Parenting Grown Children: What Dr. Spock Forgot to Tell Us

Re-Nesting: They can go home again

We've got yet another study on grown children and money. This time it's not about how we parents are helping them pay their bills or buy a house  (we can be so wonderfully generous, can't we?), but about the pressures that force them home again and how we ought to deal with the boomerang kids.

A recent story in the Washington Post looked at the three-year trend for moving back home: nearly half the about-to-be college grads plan to do so after they graduate. The survey, courtesy of MonsterTrak, also found an uptick in this year's rate-of-return: where 22 percent of last year's survey respondents said they planned to live at home for six months or so, a year later, 43 percent of them are still there. Chief among the reasons for staying put:debt--college loan and credit card.

Moving back home for an extended time isn't necessarily healthy for either the parents or the grown children. They lose their independence and we get to see our grown child's habits up close and personal.

The Post story listed some issues that should be discussed "before the bags are unpacked." These start with rent [will it be levied], length of stay and personal financial information.  The experts quoted in the story say we parents have a right to that information in order to keep tabs on our adult child's progress toward independence [and a move out of the house].  "If they don't want to be accountable to you,"  the advice reads, "then they need to get up and out of your house."

Tough love. And a form of love that doesn't sit too well with some of us. Having to have a contract with our children? Ick. Charging them rent? You'd have to be in desperate financial straits--unless you were putting it in a savings account for them so they'd have a nest egg ready when they're ready to move onward and out.

Any other thoughts on where you'd come down on dealing with a re-feathered nest?

A New Baby: Offering help in one form and another

There's a lot of excitement in our small family. We have a new baby--that is, Uber Son and his wife have brought forth their third. Babies are something we know something about. And we also know--experience cannot be denied--how hard it can be to juggle taking care of a newborn while also meeting the needs of two young children, a spouse, a home and mealtimes. We know how helpful it is to have another pair of hands--especially hands that can drive a car and take a child to piano lessons, get another to soccer practice, race to the supermarket for supplies, cook meals that can be frozen for use on another day--and bring the nursing mother a glass of water while that new baby is taking nourishment (oh the thirst when you're nursing).

Paterfamilias and I just spent several days as extra pairs of hands. This is, of course, a basic service that comes with being parents of grown children.  But when we leave--we live a seven-hour drive to the south--both Paterfamilias and I key in on the same thing: How will they manage? I am distraught that I can't offer to spend another week or two to help. (It's something called a job.) What, after all, am I here for if not to help when help is needed. I look at my schedule and try to figure out when I can come back.

Paterfamilias has another solution. He sends them a check, earmarked for paying for babysitters. Get them often, he writes in his note.

It's practical. It's helpful. And it's also appreciated. And it's what we parents of grown children can do when we can't do the job ourselves.

Money Matters: Setting limits when you make a loan

When you lend your grown kids money--and it's a loan, not a gift--you may be risking a whole new set of pressures on your relationship. "What seems straightforward can become a straitjacket if families aren't careful," a recent news story reports. It asks the key questions:  How do you keep family harmony when money is given to one child and not others? What happens if a son or daughter can't -- or won't -- repay the loan?

Some pointers::

1. Call it what it is--a loan or a gift? If you actually don't expect any payback, give the money unconditionally; otherwise it's not really a gift, but a debt in grandiose disguise.

A loan is much more work.

2. Discuss the need.

"If parents are going to be the bank, they should act like the bank," says a financial adviser. "You've got to treat it seriously; kids need to understand this is not petty cash."

3. Keep it simple

Draft a document stating how the loan will be structured. Get a promissory note in writing and set a repayment schedule. "You've got to set the tone. All the other family members are watching."

4. Don't play favorites

Not all children are the same, but parents generally prefer to keep things equal among their children. 

One solution is to reduce the borrower's share of a trust or inheritance by the amount of the loan, which counts as part of your assets.

Final words of advice from a financial adviser: "If you've got a challenging relationship with your kids, you for sure don't want to be their banker. If you have a good relationship with your kids, you want to be careful about being their banker. Nothing can make a good relationship go bad than money." 

On the Road: Taking grown children on your vacation

Vacationing with adult children is a whole new world--from getting to know them (and their habits) all over again to issues over who's paying for what and who's making the decisions. I'll be blogging about that all summer long, but meanwhile there's this story by a dad who's a professional traveler--he was escorting a large tour on a worldwide trip and brought his adult daughter along. He doesn't describe any pain in traveling with his now-grown daughter--just the wonder at her wonder at seeing the world's greatest sights.

He starts off witih his most trenchant point:"One reality most families eventually deal with is that when your kids grow up, graduate from college and begin a life of their own, it is easy to grow apart, particularly if they live a distance away. They have their own friends, interests and want their independence. It is a rare opportunity to have them set aside a few weeks to just be with you."

Who's an Adult: Defining a point in time

A college professor takes a crack at pinpointing when an adolescent becomes an adult. It's not as easy as he thinks.

