Boy have times changed. In 1957, when I was 20 a friend and I got an apartment near the university we were both at and my mother just about blew a gasket over that. She expected that you lived at home until you got married and anything else was rejection. Of course, I ignored her, but she tried to lay a real guilt trip on me. When my sister got married a few years later, she and her husband lived with my parents for a year or so until they had a little nest egg and then moved out. And even more bizarre when I took a sabbatical leave at my alma mater in 1989-90 and my wife and younger son decided to stay in Montreal (he was in 10th grade and didn’t want to go away), I stayed with my mother, but that is a totally different situation.
In 1973 I lived in London, England (typically expensive capital city.)
I asked my parents if I could stay with them while I saved up for a house deposit.
They were happy and I paid them £100 ($131) a month.
Allowing for inflation, this would be about £1,188 ($1,564) today.
Funnily enough, nobody ever criticised me for staying at home.
I was also saving the same amount and by 1986 I had enough to put down a deposit on my first house.
That’s great!
Is she single? 
Just kidding
Hey, if you are staying with your parents and you pay rent and utilities and have a job and such, good for you!
If you are staying with your parents and pay no rent or utilities and/or have no job and spend all your time playing video games, then that is a problem.
Also, I just realized while typing that that I’m old 
You know a different bunch of people than I do. Or I should say I actually know their parents . I won’t go into a whole lot of detail- but if you’re paying your kid’s rent at 25 because she has to live in Manhattan- (Queens is not good enough for her) don’t be too surprised when you’re still working at 75 to help your 40 something year old with the mortgage because he won’t sell his house and downsize. There’s a group of very entitled people out there, but it has little to do with the generation they belong to and a lot to do with their parents.
And those parents didn’t do their kids any favors.
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Funny timing in this thread. This week in teaching my students using an article about the increased number of young adults living with their families in the UK. People don’t see how it’s a problem here, because it’s expected that they will.
It’s been said several times upthread: There are two type of “living in your parent’s basement”. One is preparing to move upwards with a few years of low rent to get ahead. One is in the “waiting place” and using parents to prolong adolescence. I will most certainly mock the latter - mercilessly.
We just barely dodged a bullet at Casa Pullin. The family couch surfer had finally worn out his welcome at the last gullible relative’s house and they were all looking toward us (4 BR house, empty nest). We went radio silent for a year and another relative fell victim to the scam. Surfer gets a job somewhere, moves to relative’s house to “get on his feet” and promptly quits to become a long term, multi-year parasite. This one is the latter type I mentioned above. The one who took him in is now facing years of supporting him.
I guess one shouldn’t mock until the entire story is known. Technically, my eldest lived with us for a year while delivering for Amazon.
He “delivers” in a 767, and was saving so he could make a larger down payment on his first house. He and SO moved into it last month.
The “waiting place” is a Dr Suess
[quote]
(http://ajjuliani.com/best-lesson-dr-seuss-taught-us-stay-waiting-place/). I’ve watched a lot of people get stuck there.
I just want the SDMB to reflect a moment. I am a poster old enough to have a 37-year old daughter. There is a poster who calls himself manson1972, whose avatar is creepiest photo of Marilyn Manson he could find. And he’s asking me if my daughter is single.
manson1972 I have a baseball bat by my front door and a big dog.
pssst - I hear Evan Rachel Wood and Dita Von Teese are available.
Is your dog single?
Don’t forget the phenomenon of parent/s moving in with their kids.
My daughter is a single mum, and we moved in together to save on rent and bills. I work from home (so can look after the kids as needed). We keep out of each other’s hair for the most part, and the arrangement is both socially and financially beneficial to us both.
To be honest, I don’t think there is a lot of negative stigma in general; in my experience the people that fit the stereotype are the ones that take umbrage (like that moron whose parents had to sue him to get him out of the house), rather than the people that moved back home to accomplish something.
Well, maybe we are just in different Internet circles. I see comments thrown about all the time about “So-and-So must be a loser living in his parents’ basement playing video games” used as an insult (i.e., YouTube/Facebook/Reddit comment sections) and it seems to be akin to “40-year old virgin” as the Internet’s insult of choice.
Not sure why your proposal is any different then staying at home longer till they can make it out on their own. They are just choseing another way of building themselves up tp the point where they can get their own place.
Also not seeing the connection you propose as neither is getting everything right out of college. Both are living fugally when it comes to housing costs.
That’s part of it - but also, you don’t see "“So-and-So must be a loser living in his parents’ basement saving for a down payment” or "“So-and-So must be a loser living in his parents’ basement because they need help” getting thrown around as an insult. There’s one specific insult you report seeing (that the person must be a loser living in the parents’ basement playing video game, presumably because he has no need /desire for more privacy or living a more independent life) and that’s the exactly stereotype that gets the stigma.
