An Empty Nest Can Come With a Budget Shift

Empty Nest Budgeting: How Expenses and Retirement Savings Change

For years, the assumption was simple: once the kids move out, extra money follows. Grocery bills drop. Utilities shrink. The car logs fewer miles. But the financial reality of becoming an empty nester rarely matches what parents expect.

Which Household Expenses Shrink First?

The earliest changes typically affect expenses tied directly to having a child at home. Grocery and utility bills may ease once fewer people are cooking, showering, and using appliances under one roof.

Transportation costs often follow, especially for families that no longer need a second car or a daily tank of gas for the school run.

Activity fees, tutoring expenses, and school costs may fade more slowly. Because they follow an academic calendar, they are often among the last expenses to disappear.

Supporting Adult Children Can Affect Retirement Savings

A 2025 AARP study found that three in four parents provide financial support to at least one adult child, contributing an average of about $7,000 per year. The surprising part: AARP found that more than half of those adult children could cover their own basic expenses.¹

A March 2025 analysis from Savings.com found that working parents who financially support an adult child contribute more than twice as much toward that support each month as they do to their own retirement accounts. Remember the old saying: “There are no loans in retirement.”²

Empty Nesters Often Spend More on Home Renovations

When freed-up income gets redirected, long-term retirement savings are not always first in line.

A Nationwide study found that empty nesters spent an average of nearly $9,000 on home renovations—almost twice as much as the typical homeowner.³

Homes need constant attention, but retirement planning does, too.

What Empty Nesters Should Consider

An empty nest changes the shape of a household’s cash flow, sometimes temporarily and sometimes for good.

Understanding which expenses have eased temporarily and which have changed for the long term can help guide budgeting and retirement-planning decisions. It is worth talking through these changes as the transition unfolds—not after the first year has come and gone.

This material was developed and produced by FMG Suite to provide information on a topic that may be of interest. FMG Suite is not affiliated with the named broker-dealer, state- or SEC-registered investment advisory firm.