Adult triplets all coming home to live with Mom and Dad? Really?
Sounds farfetched, but Procter & Gamble, playing off its Tide detergent ad on the amount of laundry three infant triplets generate, has a relatively new Tide ad with the amount of laundry three ADULT triplets, who’ve moved back home with Mom and Dad, generate.
Though the ad may be effective in advertising detergent, it begs the question: what is the likelihood that ALL THREE adult triplets would be so down and out as to move back home? Better yet, what is the likelihood that Mom and Dad would almost playfully work together to wash their adult kids’ clothes? In fairness to Mom and Dad, they want the kids gone – not because they don’t love them, but they NEED to be on their own.
Parents who’ve raised triplets, and perhaps other kids, look forward to that empty nest when the kids are grown. They want to still see them, but they don’t necessarily want them living back home. If you are a parent, would you welcome your, say, 30-year-old still living with you? If you are the 30-year-old, do you want to be living with Mom and Dad?
In recent years, with the number of job losses etc., parents have been a fallback for younger adults whose lives were suddenly changed. The young person can save on rent, perhaps even food and other living expenses, by hanging home. But as much as parents may not want this arrangement, the young person shouldn’t want it either.
For many, getting out of the house to live on one’s own is a goal as a young person. Parents, meanwhile, undoubtedly look forward to lives they’ve never been able to live while raising children. When the economy is going well, everyone should be happy with their own independence.
BAD ECONOMY MEANS UNINTENDED LOSS OF INDEPENDENCE
The unintended consequence of the economic downturn is the number of people who lose their independence. Mom and Dad could disallow their child or children to move back in, but most parents have never gone through what these young people are going through. They’ve never seen so many young careers threatened by forces their children can’t control.
The good news for children is they have time to recover. Presumably, the triplets in the Tide ad are all single. Matters get really complicated if the adult children have spouses and families themselves. It also gets really complicated for the person who is close to retirement, but not quite there yet. Their unexpected lack of work may sentence them to an extension of their work life, in some fashion.
Add to that the trend of companies refusing to hire those who have been unemployed a while, and you have the makings of a very slow recovery. Meanwhile, those who want to be independent – parents and adult children – can’t be in many cases.
What to do? If you are indeed forced to move back home with Mom and Dad, don’t stick them with your laundry or any other life chore. Live as if you were on your own. Sure, you can eat meals together, but if you don’t eat at the appointed family time, make your own meals.
If you are indeed unemployed, and are looking for an income source, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. This is among the better of the many ways out there to earn income, without having a traditional job. If you already have a job, don’t presume it will always be there. Check out other ways to make money – and save money, too.
If you are a parent and have adult kids at home, you, too, can buy into this venture and have your kids work with it. That may hasten their independence, and yours.
Having kids around is great. Many parents whose kids they never see would relish having their children home – for a time. But, after a while, they will want them to go to their own homes. The kids, after a while, should want that, too.
Peter
Tag Archives: jobs
30-SOMETHINGS SWEAT RETIREMENT: PART 1
If you are 30-something, are you worried about your financial security in retirement?
A survey by the Pew Research Center, as reported by Hope Yen of The Associated Press, says Americans in their late 30s are more worried about retirement than those of the Baby Boom Generation.
The 30-somethings should be concerned. However, they have time to do the right things.
If you are in this group, think about the following: your job, your pension (if you have been promised one), your lifestyle, your spending habits, your free time.
First, your job. No matter how “good” your job is, it may not last forever. Your forebears saw complete industries go from thriving to dead – or at least on life support — in a generation. If you have or had grandparents who worked in a factory, is that factory still around? Remember, your grandparents thought that job was as good as gold, and it probably was FOR THEM. But they may have lived to see those jobs disappear – something they never expected when they were your age.
No matter what industry you are in now, EXPECT it to change. New technology is making the way we do things differ by the day. What you are doing now may not even resemble what you may be doing as you approach retirement. Can you live with that? Will you see the changes BEFORE they hit you, so you can act accordingly? It’s difficult to anticipate change you don’t know is coming, but regardless of how your job, or industry, changes, your expectation of change will serve you well.
A PENSION FOR CHANGE
Second, your pension. If you are lucky enough to have a pension as part of your employment package, count your blessings. However, at this stage of your life, your pension is little more than a promise, unless you are contributing your own money toward it. We are seeing pension promises broken every day, and those older than you are having retirement planning disintegrate before their eyes.
Do you have a parent who is at or near retirement age but has to keep working because everything they’d worked for has all but disappeared? From your vantage point, you can learn from this. Start now to save for your retirement. How YOU prepare your own resources for retirement will make a difference in how and when you will be able to retire. Remember, the retirement planning that you do, with your own money, can’t be taken from you. It can go up and down with the markets, but your own money and efforts are yours forever. It’s a promise you can keep for yourselves.
