When the financial downturn hit in 2008, most millennials were still in school, with other things to think about than serious financial matters. But now in their prime home-buying years, many are reflecting on the life lessons learned during that recessionary period.

“Young people ... remember how many in their parents’ generation struggled with foreclosures, short sales and other problems involving real estate. They don’t want the same thing to happen to them,” says Sophia Bera, a 33-year-old financial planner who heads a firm focused on clients in their 20s and 30s.

“So many young homebuyers are saddled with student debt. That alone has made them resistant to overspending for a property,” says Bera, a fee-only planner affiliated with the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (napfa.org).

Of course, it’s tough to restrain mortgage borrowing to the limits of personal comfort for many whose salaries are growing slowly, if at all. A recent report by Attom Data Solutions (attomdata.com), which tracks housing markets throughout the country, found that it costs in excess of 43 percent of average wages to cover house payments in more than a quarter of U.S. markets.

Even if you’re a first-time buyer lucky enough to live in an area with reasonable housing costs, you’ll still want to be cautious about taking on a larger mortgage than you can comfortably afford. To be sure you won’t overspend, financial analysts say it’s wise to carefully calculate your living expenses before committing to a purchase.

“Run the numbers and make sure you stay skinny on your overhead,” says Dale Robyn Siegel, a home loan broker and author of “The New Rules for Mortgages.”

Your core living costs are expenses you must meet on a regular basis. They include outlays for food, transportation, child care and insurance coverage. They may also include any financial commitments you’ve made to a religious institution or charity. Together, these expenses constitute what many in the financial field call your “nut.”

“Your first task is to ensure you’ll have the funds to meet your nut every month. Otherwise, your stress level and quality of life could leave you greatly impaired,” Siegel says.

Here are a few pointers for first-time buyers:

-- Carefully calculate your core expenses.

Arlen Olberding, a financial planner affiliated with the Garrett Planning Network, urges would-be homebuyers to take a step-by-step approach. As a first step, carefully review your bank statements to see where your money has gone during the past six to 12 months.

“When it comes to spending, people are creatures of habit. Because of that, looking back at your personal spending history should help you project your future spending,” Olberding says.

After categorizing your past spending, it’s time to comb through the columns, determining which among your non-mandatory costs you’d be willing to trim.

“Establishing financial priorities is a very personal matter. There are no right or wrong answers,” says Olberding, who specializes in helping middle-income clients meet their money goals.

Once you’ve calculated your living costs, along with quality-of-life choices you consider essential, it’s time to compare this monthly total to the net income you’re bringing in. The difference should be the funds available to cover your mortgage expenses, along with home upkeep and utility costs.

-- Realize that lenders could let you overshoot your budget.

After the recession, mortgage lending standards became stringent, and still remain so. Yet ironically, Siegel says many who can jump over lender approval hurdles are still able to borrow more than they reasonably should. Why? Because the full extent of their living costs isn’t apparent to the lender who reviews their file.

For example, when assessing your affordability range, a lender won’t take into account private debts— -- like the regular payments you owe your mother who advanced you the money to buy a new car.

“If an expense doesn’t show up on your credit report, the bank doesn’t know about it,” Siegel says.

-- Factor inflation into your living-cost calculations.

Although the government’s Consumer Price Index has shown little movement in recent years, inflation is still a factor for many households. Especially hard hit are families with young children who face hefty daycare costs.

Along with child-related expenses, health-care costs have also risen dramatically, led by the cost of employee contributions to health plans and the premiums paid for the kind of individual policies used by those who have no access to insurance coverage through work.

“At any age, medical care costs can sneak up on you. This is particularly likely if you’ve had an accident or a major illness and you incur big co-pays for treatment,” Olberding says.

In assessing their living costs going forward, Olberding advises clients to factor in average price increases of as much as 5 percent per year for their core expenses.

“No one is immune from inflationary increases. So, it’s always better to err on the high side when you’re preparing a spending plan,” he says.

(To contact Ellen James Martin, email her at ellenjamesmartin@gmail.com.)

All over America, many boomer-age parents are fretting. To fund their retirement, they must sell the big family house. But downsizing is impossible if one or more grown children have moved back home.

“The phenomenon of ‘boomerang kids’ has really upset lots of older folks who can’t roll with their plans because Junior has reclaimed the room he last inhabited in high school,” says John Rygiol, a real estate broker who specializes in the sale of upper-end property.

The migration of kids back to their parents’ property isn’t new in U.S. history. But it last became obvious to demographers during the recession that began around 2008. This was expected to be a temporary response to economic pressures, according to Frank Furstenberg Jr., a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

But the trend has been anything but short-lived. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, more than 20 million young adults currently live in their parents’ home.

“People in the U.S. are marrying later, so the passage to adulthood is longer. But by age 25 to 29, there’s a huge dropoff in the number of young adults still living at home,” according to Furstenberg, whose research focuses on the changing nature of early adulthood.

Here are a few pointers for would-be home sellers with boomerang kids at home:

-- Don’t waver from your downsizing dreams.

Rygiol, who owns an independent real estate brokerage, says he’s witnessed many clients sacrificing their retirement security to maintain quarters for grown children.

“These kids are eating their parents’ lunch. Mom and dad shouldn’t have to sacrifice their retirement plans for the kids,” he says.

Of course, many young adults living in the family home are unaware of their parents’ financial situation. Nor do they grasp the full cost of owning and maintaining the family home. That’s why Rygiol suggests that an important first step toward your housing transition could involve a family meeting to outline these realities.

