What To Do With a Boomerang Kid

A boomerang is supposed to return when it leaves your hand, but a “boomerang kid” is something else entirely. That’s a term for an adult child who has returned, like a boomerang, and now lives at home again. If you have one, you’re not alone. Thrivent actually does an annual Boomerang Kids Survey and the latest one, just conducted in May, found that* 41% of parents* have an adult child currently living with them. The three most common reasons given for this were:

• Increasing rent and home prices— 35%
• Needing additional financial support after completing high school or college— 20%
• and job loss, 13%.

No doubt the disruptions caused by COVID have also contributed to the boomerang kid boom— even though employers were desperate for workers in the later stages of the pandemic, and employment remains relatively strong.

That an adult child is living at home in and of itself may not be a big drag on parents’ finances, if you’re only providing what’s called “three hots and a cot.” It’s when you start picking up the tab for their smartphone, student loans and car payments that things can get out of hand in a hurry.

Many parents are willing to help their kids even to their own detriment, even when it jeopardizes their retirement. In a brand new Bankrate survey, around half of parents said they’ve sacrificed emergency savings and debt payoff efforts to help their adult children, while 43% said they’ve tapped into retirement savings to help their kids.

This inability to cut the financial umbilical cord can have a detrimental impact on both parents and children. The kids may begin to expect regular financial handouts and become dependent on them.

What can you do about it? Begin by recognizing that you should do something about it. You don’t want to have an adult child living at home unless there are mitigating circumstances, such as caring for you if you’re disabled. Proverbs 10:4 reads, “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” As parents, we always want to help our children, but at the same time, we don’t want to encourage our children to have “a slack hand.”

Finding the dividing line between helping and hurting can be difficult, and often leads to tension when spouses disagree on where one ends and the other begins. However, it doesn’t have to be a question of throwing your kid out on the street or breaking your budget. You can take on this challenge gradually.

First of all, you need to set a non-negotiable requirement. Your boomerang child must have a job and be earning income. The type of job isn’t important. Set a deadline. For example, “Moving out day is 2 months from now if you’re not working yet.” There are plenty of jobs available, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Once your boomerang kid is earning money, you can sit down with him or her and set up a budget and a financial plan. First and foremost in that plan will be saving to get their own place.

You must impress upon the child the need to live below one’s means so that one can save. It’s the key to all future financial success.You can offer to match your child’s savings— temporarily— to accelerate the process.

You want your child to save for an apartment, but also to save for emergencies. Their budget must allow for that once they’re on their own. Otherwise, something will come up like a job loss or major car repair, and they’ll be borrowing from you or moving back in.

Of course, all of this is much easier if you are a financial role model. There’s no better way to teach your children about wise money management than by showing them how you do it.

Proverbs 22:6 tells us, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” It’s never too late to start teaching your children financial responsibility. When you do, you boomerang child can once again leave your hand— this time, successfully. You can also listen to a related podcast on this topic.