More than half of young adults moved back home after leaving

Almost 60% of young adults have moved back home at some point, but they don’t see it as a failure to launch.They see it as financially savvy.That the path to full independent living is increasingly an ongoing process, strewn with periods of moving out and then back in, is the conclusion of a new survey from storage solution company SpareFoot, which surveyed 981 Gen Z adults and young millennials.“The boomerang generation is no longer an outlier, but the norm,” writes SpareFoot senior content manager Maggie Stankiewicz.The survey finds that 58% of young adults—or 3 in 5—who moved away from home later move back, including 15% who have done this multiple times.But adult children aren’t just moving back home.

Unlike previous generations, when living with parents past a certain age carried a distinct stigma, these “kids” aren’t ashamed about their living-at-home status.According to the survey, 3 in 4 young adults say living with family or in transitional housing (often with a roommate) is a “smart financial strategy,” not a setback, and 26% declared they moved home to deliberately save money.A vast majority of the respondents—62%—said the harsh stigma around moving back home has faded compared with previous generations, and 63% say they personally no longer feel embarrassed or judged about their living situation.Other financial reasons that young adults say they aren’t flying the coop just yet are waiting for the right income level or salary (38%), reaching a specific amount of savings (23%), and paying off existing debt (13%).Unsurprisingly, the trend of adult children living at home is more pronounced in expensive areas.While the most recent U.S.Census figures found that 33% of individuals aged 18 to 34 live with their parents, it is even higher in pricey states like New Jersey (44.1%), Connecticut (41.3%), California (39.1%), Maryland (38.5%), and Florida (36.6%).Real estate agent Jenna Hoyas of Douglas Elliman sees this scenario ...