You love your children. You do not like to see them struggle or have a difficult time with life. Your parenting instincts kick in and you just want to help them out. You bail them out, again and again. But is it really helping?
I believe that it’s our job as parents to raise our kids to be independent and self-sufficient. We want help the little birdies fly and leave the nest, so they can build their own nests. It’s like the old English proverb that is often mistaken for a bible verse, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
It was a great feeling when our son Luke got a job and his own car, and moved out of our house into his own apartment. We love him and miss him, and are very proud of him and what he has accomplished. He comes to visit regularly, which is wonderful. However we are happy he is on his own and out of the house. Since, our daughter Elizabeth is still in college, we are still waiting for that day to come.
Nowadays however, there seems to be many more boomerang kids than there has been in the past. There are many kids who come back home and then do not leave. How about your son who is in his forties who lost his job and moved back home until he got back on his feet. It’s now five years later. He is still at home with no job, does not seem to be putting forth much effort finding one, does not help out around the house or contribute to household expenses, and expects you to do his laundry.
Or how about your twenty-something son and daughter who both had children before they left home or were married and then had their significant others also move in to be with the babies. To get them out of the house you take out a couple of mortgages to buy a house for each of them, with the agreement that they would pay the mortgage payments, taxes, utilities and insurance. But that didn’t last long and you are now paying all the bills.
What if your fifty or sixty-something daughter moved back home with her husband because of financial difficulties and brought along some of her grown kids and their families. You thought you were going to be empty nesters, but now there are a dozen people living with you that you are supporting.
When your son had a bad break-up, he had no place to stay. At the time, one of your rentals was vacant, and he moved in with the understanding he would pay you rent and the utilities. Not only did he not continue paying rent and utilities, he moved his new girlfriend and her grown children in with him and you are providing housing for all of them.
I have seen each of these and similar situations numerous times over the years with family, friends and clients. It’s one thing to help out the kids temporarily, like the son who needed a place to stay for a couple of months when he and his wife split up or was between jobs. It is a completely different thing to be supporting able-bodied children indefinitely.
You have worked hard all your life and saved for your retirement. You are now in your sixties, seventies or eighties. Because you are also providing for the kids, your expenses are much higher than you have budgeted. What are you to do? How are you going to support yourself for the rest of your retirement?
Have you really helped your children by supporting them long after they have reached adulthood? What is going to happen with or to them when you are no longer around to support them? They cannot support themselves. You have enabled that situation by supporting them when they could be supporting themselves. Do you really want them to sponge off you for the rest of your life?
When you support able-bodied children indefinitely, you are enabling them to be dependent. When they are dependent, they will not be self-sufficient. If they are not self-sufficient, when you are no longer able to support them or after your death, they will either seek someone else off of whom they could sponge, or they could just crash and burn and be worse off than if you never helped them at all. I have seen both of these results occur in these situations time and time again.
How do you get them out and stop this enabling cycle and cut the cash cord? It’s not going to be easy and the kids will try to guilt you into continuing supporting them. You have to have a plan and stick to it. Enter into a written lease agreement with the kids. Give the kids a deadline to start paying the rent and other expenses or to move out. And if they do not, then go through the legal process of evicting them. Be prepared for them to use the grandkids as emotional blackmail. You may even hear, “You don’t love us anymore.”
If the legal eviction process is too difficult for you, you could try another method I have seen a number of parents use. You could sell the home from which kids won’t move or for which they won’t pay expenses. Then let the new owners deal with it and evict the kids. You are then out of it. If it is your home in which the kids are living, after you sell, buy or rent a smaller place where there is only room for you. Buy that one bedroom condominium you always wanted or move into senior living facility. Not only will be helping your kids, you will be simplifying your own life.
Whichever process you choose, stick to your guns and follow through with the plan. It may be difficult for you and for the kids initially, but it will force them to find that job or other means of support other than you. You will no longer be enabling them to be helpless. You will be giving them the opportunity to be self-sufficient. Instead of giving them a fish, you will be teaching them to fish.
By: Matthew M. Wallace CPA, JD
Published edited October 13, 2013 in The Times Herald newspaper, Port Huron, Michigan as: Are you helping your kids or enabling them to be helpless?