Retirement ??

[albireo13]

Well, I retired a few years ago and my wife will retire next year. We have one adult child move in with us 2 yrs ago and may have more.
We are thinking of finishing off the basement to give more living space. I hear more and more of adult kids moving back home.
How common is this? Would love to hear from other folks.
Yeee - haawww!

 

[latexman]

With housing costs rising faster than salaries, multigenerational families/homes will become more and more common, or the norm.

 

[Car-Guy]

Happens all the time from what I can tell but how well it works is another story. I'm sure it depends on family dynamics. The DW and I have talked about the possibly and for us we'd probably build a guest house or even buy a mobile home and park it on our property since we have tons of open acreage. That way we'd all keep our personal space.

Funny, from what I've seen the adult child wants to come home (for whatever reason) but wants to be treated as an adult with no rules and everything free. Ain't happening here!

 

[nvestysly]

From what I hear via friends/family/media, boomerang adult children are not uncommon. Depending on the situation - how long they may stay - it may be useful to add some sort of kitchen, bathroom and living area. A separate entrance may be helpful. I'd make it functional but not incredibly spacious/comfy to discourage long-term living arrangements. Of course, that depends on your family.

Consider an Is/Is Not table - the left column (IS) mentions activities/expectations that are necessary to stay in good graces of the landlord (you), the right column tabulates activities/expectations (IS NOT) that are not acceptable to the landlord.

Also consider some amount of rent - even if it's a very small amount. The problems I hear of related to boomerang children is they don't have skin in the game. Even if the rent is $50 - $100 per month it's a meaningful way to convey this is not intended to be a long-term living arrangement. Consider whether you and your spouse might reimburse the collected rent when the child leaves - this could be decided secretly between you and your spouse or tell the child in advance if that may provide an incentive to find housing elsewhere.

Best wishes on finding a solution that works for everyone involved.

 

[Dtail]

My fiance's oldest son just moved in with us. Hoping it will be less than a year. We are charging him 1k monthly to have some skin in the game and no thoughts of giving him the monies at the end.
He is not causing issues for us.

 

[marko]

Outlier again! In my neighborhood the parents are moving in with the adult kids. Three houses with 200 yards have created small apartments in their basement or attic for their single parents. The parents are not elderly either, mostly in their early sixties.

These are large, newly built expensive homes less than 3 years old in a private community so there's plenty of room but we just find it a bit odd. Neither of us were raised where our parents were our "pals" who we'd want hanging out with us on a daily basis. Kids living across the street are spending 3 weeks in Greece and brought his parents with them.

 

[Exchme]

After college, one of our kids discovered that the oddball non-STEM major was not going to lead to employment, so got a job doing something completely unrelated to the degree. That job had a very uninspiring salary but was within a few miles from our house. Stayed with us for five years. We liked having the extra company and it was nice to have someone stay in the house when we were out of town.

Worked out fine, they put together enough money to pay cash for their own house with some left over and bought before house prices took off. Still works at the same place, but now manages several folks and is paid a little better.

 

[FlaGator]

My oldest finished her degree in 2023. Along the way she established her own independent life with a partner that has local family. It turned out she is unable to work FT due to health issues and is back on my payroll.

Did I compel her to move back home? Absolutely not. She was well down the road of independence when these problems came up.

I prefer to subsidize her for now and keep her living independently. There is a monthly budget that covers the minimum as long as she continues to live like a thrifty college student. She knows this is affordable for me in the near term, but unsustainable in the long term. Her situation is believed to be relatively short term, and she is pursuing options to support herself if it goes beyond a few years.

Once they leave, don't let them back in, for their own long term health, and your short term. Especially if you can afford the short term cost and they know it's not an unlimited subsidy.

For background, I'm a guy who quit his job at 55 (unplanned) to raise kids after being widowed with 2 pre-teens. Her mother and I believed the little birds should be well-cared for and trained for life out of the nest once they left. I finished the job, and the current health problems are a bump on that road.

 

[FIREd]

In my case it is my mother who has expressed the desire to share a home with me. She is 77, single, and currently lives in a large condo which she can no longer afford on her fixed retirement income. She talked about the idea of pooling our ressources to purchase a home with separate living quarters. I promptly shot the idea down.

