£1,200 cost of adult kids living at home

PARENTS who let their grown-up children move back home may want to have a think about the cost.

Taking your twentysomething back in can increase bills by at least £1,200 a year, a study suggests.

Researchers have found almost twothirds of adults aged 20 to 29 now live with their parents. They save £1 5 a week on average, often getting their meals cooked and washing done rent-free.

But by failing to fly the nest, these children are costing their parents at least

£800 a year in food bills. The electricity and gas bills increase by at least £260 a year, while cleaning products and washing powder add up to more than £100.

The cost of letting adult children stay at home was worked out by Loughborough University researchers, who interviewed older parents and grown-up offspring. They say the £1,200 annual bill for stay-athome children could leap to £2, 40 for parents in rented accommodation unable to downsize and forced to keep spare bedrooms for their adult children.

Donald Hirsch, professor of social

policy at Loughborough University and senior author of the report, said: ‘Some parents did feel they were helping their children save for a deposit and that their children were not really saving, or spending their money on things like iPhones or eating out.

‘That made them feel as if they were subsidising their children’s lifestyle.’

The report, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, concludes that £100 a month would be the minimum ‘board’ payment for young people to pay if the aim was for parents not to lose out financially.