Kids In Parents' Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings - KIPPERS

It’s a jungle out there, which is part of the reason why more 18-34-year-olds live at home with their parents today than at any time since the Swinging Sixties. These home-dwelling grownups may or may not be the stereotypical live-in-basement-and-play-with-action-figures types, but whether they are or aren’t, their domestic arrangements have earned them a cute lil nickname: they’re called KIPPERS, which stands for “Kids In Parents’ Pocket Eroding Retirement Savings.”

Hey, we get it: life is expensive. Between rising living costs, student debt, and a sometimes-challenging job market, it’s not easy to leave the nest and forge our own way. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with moving back to Mom and Dad’s if, upon graduating from college, we find that the highest-paying job we can secure is as a barista at the mall.

But we should be aware that, just because living at home is easier for us financially, that doesn’t necessarily make it so for our parents. A lot of times, they end up shelling out more money—and potentially dipping into their retirement savings, which is where the ERS in KIPPERS comes from—to pay for things like extra food, water, electricity, and whatever else we’ve got going on.

So if we do find ourselves in a KIPPERS situation, even if we’re not raking in the dough, we should take extra care to make sure we’re contributing what we can to overall household expenses and maintenance—and we should be extra-sweet to the parentals for letting us continue to crash at their pad.