PenPenWrites

They’re back. Damp towels on the floor, dishes in the kitchen sink, eyes trained on iPhones. Our young adult kids are coming home and moving into their old bedrooms or our basements. It’s a trend that’s accelerating.:

• Nearly half — 44 percent — of U.S. parents with adult children ages 18 to 35 say a child has moved back home at some point. Thus reports a recent poll by Thrivent, a financial services company.

Many of our kids are returnees thanks to financial pressures. The top strains:

• the high cost of housing
• job loss
• reduced income,. (Entry-level wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation.)
• AI’s threat to the stability of white collar jobs, especially at the entry level.

That’s only half the story. The Thrivent survey also found that 50 percent of the re-nesters are not feeling a tightening of purse strings. They’re planning for the future. They may be saving for a down payment on a home (34 percent of young adults gave that as their reason to come home for a while) or to launch their own business (with or without use of your garage).

If our kids are re-residencing, we are entering into a relationship with them known as economic interdependence. To find our way through this phase, financial gurus have some tips:

• There’s a difference between providing a safety net and enabling financial immaturity. That is, there needs to be a balance between short-term support and long-term independence. “The goal should really be to use this period to build towards financial stability and not delay it,” says Gene Elder, a financial consultant at Thrivent
• Communicate whether and how the move home is impacting the family’s finances. This silent sacrifice can be costly. Nearly 45 percent of parents are willing to slash their own everyday spending to help their adult children. Turns out, two out of three boomerang kids say their parents have never communicated how much supporting them affects their parents’ long-term financial planning.
• As to setting the day-to-day means by which you live together, a frank two-way discussion tops the list to figure out the ordinary and the personal, such as rules about kitchen clean-up, bathroom protocols and overnight guests, to name just three hot buttons. While a full discussion can help keep things on an even keel, Michele Singletary, the Washington Post financial columnist. is succinct about the bottom line: “Your roof, your rules.”

painting: Madis Oru, “Dirty Dishes”