There are lots of reasons why people might reside with their parents (or with their kids for that matter). And they run the gamut from because it's mutually beneficial ( it;s cheaper for both generations, parents provide childcare and no longer need to worry about physically difficult chores like snow shoveling) one side is getting all the benefit while costing the other side little (kid remains home for a couple of years after schooling ends to pay off loans/save a down payment) to arrangements where all the benefit is one way, it's not time limited and it doesn't exist for what most people would consider respectable. That last one is the the "kid" who lives with mom and dad so he can keep his low stress, low paying "dream job" and still go on multiple vacations. Or the parents who move from kid-to kid every 4 or 6 months, not because they can't take care of themselves physically but because of their poor financial decisions ( I'm not talking about people who were always poor, I'm talking about people who had money and gambled it away or lost it trying to flip houses). It's only that last group that people call losers- the ones who live off their parents ( or kids) even though they* didn't have to end up there*.It wasn't medical bills or job loss that resulted in.
People neglect the social benefits. If you get along with your parents, not only do you save money but both parties enjoy the social aspects.
I live alone right now but I many times miss having my mom to socialize with like I did when I was living at home. She didn’t want me to move out but when I found a better job in another city I did, but the social aspects are underrated. And as I mentioned above, I’d rather live with family I get along with than crazy roommates.
You’re not getting the connection because he didn’t make it explicit. First of all, I don’t think there is anyone who would continue to live with their parents for the same amount that it would cost them to live with roommates under the same circumstances. Think about it - would you pay $X to live with your parents if you could pay the same $X to get your own bedroom in a shared apartment with your friends in a similar neighborhood. I don’t know anyone who would have- because parents tend to continue to act like parents even after you’re grown, even if they don’t want to. So they are either paying less to their parents that they would sharing an apartment or they are living better- often both.
But about getting everything right out of college : One thing I have noticed is that a lot of people don’t want to move out if it involves their standard of living dropping in the least. That’s just a fact of life-when you move out on your own or with roommates at 22 or 25 or even 30, you should not automatically expect to have what your 50 or 60ish parents have in term of “amenities”. You might not be able to afford furniture that doesn’t come from Ikea, or fast internet service or cable TV. Or maybe you can’t take the same/number type of vacations that you could when you lived at home.
It is somewhat in London, at least. London’s always been a little different, because people often leave their family home in order to move to a big city, so if you already live in a big city then you’re there already.
Average London rent for a room in a houseshare was £743 a month in 2015, and it will have gone up by then. This article Fancy hoop earrings are the affordable way to spruce up your in between wardrobe | London Evening Standard | Evening Standard cites places where you can get a room for as little as £500pm. That’s optimistic TBH, includes areas that are barely even London, and more reflective of rents outside the capital - they don’t necessarily get that much cheaper until you get to some specific areas like the North-East of England, and then there are fewer jobs to pay the rent with.
Manchester, for example, which is a smaller city with a fair number of jobs, has roughly the same houseshare prices. Birmingham has a few that are cheaper, going down to about £400 though that’s just through looking through listings, and experience shows that the lower-priced ones can be fake so need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Edinburgh is about as expensive as London.
So ITSM that £500pm is a reasonable amount to estimate for a room in a shared house somewhere you have a hope of being able to get work to pay the rent.
Going on a £500pm rent, you’d usually need two months’ rent up front, plus a deposit of two-three months’ rent, plus agency fees of £250+ (it’s unusual these days to find a room not let via an agent unless you know someone with a spare room, and then they’re often live-in landlords so your rights are few).
So we’re talking £3,250 just to move in to a room in a house share. From young people who probably don’t have enough of a credit rating to get a credit card to pay it with, so they have to save it all up front.
My first house-share, in one of the cheap £500 areas listed in that link, when I was 16 - so less than the stated 30 years ago - was £40pw. I paid a month in advance, a month’s deposit, and paid for electricity on top. It’s a HUGE difference given that wages haven’t risen by the same amount.
Alternatively you continue living in your parents’ home. You contribute towards the rent and bills, and your parents get that money without having to have a stranger living with them - they have the bedroom available anyway because it’s the one you lived in. They probably charge you less than they would a tenant but then they can walk around in their dressing gown without feeling like they’re being rude.
I don’t think it’s always the best thing because living with your parents changes your behaviour - you revert to being a kid. But that’s not guaranteed and I think people are starting to adapt.
My daughter, who’s 20, and a student, is not under huge pressure to move out anyway because as a London-based student she’s not even eligible for Halls at her London-based uni. And the cheapest rooms in halls, a small room with a shared bathroom shared with upwards of eight people, are also just over £500pm (but you have to move out in the holidays).
My daughter’s also autistic so special rules apply to her, but all the kids she grew up with are in the same financial situation. It’s a lot of money, really.
If the grown kids and the parents are happy living together, then everybody else should mind their own fucking business and keep their mouths shut about it.
If you made a pact with God to never age until this happens, you’ll live until the heat death of the universe.
I gotta say I’m getting a mixed message here, doreen.
Anyway, here’s a few reasons:
The parents live closer to work than any available apartment, especially if there’s no public transit available.
The child has PTSD or some other condition where they can function normally, but something unexpected can be a trigger, and prefers things stay status quo as much as possible.
The child has a slight physical disability that roommates would find a dealbreaker e.g., difficulty doing housework.)
It’s an old-style multi-generational family where children live with parents in one big house even after marriage until they literally run out of room.
The child has elderly parents, likes the neighborhood, and expects to live there even after the parents’ death.
I’m sure there are many other reasons, but I can personally know examples of all of these.