Think You’re a Good Parent? Suze Orman Says This Money Move Proves Otherwise
Suze Orman has advice for the parents who open the door to a grown child and then bankroll the stay by shortchanging their own retirement. Scale back on wants if you must, she says, but pausing your retirement saving to fund an adult kid is, in her words, “the opposite of being a good parent.”
Nearly half of U.S. parents with adult children between 18 and 35, 44%, say a kid has moved back home at some point, according to Thrivent’s fifth annual Boomerang Kids Survey. For most of those young adults, it was a way to save money.
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Returning to the nest
A record share of young adults now live with a parent, and in the Thrivent survey, conducted by Ipsos, 55% of returning young adults called the move financially necessary. More than half of parents expect it to last a year or longer, with unaffordable housing and lost income the main drivers.
For many, the goal is a down payment. About a third of young adults said saving to buy a home would be their main reason for moving back, even as 30% of those in their late 20s and early 30s who have not yet bought a place say they never expect to. For the kids, the math holds up. For the parents, it depends entirely on what the arrangement costs them.
Put yourself first
Almost half of current boomerang parents, 47%, said their finances have taken a hit, and 43% are willing to trim their own spending to help. That kind of trimming is recoverable. Skip the trip, hold the car another few years, cook at home, and the money that was going to wants gets redirected without lasting damage.
The next number is the one that should stop you. Nearly one in five parents said they would cut their own savings or retirement contributions instead. That is the line Orman draws, and the reason it matters is compounding. A dollar you do not invest in your 50s is not just a missing dollar. It is the decades of growth it might have earned before you needed it, and there is no clean way to buy that time back.
Catch-up contributions rose again for 2026, but that room helps only if you are funding it. Divert the money to a grown child for two or three years and you are not pausing your retirement. You may be shrinking it for good. If you are already behind, there are smarter moves for someone over 50 and behind than draining the one account built to outlast you.
One of the best ways to protect your savings is having money in different types of investments: ideally, ones that can go up when others are going down. For example, stocks tend to do poorly when inflation and interest rates are rising and there’s political turmoil brewing. Gold, on the other hand, thrives in this scenario.
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Avoid creating a burden
Here is the twist families may miss, and it is the one Orman keeps hammering. A retirement you underfund today does not stay your problem. Jump ahead 10 or 15 years: Your child is raising a family and saving for their own future, and you come up short. The help you gave now returns as a bill they never planned for, at the worst possible time.
The same survey found that 76% of boomerang kids say their parents never told them how the support affected the parents’ own finances, up sharply from the prior year. That silence is the real risk. A frank conversation about what the arrangement costs, and how long it will run, protects both sides.
Fund your own future
Helping a grown child through a hard stretch is a parental instinct, and nobody is telling you to turn them away. Cut the wants if you must. Set a deadline. Charge modest rent if it fits the situation. Just continue funding your retirement.
The most valuable thing you can hand your kids is not free accommodation; it is the near-certainty that you will never become the financial emergency they have to solve. Fund that, and you have given them something they will not fully appreciate until they are your age.
If you have over $100,000 in savings, consider getting advice from a pro to ensure your retirement needs are met, and you won’t become a burden on your children. SmartAsset offers a free service that matches you to a vetted, fiduciary advisor in less than 5 minutes.
