One afternoon, after finishing shopping in a supermarket, my family and I went to the check-out. I suddenly thought we didn’t need any of the junk, and we abandoned all of those, saving $300.

That got me thinking about all our pointless expenses in life. With a promise that we’d stop if it was killing us, I convinced the family to take the leap into frugality. The rules were that we would buy nothing for 30 days except absolutely essentials.

Our adventure began with a great start. By 9 a.m., my wife, Ruth, had already made cakes from old strawberries and picked flowers I didn’t even know we had in the garden. I cleared the car by hand for the first time for years. I read and returned the neighbor’s newspaper before he woke up. Total spending on the first day: $0.

As days turned into weeks, we became so proficient(熟练的) at living frugally. We started riding our bikes to save gas. My child’s finger painting was recycled as gift wrap for the home-made presents. We started to use an Internet application like Skype for free phone calls and ask neighbors with gardens for extra vegetables and herbs.

In the end, we saved more than $2000 by not spending for a month. When we began, I imagined we would rush out the moment we were done and buy a lot of things in the supermarket. Then maybe hit the mall or go to the movies.

Boomerang children who return to live with their parents after university can be good for families, leading to closer, more supportive relationships and increased contact between the generations, a study has found.

The findings contradict research published earlier this year showing that returning adult children trigger a significant decline in their parents’ quality of life and wellbeing.

The young adults taking part in the study were “more positive than might have been expected about moving back home—the shame is reduced as so many of their peers are in the same position, and they acknowledged the benefits of their parents’ financial and emotional support. Daughters were happier than sons, often slipping back easily into teenage patterns of behaviour, the study found.

Parents on the whole were more uncertain, expressing concern about the likely duration of the arrangement and how to manage it. But they acknowledged that things were different for graduates today, who leave university with huge debts and fewer job opportunities.

The families featured in the study were middle-class and tended to view the achievement of adult independence for their children as a “family project”. Parents accepted that their children required support as university students and then as graduates returning home, as they tried to find jobs paying enough to enable them to move out and get on the housing ladder.

“However”, the study says, “day-to-day tensions about the prospects of achieving different dimensions of independence, which in a few extreme cases came close to conflict, characterised the experience of a majority of parents and a little over half the graduates”.

Areas of disagreement included chores, money and social life. While parents were keen to help, they also wanted different relationships from those they had with their own parents, and continuing to support their adult children allowed them to remain close.

Children should do housework. That’s a controversial idea, though not everyone will admit it. A few parents will declare that their children are too busy for housework. Many more of us assign housework, or say we believe in them, but the housework just doesn’t get done.

That' s a problem. For starters, housework is good for kids. Being a part of the routine work of running a household helps children develop an awareness of the needs of others, while at the same time contributing to their emotional well-being.

One small study, done over a period of 25 years, found that the best predictor for young adults success in their mid-20s was whether they participated in household tasks at age 3 or 4. Those early shared responsibilities extended to a sense of responsibility in other areas of their lives.

But for all that their help matters, few kids are doing much around the house at all. In a survey of 1, 000 American adults, 75 percent said they believed regular housework made kids "more responsible”. Yet while 82 percent reported having had regular housework growing up, only 56 percent of those with children said they required them to do housework.

Sports and homework are not get-out-of-housework-free cards. The goal, after all, is to raise adults who can balance a caring role in their families and communities with whatever lifetime achievement goals they choose. Housework teaches that balance.

What should you do when getting children to do housework? Accept no excuses. Don’t worry if you must repeat yourself again and again. If you’re spending more time getting the child to do this job than it would take to do it yourself, then you’re doing it right. Can an allowance help? Maybe. But if you’re trying to teach kids to share the responsibility of a home, paying them for routine housework is not the right message.