The Times - Warning: boomerang children don’t bring financial returns

Parents who make life too easy for their grown-up offspring could come to regret it

Grown children going back to live in the family house cost parents an average of £5,000 a year extra, with sons tending to cost more than daughters, pension advisers say.

Government statistics show that there are a million more young adults aged 20 to 34 living with their parents than there were 15 years ago.

High rents and house prices combined with the difficulty of securing an affordable mortgage rate with a relatively small deposit, resulted in a quarter of people aged between 20 to 34 — some 3.4 million people — still living in their family home last year. In 2008 there were 2.7 million and in 2003 it was 2.4 million.

Boomerang kids — those over 18 who fly the nest for a while then fly right back when they realise how expensive rents are — cost parents an average £414.38 a month, according to Portafina, a pensions advice company.

The company found that men expect to move out of the family home at 26, while women expect to move out at 22, so kidult sons can cost about £20,000 more than daughters. Many parents are also suffering from the “boomerang-plus-one” effect where grown-up children move their partner into the family home. These can even become “boomerangs plus two” if they have children.

The full online article can be found here.