4 ms·

I know of many people who live at home with their parents out of necessity (I did for a little while after college). I also know people who live at home with th

I know of many people who live at home with their parents out of necessity (I did for a little while after college). I also know people who live at home with their parents with the intention of saving up money to put a down payment on a house (a few have done that). But I also know some people who have spent themselves into debt even while working and living at home, guaranteeing that they won't be leaving any time soon. I don't think it's possible right now for the average person to do what our parents or grandparents typically did (get married, buy a house, have 2.5 kids, and send them to college) at as early an age as they did. All of these life events have become insanely expensive by our parents' standards: Marriage: avg. wedding cost in the US is now about 30k, avg. ring is about 5k. (I'm not saying this makes sense, I'm just saying this is where money is allocated.) House: avg. housing costs are still up over historical norms and anyone who was able to buy their first house in the last few years is probably upside down on payments. Kids: More expensive than they used to be. All signs point to dramatically increased costs across the board: health insurance, clothing, education, activities, and food. College: College prices have bubbled as much as housing and the cost of a degree has nearly doubled in 15 years. By the time your kids take the plunge, it may have doubled again. And this is on top of individuals carrying higher levels of debt from all of these events later into their lives even while real world wages have stagnated. All indications point to jobs trickling back into the economy more slowly than they left. My only hope is that a good portion of those who are stuck at home are working on ways to extricate themselves (startups, consulting, freelancing, etc.).

cookiecaper 17y ago
Expense is just an excuse to avoid commitment in most cases. You think your parents started out with 2 cars, a nice house, and college funds all wrapped up and ready to go? I know mine didn't. In most cases, those people have worked hard for years to earn that kind of lifestyle. A lot of the coming generations are accustomed to it and expect it, without realizing all of the time and work their parents invested to earn that. My parents moved into a small apartment when they got married. They worked to save up for a down payment on a home. They had bought one by the time I was born (4 years after their marriage), and they continued to save to provide all of the luxuries that my siblings and I enjoyed as we grew up. But they didn't use it as an excuse to put off the family. My wife and I shared an apartment with another couple when we first got married. It sucked, but we did what we had to do, and we were happier to be together than to put it off and stay at our parents' houses alone just because we couldn't afford a spacious living condition. You don't have to spend 30k on a wedding. My wife and I got married for less than $200, and our rings were under $50. You don't have to have your own house. Apartments work just as well, and have less general expense. You don't have to send your kids to college. They can work to get there -- there are plenty of options for that, and they may not even have to go to college. I dropped out of high school and my last full-time job paid me a salary of $65,000; not bad for a 21-year-old, imo. Plenty of people get by with their kids on $10-$15/hr or less. It's possible, you just can't be demanding and you can't nourish entitlement. Accept that you won't be able to buy that $300,000 house right away and move on with your life. Don't put off love for convenience; that trade will rob you blind.
- pyre 17y ago
  > You think your parents started out with 2 cars, a nice house, and college funds all wrapped up and ready to go? I know mine didn't. In most cases, those people have worked hard for years to earn that kind of lifestyle. A lot of the coming generations are accustomed to it and expect it, without realizing all of the time and work their parents invested to earn that. It doesn't help if the parents don't really do a good job of instilling in their kids what they have gone through in their life. If all they tell their kids about their life are a few choice bits here and there, then it's little wonder that their kids don't have a clue that their parents were sometimes in dire straits for cash or food before working their way up to where they are today. > You don't have to spend 30k on a wedding. My wife and I got married for less than $200, and our rings were under $50. My wife and I were able to do ~$5k for a wedding for ~50 people, which included a banquet at a nice Chinese restaurant (There was so much food that people were taking food home, they added an additional course to the meal at no charge, and let us bring our own alcohol even though we technically needed to get some expensive license to do so). And ~$3k of it was just for the banquet. But I've known people that go overboard with weddings. One wedding we were invited to was in the Caribbean on a cruise. If we wanted to attend we would have had to purchase our own way on a 7-day cruise. (Apparently the service was going to be on some small island in the middle of the cruise) I can't imagine how much that must have cost. My wife also had a co-worker whose fiance broke up with him because they weren't going to be able to immediately move into a nice house/picket fence/etc when they were married because he ended up losing his job. People put too much relevance on money and possessions.
- jeremymims 17y ago
  I think that might end up being good advice for many people. I, however, am not ready to embark on that journey just yet. :-) I think one of the reasons the current situation bothers me so much is that it violates a basic sense of fairness. I cofounded a startup so I'm used to risk and uncertainty, but most of the people I know wouldn't be cut out for it. They play by the rules and expect to have the modest upward trajectory that a life like that would bring. I know a young couple like you and your wife who have gone into debt to go to college, gone further into debt to go to grad school, and then gone into more modest debt to get married because of the expectation that there would be upward mobility from these expenditures. Now between the two of them, they're 400k in debt and living at home. That wasn't really something that came in the brochure. Now of course that always was a real possibility, and past performance doesn't guarantee future returns, but it was supposed to be different. I truly feel bad for the average "play by the rules" types who have been raised with the expectation that if you do the right things, the right things will happen. Many of them now are saddled with the debt levels that demand that they put off the choices you were luckily able to make.