First because, from a financial perspective, it makes no sense for me. It seems awfully risky to co-own a property with anyone else as I have witnessed how such situations can quickly turn badly. And second, I know my mother. She is a difficult, controlling woman who is very much set in her ways. As a result, she repels people (including her children) and finds herself isolated. She recently admitted having failed to plan for her future, both from a social and financial perspective and now she is stuck. It is obvious to everyone privy to the situation that she is looking for a nurse with a purse. I ain’t it, as sharing a roof with her could quickly make my life a nightmare (there is a reason why I left home at 18).

The best solution in my eyes is for her to sell the large condo and buy something (much) smaller that she can afford on her own.

 

[bigcmagor]

We paid off the kid's mortgages to reduce this possibility.

 

[wrigley]

Two adult children out of the house and making ends meet on their own. Prices of EVERYTHING have gone up for EVERYONE. There are plenty of available P/T jobs out there if need be!

 

[VanWinkle]

To each his own..... When my kids called asking about moving back, my wife said "We filled your
rooms with concrete" so there is no space here.

 

[Harris4crna]

Well, I retired a few years ago and my wife will retire next year. We have one adult child move in with us 2 yrs ago and may have more.
We are thinking of finishing off the basement to give more living space. I hear more and more of adult kids moving back home.
How common is this? Would love to hear from other folks.
Yeee - haawww!

My son is moving back in with us and he is 25yo. He just graduated from CSU and will be applying to law schools while living with us. I believe GenZs are taking a little more time to brake ties from the nest.

 

[Going camping]

DS was losing his roommate after his lease ended last year and asked if he could move in for a while until he found a new roommate. He said he would probably need a place for 8 months until friends were out of their current leases.

We came up with a plan that he would move in and pay equivalent of household bills (taxes, utilities, HOA) and cut the grass while DW and I would plan some months-long slow travel trips to take advantage of having a trusted house sitter on the property. Win-win.

A few months before the arrangement was to take place, DS had a buddy move back into town for work and needed a place to live so he signed a new lease stayed in his apartment. I was glad for him because I knew he didn't want to move back home but I was looking forward for the opportunity to travel longer term.

One of our neighbors has had an adult son living with them for 3 years so far and the kid (30-something adult) is a pain in the neck. Doesn't clean up after his dog and has a general grumpy disposition. He alone has convinced me that if a child returns home there needs to be a set timeline, some sort of rent payment, and rules to behave like an adult and good neighbor.

 

[Koolau]

Well, I retired a few years ago and my wife will retire next year. We have one adult child move in with us 2 yrs ago and may have more.
We are thinking of finishing off the basement to give more living space. I hear more and more of adult kids moving back home.
How common is this? Would love to hear from other folks.
Yeee - haawww!

In the Islands, multi-generational living is quite common. Housing costs are so high that it often takes two w*rking generations to cover the mortgage or rent. I know of one family that briefly had 4 generations in the same home. It wasn't ideal, but the family made it w*rk because, well, they were family. Family is really "big" in the Islands.

 

[Teacher Terry]

When my kids were younger they boomeranged home a few times and it was fine. My youngest son left Vietnam during Covid right before the country shutdown and I told him he was welcome to stay with us.

Then I got divorced so he remodeled my condo and stayed a year. He wanted to pay rent and I said no but let him pay for half of the groceries. He worked and I had a built in dog sitter. 2 years ago he returned to his job in Vietnam. I wouldn’t want to live with my kids permanently but I enjoyed the year we spent together.

 

[Sojourner]

I moved back in with my parents after graduating college into the teeth of a very difficult job-hunting environment (tail end of early 90s recession, with high unemployment). I vividly remember how unhappy I eventually became after living there for over a year, and I also remember how much of a toll it took on my relationship with my parents. Luckily, it wasn't a permanent stain on our relationship, but it definitely was one of the darker periods of my life.

Based on my own experience, I would certainly advise anyone contemplating a "boomerang" situation that they should proceed with caution. IMHO, parents and their adult children need their own private, separate living spaces. As time goes on, the likelihood of daily conflict, friction, and resentment becomes quite high, even for parents who have an otherwise very loving, healthy relationship with their kids.

