This nest is feathered with cash | The Retiring Boomer?

Barbara Mitchell, professor of gerontology and author of The Boomerang Age, a book about family finances when adult children move back home, is pictured at Barbara Mitchell, professor of gerontology and author of The Boomerang Age, a book about family finances when adult children move back home, is pictured at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia ? Ben Nelms for National Post

As Published in the Financial Post

By?Julia Johnson

When the Baby Boomer generation left home, they didn?t look back. They couldn?t. Not with younger siblings and physically smaller living quarters.

But a change in family dynamics, coupled with the economic deck stacked against many young adults, means that modern twenty-somethings now are likely to return to the nest at some point, which can impact the retirement plans of their Boomer parents.

?Children are taking longer to leave home, they are staying in school longer if they don?t have immediate employment prospects or opportunities, taking longer to find stable jobs, longer to get married, longer to have kids,? Daryl Diamond, financial planner and author of Your Retirement Income Blueprint 2011.

Mr. Diamond said a gritty job market and costly rental housing sends those who have recently finished post-secondary school back to their childhood bedrooms.

On top of the added grocery and utility costs of having another person in the dwelling, parents are chipping in with the children?s cell-phone bills, car expenses, and debt, according to Barbara Mitchell, a professor of sociology and gerontology at Vancouver?s Simon Fraser University.

?Especially with middle-class type parents, there is sort of this mentality that to be a good parent you need to care for every need of your child,? Ms. Mitchell said.

Ms. Mitchell conducted a recent study of roughly 500 families in the Vancouver area who had children aged 18-35 living at home. Eighty-five per cent were living at home for economic reasons and one quarter of those were in ?dire? debt situations, Ms. Mitchell said, with which parents feel obligated to help.

It is also a characteristic of the boomer generation to feel the need to keep up with their neighbours, said Ms. Mitchell. ?We are raising children within a society, whereby there are certain standards that we see in other families that everyone is trying to keep up with the Jones? kind of thing.?

The willingness to continue support can come at personal financial cost.?Continue reading??

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