Rising rents and home prices mean more parents are welcoming their adult children just out of college back to the nest, but the current economic environment is forcing them to pull back on the level of financial support they can offer, according to Minneapolis-based Thrivent.
Forty-one percent of parents are currently allowing their adult children to live with them (that’s up just a tick from 40% in 2022). But 39% of parents are also reporting that this year they had to either completely withdraw or scale back their financial support, according to the firm’s second annual “Boomerang Kids Survey.”
This makes the next statistic even more surprising, according to one advisor familiar with the survey: There’s been a seven percentage point increase in the number of parents who admit they are not actively setting boundaries for the support they’re giving (60% said that this year while 53% said so in 2022). More specifically, that means 60% of the parents are not having conversations with their child about expectations, money management or the establishment of a time line for when the kids will move out or consult with a financial advisor.
“There’s a fair amount of avoidance,” says Alex Gonzalez, a certified financial planner and Thrivent advisor based in Bloomington, Minn. “This study is a cross-section of all of our society, and a lot of households don’t work with a financial advisor. The ones that do are having conversations with their advisor about where they stand in short- and long-term goals, and this allows the advisor to also have a candid discussion about the impact of supporting an adult child.”
Given that parents are also trying to prepare financially for their own life goals—48% of the survey respondents said they were saving for retirement, 25% were saving to buy a home, 56% were paying off debt, 24% were caring for aging parents, and 15% were saving for college for other children—understanding that impact may be what’s needed to move the needle on those heart-to-hearts.
“Ask the client, ‘Are you willing to work longer or spend less in retirement?’ We love our kids and want to help as much as we can, but putting it in context with their financial plan is what we have to do,” Gonzalez says.
Fifty-one percent of parents have put off their own savings in order to help financially support their children, the survey found. That means they’ve had to compromise on their own future healthcare needs. Yet despite that strain, 75% of parents with boomerang kids aren’t discussing money management at all, 80% aren’t setting financial expectations, and 92% haven’t set a time line for their kids to move out.
And those expectations from parents need to be brought out into the open, because right now parents and kids aren’t on the same page: While only 16% of parents said they could fully support their children, 53% of adult children thought they could.