Are you a Yuckie, Kipper, or SKIer? New U.K. Terms Shed Light on Life Insurance Trends

I recently read an article about the United Kingdom’s baby boomers and their children. It seems the U.K. has concocted several new categories of acronyms and neologisms (I had to look this word up – it means a newly coined word). Yuckies are “Young Unwittingly Costly Kids” – twenty-somethings who live at home or are causing undue financial strain on their parents. The article quoted several surveys showing that Yuckie parents have drained as much as a fifth of their savings and that one-third have remortgaged their homes.

Kipper is the U.K. term for boomerang kids and stands for “Kids in Parents’ Pockets.” It’s a different name with the same meaning – they are eroding their parents’ retirement savings. So the boomers in the U.K. are doing the same as their U.S. counterparts – Spending my Kid’s Inheritance, or as they say in the U.K., SKIing

The SKIing phenomenon has migrated to Canada. Increased longevity and the recent economic downturn make it even less likely that there will be anything left for the kids. These trends are also mirrored in the U.S.