News Alert: How others (our grown children) see us

This just in from MSNBC. It's not only a look at what we do that our grown children don't like, it asks for anecdotes--outrageous is what it requests.  The headline says it all: Grandparents Behaving Badly. Check it out.

House and Hearth: The grown kids buy their first home

When paterfamilias and I bought our house--the one we're still living in--our children were five and six years old. My mother flew up from her condo in Florida to help with the dirty work of moving in. She and I hand-transferred to the new house a fragile antique wall clock and a gold-framed mirror that used to be hers but were now mine. Paterfamilias and I were taking up the carpeting the former owner had nailed down all over the house. We had the wood floors stained and burnished before we moved in. What I remember most about those first few days in the new house is my mother carrying things back and forth between kitchen and dining room, rags wrapped around her bare feet. "This is a good way to keep the floors buffed," she told me as she shuffled around. "You should do this all the time."

I'm reminded of this because Alpha Daughter just bought her first house. She closed on it on a Friday, and we flew up on Saturday to look it over. She and her husband were planning to strip out the old carpet and redo the floors before moving in. While we were poking around the front yard and inspecting its bushes, a neighbor came by--all big hellos and welcomes and wanting to know who was moving in. Then another neighbor appeared on the street. The first neighbor waved her over. "Lois," she said, "here's the new family that's moving in, and it comes with a Bubbe."

That would be me. Bubbe is Yiddish for a granny. And there certainly was a very active five-year-old clambering up and down and around the front steps. But use of the term was a bit of a shock for me--I'd always thought of a Bubbe as a person who's sidelined to the back seat of the car--a person who's no longer part of the main events of family life. Part of what happens as our children get older, something my friend Marian, the psychiatrist, calls "flattening the heirarchy." Others use the term Bubbe in a more benign way--as the neighbor did, to connote that the parents of the new owners were around.

This Bubbe, unfortunately, doesn't come with the house. Paterfamilias and I live a ten-hour drive away. I may never tie rags around my bare feet as my mother did. But like her, I hope to be there on moving day to help out with whatever needs doing. It's what we parents of grown children do, whether we think of ourselves as a Bubbe or not.

Re-Nesting: It's not just the 20-somethings who are moving back home

Here's a shocker of a report: Grown children are moving back in with their parents. Not just the 20 somethings who are starting to make their way in the world, but the 40s and even 50s who have been out in the world and on their own. The slumping economy and credit crunch have a lot to do with it. You might say, everything to do with it.

The trend has become notable in the past six months. The grown children who move back in are either single, single-again, laid off from a job, unable to make ends meet with the job they have or hoping a brief time at home at no- or low-cost will help them put together the wherewithal to buy a house or move up in the world. You can read a recent AP story here.

One point the story makes is this: Such moves can be a drain on parental retirement resources, and financial advisers are saying that they have to show their clients--the parents--where to draw the financial line.

It's a point an AARP story makes even when it's younger grown children who move back home. There's a need to plan for it--emotionally as well as fiscally.

Money Matters: When is it time for "the chat?"

During the last few years of my mother's life, a visit to her (she lived in another city, an airplane ride away) generally meant a peek at a little list she kept.  She wanted me to know what her assets were and where--a CD at this bank, a safe deposit key at another one.  I came to think of it as "The Chat."
It gave me the creeps.

Yet, I've started wondering whether paterfamilias and I ought to be having "the chat" with our offspring. We're believers in share-it-now, help-them-when-they-need-it. But we're also husbanding what we'll need for an independent and comfortable retirement.  We're not [presumably] close to closing in on the end of our life lines, but you never know what's coming down the pike.

So we're asking ourselves, when is the best time to give our grown children a rundown on the assets we'll be leaving behind for them? It's a touchy issue but we don't want them to have to scramble around to assemble our assets. Maybe the sooner we do it--when we're in the pink of health and robust in appetite for life--is the better time. Not so creepy. Just the facts.

I've just developed a lot more empathy for my mother and The Chat.

A Big Event: Who has the bragging rights?

Our friends the Ds are having a baby. Let me rephrase that: Their daughter is having a baby. Her second. Their fifth. Their daughter's husband called at midnight with the good news: healthy 8-lb boy. By 12:02, Mrs. D was at her computer sending out an email announcement to family and friends.So far, so good--except that her daughter hadn't called her brother. It was late, the brother had three small children under five years of age and sleep is a precious commodity. The call could wait till morning. The sister-in-law, however, was up at 6, logged onto her computer and got the news by email from her mother.-in-law. Her nose was quite out of joint. She and her husband wanted the joy of the personal announcement from the daughter and brother-in-law. They  were quite resentful about the email.

I think about that now because we are having a baby. That is, uber son  and his wife are having their third. She is almost a week late and we are in daily communication about when an inducement might take place. Soon, if that baby doesn't make it's way into the world by week's end. So I bring up the question about who will tell uber-son's sister. Does he mind if we do?
He is dumbfounded by the question. "We're a close family," he says. "Who cares who calls first?"

