like the 26 year old in the video though! Both of us also lived at home for a while after graduating college and felt it was beneficial to get us started.
Here are a few of my thoughts on the topic:
• If you’re living at home so you can buy more purses, shoes and clothes that is not cool.
• If you’re living at home to save for a down payment on a condo/house, that is awesome! Just make sure you are really saving that money instead of taking your third trip to Vegas this year.
• If you are unsure about your career path or how long you will be at your current job, it might be smart to live at home so you aren’t locked into a lease. Just remember that eventually you will have to take a risk and decide on something!
• If you live at home, you should pay “rent and utilities” to a money market account so that you become used to the financial burden and budget that living on your own will require when you DO move out. I would prefer if you couldn’t touch or see this money market account so you can’t tap into it. Remember, when you move out, you can’t “borrow back” your rent/mortgage payment.
• Make sure you are working towards an established goal otherwise before you know it the months and maybe even years will pass you by and you will have nothing to show for living rent-free.
• If you are living at home to pay down debt, put your debt payments on auto-debit from your checking account so that each month a pre-determined chunk of your income goes towards those. Don’t wait for the bill to come and “decide how much you feel like paying this month” otherwise you will never get rid of it.
