Now that your baby is all grown up and has an official college degree, your responsibilities have ended, right? Wrong! Your son or daughter has informed you that that they will be moving home after college while they prepare themselves for their next phase in life. According to The Guardian, almost a third of Italian adults (31%) live with their parents. The highest proportion was amongst 18 to 29 year olds for whom unemployment is particularly high with 60.7% reported living at home. Are we taking over the Italians? Last year, NPR reported that a whopping 32.1% of kids aged 18 to 34 were living at home with Mom and Dad.
Here are four tips to get that college graduate off the couch and launching into real life.
- Use Social Media…Yes, Social Media – In order to get your college graduate up and working in a real job, you have to make them treat getting a job like a job. One of my biggest recommendations is to hold them accountable to get to 1,000 connections on LinkedIn and send out 15 messages a day. It won’t be hard for them to see their friends doing well in different social media channels, but give them a weekly goal of number of interviews that they will have every week.
- Set A Deadline – If you don’t cut the cord at some point then you should expect the cord to start wrapping around your neck. It is important that you begin charging rent immediately, even if you plan on giving them that rent to get their first apartment or home. You need to be clear with your college graduate that this arrangement will last for three months, six months, etc., but has a definite deadline.
- Make Them Have Responsibilities At Home – This isn’t about giving them $3 a week anymore to take the garbage out to the end of the driveway. It is important you set clear boundaries about how the house runs since they haven’t been home permanently for a long, long, time. You should be very direct about having people in the house, what chores are expected, and make certain that they don’t think you are there to wait on them hand and foot. Get them in the habit of helping to cook meals and do the laundry.
- Sit down and help them make a budget (or just get them to come see us) – It’s a good likelihood that you have been picking up the auto insurance, health insurance, and many other bills that your newly minted college graduate has no idea exists. It’s a great idea to start to map out a budget on what it will cost for an apartment, automobile payments, food, and all of the other bills that they will be facing every month. For them to figure out what income they will need to be earning, there is no way to know this without a budget. Plus, doing a budget will add some more finality to the inevitability that they will be officially leaving home.
If you are struggling with how to handle this delicate situation, give me a call or shoot me an e-mail at ted@oxygenfinancial.net and we can help.