 

[UpQuark]

I boomeranged home multiple times during my twenties, tho part of the time it was into a small rental house my parents owned (where I also found myself responsible for the family dog since my parents moved to a different state). But after the second time I boomeranged into their one-bedroom/one-den city apartment with them (plus by then I was in my 30s), they subsidized rent for me to move to an apartment of my own.

Then when I was in my 40s my parents proposed a shared mortgage for a house that had a separate entrance mother-in-law apartment. That worked out great for us, though looking back I see that I wandered unannounced into their area all the time. OTOH it was useful to them maybe since my dad got increasingly senile and so if I wandered up into their part of the house and found him watching static on the TV because he couldn't remember how to use the remote I could get the TV working again for him.

And eventually my mom got old and appreciated me being around to take her to doctor appointments etc.

Financially it was great for me because eventually the house became mine and selling it when I retired has enabled me to have a decent retirement.

 

[pacergal]

I moved back in with my folks a couple years between early college and marriage, back in the '70s.
My son has moved back twice, once during covid shutdown. Stayed less than a year both times.
My daughter and SIL are already telling us that they will have us move in with them at a later date. We have said thank you, but we hope to stay independent all the way. It is nice to know they view that as a desirable option, though.
My sister and BIL recently bought a multigen home and her daughter, SIL and DGS live with them.

I think multigenerational living is and can be wonderful, depending on the relationships and personalities. The trick is to have conversation before hand about finances, rules to live by, etc and to continue those conversations throughout.

 

[Walt34]

So much depends on the people involved. I boomeranged back in with my mother in 1984 after a divorce. She initially had misgivings, but I had a plan worked out to be gone in 18 months, I showed her the plan, and I stuck to it. During that 18 months I didn't pay rent but I did pay all the utilities (house was paid for) and I was basically a live-in handyman and took care of a lot of deferred maintenance and cleaning up stuff that my semi-packrat father had left behind when he passed away. So I repainted the entire interior of the house except for one room (Mom didn't want it painted) and I took three or four pickup truck loads of stuff to the dump. I got the lawn in better shape than it had ever been (Dad just mowed whatever grew; a few bags of weed 'n feed worked wonders). In 18 months I had the $20k needed for the down payment/closing on a house and started looking, and was gone in the two months it took to settle. Oh, and I fixed a leaking water pipe at 7:00 AM on a Christmas morning, then went to work for my afternoon/evening shift. A couple of years later when Mom put the house up for sale to move in to a CCRC it sold in three days.

So it can work out well.

 

[JDARNELL]

I think it's pretty common right now with the cost of housing. In fact we are heading out in a few days to move one child back to Tennessee. The move is not due to any change in employment relationship etc but rather a desire to leave DC and since he works remote and travels every month for work it doesn't matter where he lives. He is chomping at the bit to get his own place as soon as he gets here. We are in the process thought of 1031ing one of our rentals to the area for him so he will be with us for a few weeks until that deal finalizes. It makes sense for us family wise for a few weeks but we all agree everyone needs their own space and we all have no desire for a long term situation.

 

[38Chevy454]

My thoughts are as a temporary living it is OK and can even be beneficial to the family relationship. But there is a limit to the time, and overstaying can create problems. As for that length of time? Depends on families, but I think 6 months is a good target. Also no freeloading as that will have consequences.

Temporary living as in a job move and one spouse is staying behind until kids finish school year, or while the house is sold and new one purchased. Or moving in to help with medical issues. There should be a good reason and also an understanding that the situation is temporary and not for long term.

 

[RetiredHappy]

My son wants me to move into his house if/when my husband passes away. I told him that his house is too small for me and that I would buy a much bigger house and have him move in with me. So, yeah, we want to live with each other.

 

[ncbill]

Also had one kid at home for several months after undergrad.

They had a job lined up but not before Guard training which took place end of that year.

Put 'em to work around the house while they were waiting.

 

[Time2]

We paid off the kid's mortgages to reduce this possibility.

We bought a fixer upper house for our son, but I'll miss not having him around. Although his house is only 2 blocks away. Repairs should be done withing 30 days.