Presumably, it's the mass email that's less than a charm. A call is still personal. Email's OK for friends and far-flung family but not for the nuclear ties that bind. At least this is the note I've made to myself.

Money Matters: A reverse cash flow from the Kippers to the Saps

And now for something competely different. While all the recent studies show how generous we aging Baby Boomers have been to our adult children, a study just out of Great Britain suggests our children have been equally as generous to us.

The study found that one in 10 of our adult children have given us money, according to insurer Scottish Widows. Moreover, six out of 10 people who have given money to their parents said they had wanted to help them, 34% said their parents needed the money more than they did.

The study, which refers to the phenomenon as "sap back," found that one reason parents were asking their adult children for cash was "likely to be because they had given them money in the past that had been earmarked for their retirement."

Previous research by the group found that 22% of parents had helped their children buy a house or repay debt.

Anne Young, a savings expert at Scottish Widows, said in a follow-up newspaper article that "the glaring hole in parents' finances will need to be replaced somehow, whether by sapping funds back from their children or by other means."

The story also noted that "earlier this month, Prudential identified a growing trend for parents to go one step further by moving in with their children as a means of saving money."

As they say in the texting world, OMG.
   

Life Styles: The stats on kids living at home

One of the big three ways in which parents help their adult children is by providing them with a roof over their  heads: the parent's own roof. In the past 20 years in Canada, the percent of adult children (20 to 24 years old) living at home has gone from 41 percent to 57 percent.
The same study that came up with those figures also found that 64 percent of parents who live with adult children report high satisfaction with life. Only 49 percent of parents who live with no adult child at home reported the same sense of satisfaction.
Another point the study makes: Living with adult children means the continuation of conflicts over money, children, house chores and responsibilities--until the kids move out.
But they do move out. Few parents reported living with children who are in their 30s. But that may change as the economy sinks.
The reason parents are giving their young adult kids aid and comfort? "Today's young adults are more likely to need their parent's support for longer periods of time," the report said.
You can read more about this here

Living at Home: Does what happens in London, stay in London?

Here's an interesting tidbit from a British survey: The credit crunch now means we may never have an empty nest.
A story that ran recently in a British newspaper reports that "67 per cent of all potential first time buyers are being forced out of the market due to tightening lending criteria and are having to arrange alternative living arrangements. The research from Abbey coincides with a recent study by Prudential which found that more than 80,000 UK households have three generations all living under the same roof. As the credit crisis takes hold, Prudential predicts that the number of families forced to live like this will grow."

Real Life: What to do when they lose their job

Just when you've reached a point in your own career where you're at peace--blind ambition turns into bound ambition--you've got your grown children's careers to worry about. Are they advancing, are they thriving at their work? Hey, even more basic than that, are they working? My friend G's son--he's married and the father of twin toddlers--just got laid off from his job-, along with 75 other people in the company. How comfortable a place is that to be in the economy we're living through now? It's hard on the son and on my friend. Not only do we, as parents of grown children, worry about our children's psyche in a loss like this but also about how they're going to pay the rent. But we also know--or fear--in the deepest recesses of our hearts that when the unemployment checks run out and the 3-year-olds need new shoes, we're going to tap the resources we have set aside for our retirement or fork over the cash we might otherwise put into that account. Or we'll squeeze our needs to meet theirs.
The question we face is this: Are we going to help them out, whether we can really afford it or not? And if we do, do we get to approve of the way they spend that money? From G's point of view, her son "lives large." He's got expensive tastes. If she has to help him out, does she put strings on the aide--or can she just quietly pay the rent and fill the fridge with basics. If she  sends a check, will she eat her heart out if her son uses it for a dinner out at an expensive restaurant?
Or should she just say no to helping out? Could you?

Money Matters: Tips on teaching financial independence

Looking for some basic advice on weaning your grown kids from financial dependence on you? Two sources of friendly suggestions came across my screen recently. One is from Expert Business Source. The three main points:

1. Learn to talk to you kids about money unemotionally.

2. Create a schedule for them to become financially independent.

3. Focus on now. Whatever's gone on (or not gone on) in the past, teach them now that they are responsible for their financial lives and that you are there as backup, not as the everyday bank account.

A more elaborate set of help points comes from the Financial Planning Association. You can get the full version Here. The highlights, some of which repeat what the other Experts have to say, are:

Talk about your mistakes and your tough financial times, perhaps when you were starting out, just as they are, and had only entry-level jobs that barely covered rent and food, and couldn't buy "luxuries" like a television or new clothes. Sure, they'll roll their eyes, but they're listening.

Make a plan for weaning them off your support; tell them the plan; and stick to it.

Bring in a professional advisor. Your child may be more open to listening to an outside professional than to you.

Some families establish trusts for their children in part to teach them financial wisdom. For example, initially have the child meet periodically with the trustee (which may be you) and the trust's advisor, if you have one, to learn how the trust is being managed and why certain assets are invested in specific ways. Because it is the child's money that's being managed, he or she should be more willing to listen.

Some family trusts say a child can receive financial distributions only if he or she earns a certain amount of money on his or her own.