Andy Doyle and Darcy Eaton with their sons Matt, 29, Brendan, 33, and James, 27, who live in their Vancouver home. Son Nick, 31, has moved out.Jennifer Gauthier/The Globe and Mail
Anne-Marie Thibert and her husband had a plan for retirement. They’d sell their four-bedroom bungalow in Winnipeg in 2024, downsize to their cottage in Albert Beach, Man., and spend much of their golden years travelling.
But in 2022, Ms. Thibert’s eldest son asked if he, his girlfriend and their friend could move into and rent the family home after they had an issue with their landlord. Ms. Thibert, 61, fast-tracked her plans to make it happen: She and her husband retired and moved to the cottage in mid-2022. She was initially still planning to sell the house in 2024, but Winnipeg’s increasingly expensive rental market and the need to pay down some debt limited her son’s options for moving out.
Inheritance gifts are creating a generation of haves and have nots
The arrangement is hitting Ms. Thibert and her husband’s monthly income, between covering the taxes and insurance on the house, having kept the rent the same over the past three years, and not having the equity from the house sale to draw on.
She said she’s planning to raise the rent, and is now looking to leave the property to him in her will since he doesn’t have the money for a down payment to buy it from her.
“If I can help my kids, why wouldn’t I?” Ms. Thibert said. “The cost of living is way higher than when we were that age.”
For many Canadians, there’s a typical retirement script: Sell the family home and move to a modest bungalow or even a condo, and live out your dream retirement with some extra money in the bank. But for a subset of Canadian retirees, that plan is being put on hold to accommodate adult children still living at home – or the possibility that they might need to boomerang back – because of the high cost of living and difficult job market young adults are contending with.
An estimated 17 per cent of Canadian retirees have let their non-student adult children live with them for free or at a reduced rent during their retirement, according to a 2025 Fidelity Investments report on Canadians’ retirement plans. That’s down slightly from 20 per cent who said the same in 2024.
“It’s happening while people are in the first 10 years of their retirement. Those are the ones where you’re, quote, supposed to travel while you’re young and healthy,” said Shannon Lee Simmons, financial planner and founder of the New School of Finance in Toronto.
“This is done out of love, not frustration. But people are expecting to have the most amount of freedom and flexibility in doing all the things, and there’s an adjustment of expectations.”
Ms. Simmons said that for middle-class retirees, supporting their kids this way means cutting back in other areas. She often sees clients in this boat delaying travel plans; cutting back on the kinds of lifestyle expenses they had in their working years, such as art or fitness classes; and downsizing vehicles if they’re in a two-car household.
One of the biggest questions is whether to charge adult children rent, said Leslie Logan, senior financial planner with TD Wealth in Toronto. She said this can be a good way to offset the higher costs of having another person in the house, like larger grocery and utility bills.
Ms. Simmons said rent payments could also be put toward a retirement travel fund.
Ms. Eaton and Mr. Doyle initially planned to sell their Vancouver home two years ago.Jennifer Gauthier/The Globe and Mail
Andy Doyle and Darcy Eaton promised their four sons they could live rent-free at the family home in Vancouver until age 25 as long as they were working or in school, at which point they’d begin paying $500 in monthly in rent, increasing $100 every year after. The arrangement was meant to give their sons the ability to save toward down payments, said Mr. Doyle, a 70-year-old retired investment adviser.
Today, three of their sons, ranging from ages 27 to 33, as well as their youngest son’s girlfriend, live at the family home, while the couple lives most of the year at their recreational properties. Mr. Doyle said he and his wife had initially planned to sell the Vancouver home two years ago, to put half the proceeds toward a smaller home in the city and half toward investments, but delayed doing so while dealing with a health issue. They’re now planning to sell in spring 2027.
His sons’ rent payments cover the home’s expenses, but Mr. Doyle acknowledged he and his wife made a financial trade-off by delaying selling: Home prices in his neighbourhood have “dropped like a stone” in the last two years. But the arrangement gave his sons breathing room to figure out their careers, travel and build their savings. And for the six weeks a year he and his wife are in Vancouver, they stay in the home and spend “a ton of time with our kids. … We’re very grateful for that.”
The couple stay in Vancouver for six weeks of the year, giving them time to spend with their sons.Jennifer Gauthier/The Globe and Mail
While Ms. Simmons said some of her baby boomer clients have been taken by surprise by this new reality, her Generation X clients are starting to build it into their retirement plans. Her clients have tended to feel more comfortable planning for their children to be out of the house by age 30, while in the past she would normally plan for an empty nest by the time their kids are in their early 20s.
Some Gen Xers are looking to accelerate their mortgage repayment timeline to be able to afford to stay in the family house longer into their retirement if they need to, while others are planning to stretch that payment timeline longer and retire later with the expectation their kids will still be in the house. Those with finished basement apartments have modelled the loss of rental income, she said.
Victor Couture, an associate professor of economic analysis and policy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said he thinks the phenomenon might reflect a shifting attitude in North America toward relying more heavily on family in difficult times.
“If you look at European countries, Spain had double-digit unemployment rates in the early 2000s, for years. They survived it as a society because children went to parents or people went to their siblings and stayed for years. In North America … we don’t have that same culture,” he said, though he added “it might be evolving a little bit.”
Karena Brawley, 64, who lives just west of Calgary in Bragg Creek, admitted that in the past she might’ve “had a little bit of a sideways thought” for baby boomers with adult children still living at home.
But as she prepares for retirement, she’s factoring in the possibility of co-habitating with her youngest daughter, a nurse in Toronto dealing with long COVID. She’s suggested the idea to her daughter as a way for her to have support while managing her illness and to help both of them keep their expenses manageable. Ms. Brawley said she has thought about selling her five-bedroom home and buying a smaller place that’s big enough for the two of them.
“The thinking I was taught was, ‘they should be out on their own.’ Now I really get it in a way I didn’t get it before,” she said. “Supporting them is so important.”
