What to Know:
- Moving home doesn’t necessarily mean young adults are unemployed.
- Families should set expectations – and put them in writing.
- Use the time at home to prepare financially for independence.
For generations, moving out of your parents’ home has been viewed as a major milestone on the road to adulthood. It was freedom: independence, being on your own, the first time you were really responsible for yourself and considered an adult.
But for a growing number of young Americans, reaching that milestone is taking longer as the cost of living puts more pressure on their finances.
It’s not so much that kids aren’t moving out – many are also returning home once they’ve finished college. That decision to stay with the ‘rents can come down to the math: housing costs, utilities, groceries, student loans, car payments, and health insurance can make living independently difficult, even for someone earning a steady paycheck.
So moving back home may be the answer, but is it a sustainable solution?
Should an adult child pay rent? Who pays for groceries and utilities? How much financial help should parents provide? And perhaps most importantly, how long should the arrangement last?
CBS News Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger says families can avoid some of those problems by treating the multi-generational living arrangement as a financial plan rather than an open-ended solution. We recently spoke with Schlesinger about why so many young adults are living at home, how parents and their adult children can make the arrangement work, and the financial steps young adults should take while preparing to move out.
Here’s the full transcript of our interview:
WKMG-TV: A new report shows a record 25.2 million people under the age of 35 lived at home in 2025. That’s one-third of young adults 18 to 35, and it’s more than at any other point on record, including during the pandemic.
CBS News Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger is here to discuss steps that young adults and their parents can take to manage their cohabitation. Jill. Why are we seeing this increase in young people moving back in with their parents?
Jill Schlesinger: Well, to state the obvious, it’s pretty expensive out there. Rent, utilities, overall cost of living – combine that with the fact that many are graduating with student loans, and that’s putting tons of financial pressure on these young adults. To be clear, seven in 10 of those who are moving back home or who have lived at home, they’ve got jobs. They’re not couch surfing.
So in essence, they’re being pretty smart about moving back with their generous families and hopefully saving money.
WKMG-TV: Jill, how should both the parents and the young adults create a plan if they’re going to live together in adulthood?
Jill Schlesinger: I think it’s really important to have conversations about the expectations, and also you want to set some ground rules up front. Establish a move-out target date. Now, you may not meet that target date maybe the kid’s not ready to go- but you then agree to revisit maybe 30 or 60 days before the target date so that you can kind of have a conversation and keep this going.
You also, of course, need to decide is this young adult going to pay you rent or contribute to utilities and groceries, even if just a token amount? Whatever you decide, try to think about putting this in writing. This is the way you build accountability. You pull out the document, and you sit there about 30 or 60 days before your target date. You say, how are we doing? And you have something to talk about.
WKMG-TV: And Jill, while young folks are living at home, what steps should they take as they try to move out? And is it okay for parents to help out financially beyond putting a roof over their head? long-term
Jill Schlesinger: Well, look, I think it’s a great time to develop really smart habits, keeping track of your finances and also getting used to allocating money for short and intermediate and long-term needs. So short term would be the move-out fund. Intermediate term might be paying off your student or auto loan. Long term would be contributing to a retirement plan.
Now, if you’re the parent, look, as long as helping your kids out today doesn’t hurt your own retirement plans in the future. There’s no serious problem. Just to avoid having that enabling relationship, though, I would do the same thing that you are about the living home, which is put a time horizon on it. We’ll help you with your rent for six months or 12 months and you can reevaluate it, but you want to try to make it time-bound and also put it in writing.
WKMG-TV: Jill, thank you very much. You can see Jill regularly on CBS Mornings and the CBS Evening News. For more analysis, go to JillOnMoney.com.