Promises from employers can be broken. If your parents have or had an employer that is keeping its pension promise, they are very lucky. Even unionized or government pensions are coming under scrutiny. If you are employed in a unionized or government environment, and you are in your 30s, don’t expect the promises made to you today to hold up at, say, age 60. If you plan that things will go away, and they don’t, that’s a bonus for you.
LIFESTYLE CAN CREATE WEALTH
Third, your lifestyle. In this age of ever-changing gadgets, people wait in long lines for fancier phones, etc. People want what’s hot. They want it even though they know that the minute they get it, something else will make it obsolete. When your grandparents and parents were young, they may have bought a TV or a radio, or a stereo system. They expected to use it for decades without replacing it. Today, people replace their gadgets annually, if not more frequently, so they can have the latest, trendy thing. If you have a gadget that works for you, think long and hard before replacing it. Your friends may laugh at you for having “old” technology, but you’ll have the last laugh when you put the money that you would have spent on the newest gadget into your retirement fund.
We’ll talk more about spending habits and free time next week. Meanwhile, as you ponder your retirement and fret about what it will look like, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. This may be one way you can put your mind at ease when it comes to retirement. Who knows? It might even put you on the road to retiring EARLY!
Time is on your side. Things you do – or don’t do – today may determine the type of retirement you will have. Think hard, and choose wisely.
Peter
CLASS OF 2013: FEAR THE DEBT REAPER
It’s early, but Kyle Wingfield, columnist with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, thinks it’s time to address graduates.
His October 2012 column suggests that graduates – mainly high school graduates – think about their options before going to college.
Wingfield suggests that they not end up like Katie Brotherton, a young Cincinnati woman who is $190,000 in debt from college and graduate school. She’s living in her parents’ basement.
Brotherton is “looking for answers.” As Wingfield points out, it started with her decision to go to college with borrowed money.
You can envision a pattern: a person goes to college, thinking she would get a good job when she got out. She doesn’t. So, she decides to go to graduate school, thinking it might broaden her qualifications and buy her time for the job market to improve. Meanwhile, she’s incurring more debt.
She gets out of graduate school with no good job and lots of debt. She moves back home. She doesn’t want to be living at home, but she has no choice. Her debt and lack of employment leave her unable to afford to live on her own. Her parents sympathize with her plight, but they, too, would rather see her out on her own.
A few decades ago, we were told to go to the best college we could possibly get into. The best schools would open more doors, we were told. The best schools, often, were usually the most expensive. But if those schools opened more doors, you’d be able to pay back your education fairly quickly with a good job.
Many of the “good” jobs that students thought would be there are not. In fact, they may have disappeared permanently.
As Wingfield points out, education inflation is rampant. There could even be an education “bubble” getting bigger by the day. We all know what happened with the housing “bubble.” It’s not that students should not get an education, it’s that some education does not provide a great return on investment, in terms of career opportunities.
Certainly, there is nothing wrong with getting a degree in history, literature or some of the other liberal arts. No education is really wasted. But students have to evaluate whether that education is worth the debt incurred, or, worth the sacrifices your family might make to provide it.
ARTS, HISTORY MAJORS: YOU HAVE OPTIONS
If you love history, the arts or psychology, you can still pursue them. But you can do so at less expensive schools close to home. You may be able to parlay those degrees into a good career, but you have to understand that most people with such backgrounds cannot convert them to real dollars.
All is not lost, however. You can get one of those degrees without using it as an income producer. There are many excellent ways to produce income outside your educational background. To check out one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau.
Even if you have a degree in engineering, the sciences, technology, mathematics or other fields in great demand, you might want to have a Plan B if your career plans don’t turn out the way you want them to. There are excellent income streams that can get you out of your parents’ home as an adult.
So, as Wingfield addresses the class of 2013, he suggests that they not lower ambitions, just understand the reality. Not all college degrees are the same. Most college degrees can be obtained from schools that are not cripplingly expensive. Remember that as you get older and proceed in your career, or life, where you went to school becomes less important in terms of whether you get hired. A degree is a degree. You will succeed largely on your experience.
Success comes in many forms. Being a great historian may not produce lots of income, but it may produce great successes. Just realize that you may have to find another way to make a living, or create wealth for yourself.
Educational institutions need to be aware of the “bubble.” It could burst, and they could find themselves with great, expensive programs, and no students that can afford them. Students need to be aware that there are ways to make an income regardless of education. You just have to be willing to check them out.
Peter