Mark Patterson, a writer for usnews.com, shared the following two tips as part of a recent article on “attitude adjustments necessary for retirement success.”

1. Your retirement is more important than your kids’ college education.

2. Your retirement is more important than your kids’ lifestyle.

To view the full text of the tips, plus the three additional attitude adjustments Patterson suggests, click here.

• Yes, after college, absolutely.
• Not if they are in graduate school. After grad school, yes.
• Only after they have been working for awhile, to help them “get on their feet”.
• No but they should still contribute to the household financially and physically (chores).
• Grown kids should never return home to live with mom and dad.
• It’s up to the family to decide this case by case.
• Daddy should always pay for everything!
• The minute they turn 18 they should contribute to the family.

I’m not loving any of these possible answers. This is a complicated topic with no simple answer. I think the best answer is “It’s up to the family to decide this case by case,” except that in all cases the adult child should contribute *something* every month — if not cash, then they should still be paying a set amount of “rent” by working on extra projects around the house, like cleaning the gutters or painting the garage. (You can see my thoughts on adult children paying rent when they move home in the video here.) So, I guess if I were to write a possible response, it would be: “Yes, but the family should decide what amount makes sense based on their particular situation, and if no money is available, the adult child should work off the rent by doing extra jobs around the house (not regular chores).”

If you want to vote in the poll, you can do so here. If you’d like to see the results (in which a shocking 9% say Daddy should always pay for everything — I suspect those votes didn’t come from parents!), you can find them here.

The interesting thing is that so many of the adult children who still rely on their parents for financial support really are unwitting about the amount of financial pressure it can put on parents to support their children well beyond childhood. If your adult children are thinking about moving home — or are already there — make sure you talk to them honestly about any concerns you have about your own financial well-being, whether it’s major, like concerns about being able to pay the larger grocery or heating bills, or whether it’s a simple thing — like you’d been planning a vacation that you can no longer afford to take. A family budget can be a good way to get a clear picture of your boomerang kid’s impact on your household finances.

“My parents and I are at an impasse,” she said. “After graduating college, I had minor credit card debt. I asked to move into my parents’ home after living on my own for a while to get rid of the debt, and to get other finances in order. I wanted to do a reset and start off right before it got out of hand.”

To see what Singletary had to say about this hot topic, you can read her column online here.

In both cases, parents were willing to help pay off credit cards, a mortgage, or student loans, and were much less likely to help pay off gambling debts.

You can read an article about the survey here.

This article from Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. offers some great tips for how to turn a financial gift into a life lesson in financial management.