Couple spends $5,000 a month to support their 27-year-old daughter who moved back home: 'We were not planning on this'

CNBC

17 hours ago

At 66 years old, one Sherman Oaks, California-based mom thought she'd be enjoying an empty nest with her husband. Instead, she's sharing her home with an unexpected roommate: her 27-year-old daughter.
Since their 27-year-old moved back home in early 2024, the mother, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her daughter's identity, says she and her husband are spending close to $5,000 a month covering all of her daughter's living expenses, including food, transportation and health care.
Because of the increased expenses, she says they're no longer going on vacation this year, and her husband, a radiologist, may have to delay retirement.
"We were not planning on this kind of expenditure at this point of our lives," the mother says. "The reason we do it is because we don't want to see her on the street."
The couple join a growing number of parents who say their finances have been affected by children aged 18 to 35 moving back home. One survey published in May by financial services provider Thrivent found that nearly 40% of U.S. parents say supporting their adult children has impacted their savings goals — the highest percentage since the survey began four years ago.
The parents from Sherman Oaks say their relationship with their daughter has become so strained that they've turned to Kim Muench, a parenting coach who specializes in young adults, for guidance.
Muench says "a good majority" of her clients have been affected financially by their adult children living at home. Many parents aren't traveling like they typically would, are pushing off retirement and are forgoing other self-care expenses.
"Parents sometimes hesitate to get help for themselves and invest in their health … because they're already spending more than they would like to support their adult or emerging adult children," she says.
While using short-term savings to support adult children may mean missing a vacation or not going out to dinner as often, dipping into long-term savings or delaying retirement can lead to financial challenges later in life — especially if health issues or age make it difficult to keep working, experts say.
Some decisions, however, aren't always driven by a lack of money: "I would say 80% is emotional, 20% is financial from the parents," Muench says.
Many of her clients forgo vacations because they don't trust their kids to stay home alone, Muench says.
The father from Sherman Oaks says that retirement wouldn't just mean a loss of income, it would also mean losing access to his employer-sponsored health care — which currently costs the couple close to $600 a month for their daughter.
"At this point, I was hoping to do a lot more travelling … we've really put that on the back burner," the mother says. "I thought my husband and I would have the house to ourselves with the dogs, and we wouldn't be worried sick about her all the time."
While many parents are happy to care for their adult children when they first move back home, there's usually an expectation that the move will be temporary, Muench says. However, a lack of communication between parents and children, especially around finances, can often leave parents feeling stuck in a long-term living arrangement.
"When their son or daughter is not taking [financial responsibility] on incrementally, they actually get very worried that they will be financially providing for the rest of their lives," Muench says.
Muench says parents can work with their adult children by having open, calm conversations to define financial boundaries together.
Instead of taking drastic measures, Muench suggests parents introduce gradual financial boundaries to help young adults build responsibility with support. Ask them to start small, she says, such as taking over their phone bills or putting a weekly portion of money away in a separate savings account to mimic paying rent.
"It takes consistent conversations, because it's probably not going to happen in the first conversation," Muench says. "And it takes an emotional maturity level on both the parents and the emerging adult side to figure out how they can work together."