Investing Leaving the Nest: A Parent's View Watching with trepidation my daughter move into her first apartment, I recalled my father's disapproval of my first pad Investing Investing Survival Guide By Joseph Weber Parents must tread carefully when their children strike out on their own. Poorly chosen words about the choices a child makes can haunt even the most well-meaning parent, sometimes for years. <BR /><BR /> As I visited my 22-year-old daughter's first real apartment in New York a few months ago—an upper Upper East Side place with public housing across the street and not a Starbucks in sight—I bit my tongue. I was hearing echoes of my own father's visit to my first place decades before: "You live like this?" my blunt old man said, as I proudly showed off the cramped place opposite a county jail in New Jersey. On my visit to her place, I wasn't about to give Rebecca something like that to recall 30 years from now. <BR /><BR /> <leadin>SAFETY CONCERNS.</leadin> Still, when I gently asked my daughter about how long the walk was from the subway and whether there were many people on the street when she sauntered home after 10 p.m., she picked up fast on my reservations. "It's the best place I can afford," she told me tartly. <BR /><BR /> Her tone suggested that even if I pitched in a couple hundred dollars a month on top of her $1,000 monthly third-of-the-rent tab, she and her two roommates were going to make this place home. And she didn't want my money, anyway, believing that such gifts come with strings, like a say-so over the choice of an apartment. <BR /><BR /> Ah, the vagaries of parenting a young adult. "Little children, little problems; big children, big problems," as the saying goes. <BR /><BR /> <leadin>DETACH WITH LOVE.</leadin> A parent's proper role when it comes to important choices such as places to live after college is actually simple. Find out what your children want to do and, unless the notion is life-threateningly bad, tell them—repeatedly and like you mean it—how great the idea is. <BR /><BR /> Help out financially, if you can and if it would be welcomed, on things like furniture and even those risquÉ framed posters for the living room that may make you blanch, but make it clear there really are no strings attached to the checks. And then be there to help if the choices—of roommates, locations, etc.—do turn bad, as you may have mutely expected. <BR /><BR /> Indeed, the main problems with Rebecca's place at 99th and Third Ave. turned out not to be anything I (or she, for that matter) expected. The dearth of yuppies in the neighborhood was good in some ways (it kept the coffee prices down). Even the late-night walks from the subway weren't all that troublesome, my daughter assured me, and she took cabs when her company paid after long hours in the office. <BR /><BR /> <leadin>NICE DIGS.</leadin> No, the main problems turned out to be a lack of heat and hot water a few times each week in the winter—courtesy of a landlord who could handle drywall and other tenant-winning cosmetic touches, but not the really pricey stuff. It was those problems, often erupting late at night, when nothing could be done except an anguished call home to us in distant Chicago, that drove my daughter out of the place after only a few months. <BR /><BR /> She has just moved into a new place. She picked a roommate she knew, an acquaintance who graduated a year after she did, and they found nice, albeit petite, digs in a hopping area downtown in Greenwich Village. She heard about the spot, above a left-wing bookstore, from a friend at work who lives in the building. <BR /><BR /> On my last visit to New York, she proudly walked me along the busy little street (though we were not yet able to get in to actually see the place). Coffee bars, Italian restaurants, a subway stop a few minutes away, reasonable rent and plenty of people about—many of the things both a parent and a child might want to see. It's a place I would have loved to live in when I was in my 20s. <BR /><BR /> <leadin>A COMPROMISE.</leadin> Perfect? Well, no. The prior tenant left the place filthy, and Rebecca had to press hard to get it painted and cleaned. It's so tiny that she and her roomie went in on a flat-screen TV because anything larger would have gobbled up the living room (and a modest check my wife sent went into that purchase). <BR /><BR /> But my daughter, who majored in economics, is wise to the idea of trade-offs. What's more, she says,"in New York, you're always looking for a job, a boyfriend, or an apartment." Ultimately, as inevitable flaws arise, this place could prove only slightly less temporary than the first spot (though the signs are thankfully otherwise). <BR /><BR /> Still, for now, it'll do nicely for her—and my wife and me. A gym around the corner is handy. She can host dinner parties for six comfortably, even if she hopes that friends coming to an impending open house don't all show up at the same time. <BR /><BR /> Her roommate's parents have been helpful in ferrying the girls to Ikea and helping build furniture, even as they respect their daughter's need for independence. Certainly, my wife and I will visit once in a while on trips to New York, maybe even taking in a show at the Village Vanguard or other choice spots nearby, but we don't intend to hover. <BR /><BR /> <leadin>LIVE AND LEARN.</leadin> As my daughter passionately argues, the first place wasn't a mistake. The problems that doomed it proved to be things that weren't apparent to either of us. Still, it was a learning experience for both my daughter and me. A true mistake would have been for me to chastise her for her choice, and give her a permanent bad memory. <BR /><BR /> Like her, I moved out of my tiny spot near the county jail after only a few months. Credit socially overactive roommates for helping me make the move, not anything my father said. <BR /><BR /> But my father's disdain is what lingers, even if it's just a bittersweet memory. Smart kids who were raised to make good decisions, like my daughter, deserve better messages than that. http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/aug2006/pi20060814_263165.htm http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/aug2006/pi20060811_698279.htm,http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/aug2006/pi20060811_085526.htm,http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/aug2006/pi20060814_677701.htm False