Failure to Launch
By: Hayley Caddes
Me imagining my life as a parent 30 years in the future… just go with me here.
I wake up in the morning. I’m excited to get up, have my cutesy lil morning coffee ritual, and go to my hot moms pilates class. I walk downstairs, and my 30-year-old son is playing video games on the couch, an empty bowl of cereal sitting on the table beside them, hasn’t showered yet, and looks like they have no plans for the day.
I’ll tell you this right now: without having lived that moment yet…my mood and vibe are immediately ruined. I’m resentful, and after 30+ years of parenting, can I not have ONE MOMENT in my gorgeously decorated house to myself?? 🫠 Just thinking about it is enough to drive me to drink.
Wow, even just writing this out, I’m already heated lol. If reading that scenario made your chest tighten, hiiii 👋 This one’s for you.
The question we get at Not Therapy from parents in this exact situation, more than almost any other: “How the hell do I get my young adult to move out of my house??”
Our answer is actually straight from my own dad’s playbook: CHARGE THEM RENT.
My dad actually did this to me recently when I moved back into their house for two weeks this past winter while my husband and I were waiting for our furniture to get to the Bay Area after moving here from NYC. I had two weeks rent-free, then I had to chip in on rent and groceries. Honestly, iconic.
Maybe you feel guilty even thinking about this as an option, because charging your own kid to live in the house they grew up in feels cold. It feels like something a landlord does.
Our answer: yes, it’s exactly what a landlord does, but that’s the whole point! IMO, rent is non-negotiable for any adult kid living at home. The only real variable is the currency in which they pay it.
And before the guilt spiral starts, remember the thing we say every week: stuck isn’t sick.
A capable 23-year-old who sleeps until noon in a house where nothing is asked of them (or they aren’t following through on what you’re asking them currently) is responding rationally to a setup with no structure OR incentive in it. Setup problems get fixed by changing the setup, while incentive problems get fixed by adding an incentive. Charging rent is one of the fastest changes available to you, and it does both.
We’ve watched the no-rent version play out. It looks like my literal nightmare.
We’ve watched kids be in their parents’ home for their whole twenties, never having to pay rent, and by the end it’s impossible to kick them out.
In one case, the kid essentially had a random job at their parents’ company to have on their resume and “earn money,” and they were still living at home and not paying rent. Then, all of a sudden they were 30, and the parents were calling us saying, “We are terrified that our son hates us but will never move out.” He had ten-plus years of free everything, so the muscle for running his life never got built. Yet.
Compare that to the families where there’s an agreed-upon plan from the start. “Okay, you’re going to school, so we will charge you much less than what you would normally pay in this area for rent if you live at home. If you live away from home, we’ll pay up to $[insert the max dollar amount you’d pay without getting resentful] per month for your first 6 months. Then we’ll pay $[insert smaller amount] for the next six months.”
That type of split plan works well almost every time. The kid has skin in the game, the parent has a defined role, and nobody wakes up at the ten-year mark wondering how they got there.
Same amount of parental generosity in both stories, but completely different outcomes. The difference was the structure around the money.
Does rent have to be actual money? Nope.
This is where most parents get stopped: “But they don’t have a job, and they live at home, so what am I supposed to charge them?” Fair question, Stacy. Here’s the currency ladder we use with our families:
Scenario 1: No job, has savings
If they don’t have a job but have savings, and I’m assuming they already live at home or are moving back in, then they pay rent from their savings. Yes, really. Watching your own account go down every month you don’t work is one of the most motivating experiences on earth (we’ve seen it kickstart more job searches than any pep talk).
Scenario 2: No job, no savings
If they have no savings, no job, and they’re living at home, they pay in real labor around the house. And we mean real labor, with real market value. Ask yourself: what is something you wish you could hire someone for but you haven’t been able to yet? Have them do that. Power washing the deck. Digitizing twenty years of family photos. Rebuilding the garage shelving. What is going to save you money or make it less of a cost for you, ultimately, to have them there? That’s the rent. Living at home as an adult shouldn’t be fun or easy. This serves as greater motivation to get out there and get a job.
Either way, the test for every rent and living arrangement is the same question: is this moving them more towards remaining a reliant kid or more towards becoming an independent adult? Shout out to Beth Hillman for saying this to a parent we were working with the other day. It’s stuck with me ever since.
“Free everything,” with no expectations, moves them back toward childhood. Rent, in any currency, moves them toward adulthood.
The move most parents never consider, if your young adult does in fact have a job
Scenario 3 (and the point we get most families we work with to): Has a job
Here’s the version we like best, and it might sound counterintuitive at first: pay part of their rent somewhere else.
The stipulations do the heavy lifting here: a set end date, midpoint check-ins, and a ramp-down plan (you cover half for six months, then a third, then they carry it, or whatever version fits your family).
Why this works so well: on the first of every month, rent is due to someone who has zero emotional history with your kid. No negotiating, no guilt-tripping, no “you’re so unfair.” Let the landlord be the bad guy, not you. You get to go back to being the parent. The lease does the enforcement.
If you go this route, make sure to have these guardrails in place:
Make sure the apartment is affordable on minimum wage, if that’s the kind of job they’re looking for. Setting them up in a place they could never carry alone just delays the same problem at a higher price point.
Don’t furnish it. They can buy their own mattress or take stuff from their childhood bedroom. (A slightly ugly first apartment is a rite of passage, and skipping it for them skips a step they need.)
Give them the money directly each month instead of paying the landlord yourself. They should see how much is coming in and how much is going out, and they should be the one making the payment. If they spend it all without paying their rent, that’s a lesson. There is no option to “move back in” under this agreement.
Set (and communicate) the timeline at the start: “we’ll help pay for it the whole time, half the time, or for a few months.” Whatever you pick, pick it before move-in day, because renegotiating later turns you right back into the bad guy.
The part your kid won’t say out loud
To be fair to the other side of this: we know charging rent can feel harsh when your kid is already struggling. And if your kid is in a genuine crisis right now, this is not the week to slide a rent agreement across the table. Stabilize first.
But for the young adult who is technically capable (even if you don’t believe that yet) and needs a swift kick, as we say? Having worked with soooo many of these kids, I’ll tell you that free rent feels like a daily message that nobody in the house expects anything from them.
Rent, even the labor version, carries the opposite message: we think you have something worth contributing, and we’re going to treat you like an adult who can deliver it. Most stuck young adults are actually starving for exactly that.
What to do this week
Pick the currency. If there’s savings, it’s money. If there’s no savings, sit down together and make the list of things you’d hire out if you could, and let them pick two. If moving out is on the table (or you want it to be), draft the ramp-down: how much you’ll cover, for how long, and when the check-ins happen. Ideally, they already have a job in this scenario.
Then have the conversation before the resentment picks the timing for you.
And if you’re living the “kid at home, no rent, year four” version of this and you’re not sure where to start, reply to this email. We read everything, and this specific situation is basically our home turf.
💚 - Hayley
Not sure what to do next? Our free parent guide walks you through the first move.