“Sit down at the kitchen table and explain the whole situation to your kids. Outline all your expenses for the big house and why you need to move to economize,” he says.

Once young adults realize how important it is for their parents to downsize and reduce costs, they’re more motivated to find their own housing solutions, says Rygiol, who’s affiliated with the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents (naeba.org).

-- Ponder the idea of a temporary rent subsidy.

Given how hard it is for many young adults to obtain a well-paying job, it can be a jarring transition if they’re jettisoned from the family home without sufficient funds to cover their own housing.

Should you help them pay to rent a place of their own? Rygiol says that might be a realistic way to proceed with your home sale without fear that your offspring could become homeless.

“If you can afford it, give the kids the equivalent of six months' worth of rent for a modest apartment, plus the money to cover the security deposit,” he says.

-- Stay focused on protecting your retirement assets.

Many parents go to great lengths to provide every possible advantage for their children from birth through their college years. They expend hard-earned money for fancy birthday parties, music lessons, sports equipment and academic tutors. Some parents even cover the costs for their kids to study or travel overseas.

But by the time parents reach their late 50s or early 60s, many need to focus much more intensely on their own finances rather than on subsidizing their grown children.

“At a certain stage, people must get on with their own lives,” says Donna Goings, a veteran real estate broker affiliated with the Council of Residential Specialists (crs.com).

If you have a grown child or two living with you yet you need to downsize, it might be feasible for your offspring to remain in your next household for a short while, assuming you’ll have a spare bedroom there. But in that case, Goings says you should charge them at least a minimal level of rent, proportional to what income they can bring in.

Should you feel guilty about asserting your own need to downsize, even if that means your boomerang kids can’t go with you to the new place and must find alternative housing? Not at all, Goings says.

“The best thing you can do for your kids is to see that they get on their own two feet so they’ll develop the skills for independence,” she says.

(To contact Ellen James Martin, email her at ellenjamesmartin@gmail.com.)

After her father gave her $20,000 toward a down payment, a professional writer of 28 was emboldened to buy her first home. Seizing the opportunity before prices rose further, she called a real estate agent and hastily arranged to tour property in a popular area.

Within hours, she’d signed a contract to buy a small one-level contemporary on a wooded cul-de-sac. But the property was a mismatch for the lifestyle of a single woman seeking an active social life. As it turned out, nearly all her neighbors were young families.

“It was crazy for this young lady to pick such a child-friendly neighborhood when her top priority was really to date and hang out with friends her age,” says Merrill Ottwein, a longtime real estate broker and past president of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents (naeba.org).

“Far too many buyers see a house in isolation from the rest of their lives,” he says.

Skylar Olsen, a senior economist for Zillow, the real estate data firm, sees signs that an increasing number of buyers in their 20s and early 30s are delaying a purchase until they can afford a place they’d keep for 10 years or longer.

“More millennials are saving up longer and skipping the starter home until they can get a property to meet their needs for years to come,” says Olsen, noting that many buyers in all age groups are now more cautious.

Doro Kiley, a certified life coach who helps clients craft their plans, says that before launching a home search buyers should first imagine their ideal home. That way, they’re more likely to get close to the best possible match.

Here are a few pointers for buyers:

-- Envision your future on paper.

Partners often differ on ideal housing choices. That’s why Kiley says it’s helpful for both to write down their respective visions and then seek to shape them into a single statement.

Written statements help people clarify their thinking and refine the details of their plans, as they move through successive drafts. They’re also a way to help reconcile differing views.

“In my work, all the time I come across husbands and wives who start with different visions,” Kiley says.

-- Carefully ponder the issues around commuting time.

As Ottwein says, one of the most wrenching tradeoffs many families face is between a larger, newer house with a longer commute and a smaller, older place that’s closer to the city center and the workplace of one or both partners.

Homebuyers who consider an outer-tier suburb are often driven by the desire for a larger property or what they perceive to be better schools.

But before you opt for a distant suburb, Ottwein strongly recommends you do morning and afternoon rush-hour test drives. This way, you’ll know more precisely what sort of traffic to expect if you buy there.

Ottwein says buyers should disabuse themselves of the notion that the current level of traffic congestion on their path will remain static. The odds are that the traffic will worsen as the years go on.

-- Don’t automatically assume a large yard is essential for kids.

Many people with young children hang on tightly to the hope that their offspring will have a large backyard where they can frolic, just as they did as youngsters. This aspiration can influence them to pick an outlying suburb at the expense of their convenience and commuting time.

But are the tradeoffs necessary to acquire a large piece of land worth it? Not necessary, says Ottwein, noting that today’s children often spend much more time in organized athletic and recreational activities than did their parents.

“These days many kids ... have little time for the sort of free backyard play their folks remember so nostalgically from childhood,” he says.

-- Give yourself the comfort of a deliberative home search.

These days, those seeking to own a home in a popular neighborhood can face fierce competition. They feel pressured to act quickly, lest they lose out to a rival. Because of that, many buyers take regrettable shortcuts --often rushing into a purchase without analyzing whether the property they’ve picked truly matches their lifestyle.

But because so much is at stake, Ottwein urges buyers to slow the process down or face the prospect of a taking a wrong turn.

“Some buyers get hyped by a hot market. These are people who want to win at any cost. But you don’t want to look back one day to realize that you’ve won the battle but lost the war,” he says.

(To contact Ellen James Martin, email her at ellenjamesmartin@gmail.com.)