cookiecaper 17y ago

Expense is just an excuse to avoid commitment in most cases. You think your parents started out with 2 cars, a nice house, and college funds all wrapped up and ready to go? I know mine didn't. In most cases, those people have worked hard for years to earn that kind of lifestyle. A lot of the coming generations are accustomed to it and expect it, without realizing all of the time and work their parents invested to earn that. My parents moved into a small apartment when they got married. They worked to save up for a down payment on a home. They had bought one by the time I was born (4 years after their marriage), and they continued to save to provide all of the luxuries that my siblings and I enjoyed as we grew up. But they didn't use it as an excuse to put off the family. My wife and I shared an apartment with another couple when we first got married. It sucked, but we did what we had to do, and we were happier to be together than to put it off and stay at our parents' houses alone just because we couldn't afford a spacious living condition. You don't have to spend 30k on a wedding. My wife and I got married for less than $200, and our rings were under $50. You don't have to have your own house. Apartments work just as well, and have less general expense. You don't have to send your kids to college. They can work to get there -- there are plenty of options for that, and they may not even have to go to college. I dropped out of high school and my last full-time job paid me a salary of $65,000; not bad for a 21-year-old, imo. Plenty of people get by with their kids on $10-$15/hr or less. It's possible, you just can't be demanding and you can't nourish entitlement. Accept that you won't be able to buy that $300,000 house right away and move on with your life. Don't put off love for convenience; that trade will rob you blind.

pyre 17y ago
> You think your parents started out with 2 cars, a nice house, and college funds all wrapped up and ready to go? I know mine didn't. In most cases, those people have worked hard for years to earn that kind of lifestyle. A lot of the coming generations are accustomed to it and expect it, without realizing all of the time and work their parents invested to earn that. It doesn't help if the parents don't really do a good job of instilling in their kids what they have gone through in their life. If all they tell their kids about their life are a few choice bits here and there, then it's little wonder that their kids don't have a clue that their parents were sometimes in dire straits for cash or food before working their way up to where they are today. > You don't have to spend 30k on a wedding. My wife and I got married for less than $200, and our rings were under $50. My wife and I were able to do ~$5k for a wedding for ~50 people, which included a banquet at a nice Chinese restaurant (There was so much food that people were taking food home, they added an additional course to the meal at no charge, and let us bring our own alcohol even though we technically needed to get some expensive license to do so). And ~$3k of it was just for the banquet. But I've known people that go overboard with weddings. One wedding we were invited to was in the Caribbean on a cruise. If we wanted to attend we would have had to purchase our own way on a 7-day cruise. (Apparently the service was going to be on some small island in the middle of the cruise) I can't imagine how much that must have cost. My wife also had a co-worker whose fiance broke up with him because they weren't going to be able to immediately move into a nice house/picket fence/etc when they were married because he ended up losing his job. People put too much relevance on money and possessions.
jeremymims 17y ago
I think that might end up being good advice for many people. I, however, am not ready to embark on that journey just yet. :-) I think one of the reasons the current situation bothers me so much is that it violates a basic sense of fairness. I cofounded a startup so I'm used to risk and uncertainty, but most of the people I know wouldn't be cut out for it. They play by the rules and expect to have the modest upward trajectory that a life like that would bring. I know a young couple like you and your wife who have gone into debt to go to college, gone further into debt to go to grad school, and then gone into more modest debt to get married because of the expectation that there would be upward mobility from these expenditures. Now between the two of them, they're 400k in debt and living at home. That wasn't really something that came in the brochure. Now of course that always was a real possibility, and past performance doesn't guarantee future returns, but it was supposed to be different. I truly feel bad for the average "play by the rules" types who have been raised with the expectation that if you do the right things, the right things will happen. Many of them now are saddled with the debt levels that demand that they put off the choices you were luckily able to make.