When your kids leave home, you may worry about how they’re going to handle their money. But don’t forget to worry about yourself, too.
After all, this is new territory for you as well. You may have more money than ever with the kids gone, or you may be paying for more than ever, especially if you aren’t a full-time empty nester yet, because, say, your child is in college and nowhere near financially independent.
Either way, having an empty nest, or one that’s partially empty, is a financial adjustment. And you’re probably going to make some money mistakes. But if your kids haven’t yet flown the coop, consider this your blueprint to avoiding big blunders.
Mistake: You won’t think about selling your home until after the kids are gone. You may live in an apartment or a cozy house that you plan to hole up in until your kids start leaving nursing home brochures on your coffee table. But if you own a big house, think about how empty it may be after your kids are gone.
Mark Savoree, 54, who owns a rental property and farming business, wishes that he and his wife, Karen, 56, had thought more about empty nesting when they were nesting.
They built their house in 1999. It’s a beautiful home and, as Savoree says, “It was a great place to raise our family. We have a big yard of over five acres, a pool, an outdoor hot tub, fire pit, trails and bridges in the woods.”
But it’s not a home designed for just a married couple. “By far, the biggest mistake I’ve made was not having the forethought to realize my wife and I would be empty nesters. Time flies,” Savoree says.
Their large, five-bedroom house is in Paris, Illinois (population: 8,561). The town, he says, is a great place to raise a family, but families aren’t swarming into the area and buying large homes.
So far, Savoree hasn’t been able to sell his home. “We still have to maintain the utilities and the yard that goes with it. It seems that my wife and I are constantly working just to keep it up, instead of enjoying this time of our lives,” he says.
On the other hand, sometimes the mistake is that you do sell your home once your kids leave.
“Sometimes downsizing ends up costing people more. It’s easy to think that a smaller home means lower expenses and overall cost savings, but this isn’t always the case,” says Rocco Carriero, a Southampton, New York-based financial advisor with Ameriprise Financial Services.
That can be especially true if you’ve paid off your mortgage, or you’re close to it, Carriero says. “Empty nesters … need to be careful about taking on additional debt that may come with a new home,” he says.
Mistake: You go hog-wild on purchases. The kids are out of the house, so is it time to remake a bedroom into a man cave? You’re entitled, but Carriero notes the upgrades could put you in serious debt, too. Still, if you’re going to do it, and especially if you aren’t retired and you’re on a limited budget, sooner rather than later is probably the way to go.
“Plan to do any major house work, upgrades or repairs while you are still working,” Carriero says.
If you do take on some serious debt, it may be the smartest thing you do, if you do it in a smart way. Veronica James, author of “Going Gypsy: One Couple’s Adventure From Empty Nest to No Nest At All,” lives everywhere — she and her husband, David, travel in an RV when they’re in the U.S. She says they were unprepared for just how expensive the dorms were when their two daughters went to college in the District of Columbia and New York City.
“Housing costs were almost as expensive as tuition,” James says. So when their son went to college, they came up with a novel solution — one that won’t work for cash-strapped, credit-bruised parents, but one that’s worth considering for some mothers and fathers. They bought a condo near their son’s school. He lived there for free while his two roommates paid rent. Then, when he left school, they sold the condo.
“Even with the housing market remaining a little soft, we managed to get back what we paid for it,” James says.
Mistake: You assume you’ll have more money when the kids are gone. Maybe you will, but maybe you won’t. “While you would think expenses will decrease for parents who become empty nesters, many times the expenses actually stay the same or go up,” Carriero says.
Creating a budget when your kids are no longer under your roof may be harder than you expect. “I think there’s a tendency to think that when your kids are gone, they’re gone. But you can’t really plan your budget after they move out. Whatever you’ve budgeted for with your kids moving out, there are probably a zillion expenses that people don’t plan for, outside the regular dorm and school fees and books,” says April Rudin, who owns a wealth-marketing firm in New York City.
A single mom, Rudin has two college-aged sons, one in Pennsylvania and the other in Maryland. Her youngest son, who started college last fall, ran through his dorm cafeteria’s semester allowance within several weeks. “He would go to the cafeteria any time he wanted to eat, not realizing that each time he ran his card through the machine, that was a meal swipe, and that he had to plan and allocate those swipes over a certain time period,” she says.
While she was trying to help her son from afar, Rudin was paying the usual bills for herself and her oldest son, who came back to briefly live with her while taking a semester off for a biomedical engineering internship. She didn’t mind in the least, but it goes to show that it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen when the kids leave your home. You’ll save money, but you’ll spend plenty, too.
After her oldest son ended his internship and went back to college last winter, Rudin found herself with a much smaller grocery bill. “It was disconcerting,” Rudin says. “I wandered around for the longest time with nothing in my cart. I couldn’t figure out what to buy that I liked.”
While Rudin is saving a lot on her grocery bill, it isn’t as much as she hoped, she says, since she cooks less and buys more expensive, prepared meals and goes out for dinner more frequently. And the money she is saving on her grocery bill has been offset by so many of those unplanned expenses. For instance, she really underestimated how expensive it can be to visit your kids in college — or for them to come and visit.
A round-trip train ticket costs $350, Rudin says, plus a $25 Uber ride each way to the station. “And then when you visit them in college, there are expenses,” Rudin says. “You take your kids out, you stay in a hotel and they want stuff, so you go shopping.”
So, yes, Rudin saves a lot of money buying food for herself instead of herself and two teenage boys. But all in all, she says, she is spending more money by having her kids away from home than when they were both living with her.
More from U.S. News
7 Bad Investing Habits That Are Holding You Back
10 Money Tips for Family Caregivers
How Boomers Can Avoid Going Bust in Retirement
3 Money Mistakes Empty Nesters Make originally appeared on usnews.com
