PenPenWrites

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.

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.

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.