I agree with this. If I met the OP or someone like him in real life, living with his parents wouldn’t be the dealbreaker, the dealbreaker would be that he seems to be afraid to spend any money at all. Saving money is good and admirable, but not to the point where you are a miser about spending any money. Like if I wanted to go out for burgers, and I suggested the sports bar down the street with really good food, I’m guessing he’d start up a speech about how it would be more financially prudent to go to McDonald’s. Or we’d go to the sports bar, but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my burger since the whole time he’d be complaining about how outrageous it is that the burgers cost $9.
Right, I have my own place, but I’d be afraid he’d always be over at my place, and eating my food and using my stuff for free. Someone who’s that anxious about saving money seems like he’d also be willing to save money by using my stuff and not paying.
I’d be willing to date someone who’s living at home, but he’d have to have good reasons why he was doing it. If someone is leeching off of his parents, I’d be afraid he’d leech of me as well. That is a dealbreaker.
I lived in Toronto for roughly 40 years, and I do know Toronto neighbourhoods. Places like Yonge and Eglinton, and Sherbourne and Bloor cannot be considered “moving far out on the subway line.” For all intents and purposes, they are now considered to be “downtown.” They are also where you find those homes for $700K-$900K, and up.
Going far out on the subway line would involve places like Kipling and Bloor, Kennedy and Eglinton, Downsview, and Yonge and Finch, from each of which buses can take you even farther. Then, there is GO Transit which can take you outside the city: Richmond Hill, Stouffville, Ajax, Burlington, and the like. The Greater Toronto Area is huge.
Sounds to me like our OP expects to live in downtown Toronto.
Dude, get the fuck out of a town where a meth house in the ghetto costs $400k, and you need to spend a million to get something “decent”. GTFO of a town where a bachelor pad in the boonies costs >$1k/month. You cannot afford to live there, not even with your parents, not without cheating them. Seriously. Get Toronto out of your mind.
Go get a job somewhere you can live cheaply, get some experience, and maybe move back when you snag that $200k/year financial quant job or whatever you’re angling for.
I agree with others that living with your parents temporarily after college isn’t that big of a deal, depending on the circumstances (meaning basically until you get a job and can save up rent+deposit). I also agree with others that living with your parents is the least of your worries. Get real! Unemployed college graduates don’t plan out their retirements or how they’ll save up for their million dollar dream house. Go get drunk, get laid, and take some fucking risks. For example, with $50k in the bank I’d be looking into starting a business, or learning some valuable skills. (Or at least buy an affordable starter home. $250k could get you a McMansion where I’m from.)
High risk/high reward when you’re young, low risk when you’re old. Stop thinking like an AARP member. Opening a business or learning to program a computer could quite possibly make your compound interest on $50k look like chump change. Look up “opportunity costs”. The most lucrative decision for someone your age is probably not sitting on your nest egg while looking for minimum wage jobs. Strike out on your own, take risks, and reap the rewards.
The irony is that by being willing to live in Dumpsville, the OP might actually make MORE money than he’d make in a place like Toronto or Vancouver. Large, glitzy metropolitan areas are where a lot of people want to live, as they offer all sorts of culture and amenities, so they can attract people without having to offer high salaries. Smaller backwaters can’t use their urban glitz as a recruiting tool; to attract professionals to their town, they have to actually cough up cash. And even then, a high percentage of potential recruits won’t consider moving to such a dull place. So if you ARE the sort of person who’s willing to relocate to a place like Winnipeg or Yellowknife (at least for a few years), you can do quite well.
That’s why I’m encouraging the OP to be very flexible in his job search. He’s young and completely unattached, and in a tight job market that’s an advantage he’d be foolish not to exploit to the fullest.
VeroTrem, I don’t think you are encountering this resistance because you are suggesting living with your parents. It is the **why **you want to live with your parents that people react to.
You appear financially risk-averse to the point of self destructivness.
Also, you are putting far too much emphasis on the financial aspects of life. If you are really considering having to pay to go to America for health care a reason to save, you are making excuses.
You don’t have the adult perspecive on your life yet, and as long as you live off your parents, you won’t get it. But the people who have an adult perspective are overwhelmingly saying : You need to move out!
Paying your own way is not subsidizing your parents. It’s taking responsibility for your own life and acting like an adult. I would treat it like a shared living arrangement and pay 1/3 of the total bills. (rent/mortgage, utilities, etc)
That being said, I can’t imagine living with my parents after 18 or after college and not feeling like a failure. Especially when you have the savings and a job.
VeroTrem, I highly recommend that you don’t live with your parents unless you absolutely have to for survival. It can, as you can see from many responses, carry a stigma. In your case you seem to have an extremely unrealistic and sheltered worldview which is causing you to consider this option and which will be perpetuated by you living at home.
My wife and I are in our mid 50s and we’ve lived in Ottawa, Halifax and Montreal, where we live now. You are worried about living in areas with crime issues and think that a 700k house is the minimum acceptable shelter. Here’s the thing. Most places, regardless of the neighbourhood, have some crime. My wife and I lived for five years in a (then) new infill townhouse development in Ottawa. Almost all of the purchasers (approx. 20 houses) were federal civil servants and none of us experienced any crime. Two blocks away, however, there had been a fatal stabbing and one of Ottawa’s worst neighbourhoods was only a km away.
In Halifax we lived in a similar development with crime commonly occurring four or five blocks away - it happens. We`ve never had an alarm system and we and our neighbours never had problems.
Regarding renting, in the thirty years of my life since graduating from university I have rented at various times and as recently as five years ago. Renting isnt necessarily a bad thing and I recall a thread here a few years ago about renting vs owning and a lot of younger posters preferred renting because it gives them freedom and flexibility. Also, in my first three years after graduating I lived with roommates; its a good way to learn how to get on with others.
Despite my statements about crime in my various neighbourhoods, the world isnt as bad as you seem to think and areas which appear to a sheltered person to be dangerous tend to be colourful and interesting; Im not just using that as a euphemism and you should try it out.
I don`t know what sort of person you are but, unfortunately, your posts make you sound very unrealistic, entitled, and arrogant. You need to live in some colourful and interesting areas, well away from your parents.
The reason is that not everyone is in the same situation with their parents as you. Yours is kind of an extreme situation and not every family is that complicated. There are plenty of people who get along with their parents without the kind of issues that popped up in your family. You were smart to get away from that situation and it was obviously helpful. For some of us, there’s nothing bad to get away with
It doesn’t have to be something bad you’re getting away from. At least in the US, still living with your parents when you’re an adult gives a signal that you haven’t grown up and learned how to take care of yourself.
In the US sure, there’s that culture. But for certain ethnicities, its not too unusual. All I’m saying is that I object to the assertion that anyone living with their parents beyond a certain age means something negative. I would prefer it if the women saying that would keep an open mind and just figure out the guy’s situation before they judge him.
I think a lot of women would keep an open mind. The OP specifically went into a lot of detail: he has no financial need; his parents don’t need him there for any reason; he’s reluctant to even pay them rent, and sees doing so as “subsidizing them”; he’s resistant to living anywhere that isn’t very middle class.
It’s all those details that suggest a certain immaturity.
Depends on your culture (you know, the United States is not one monolithic same culture), in more tradiational cultures, not living with your parents means you are an irresponsible, ungratiful hedonist with no respect for your elders.
I get what you’re saying. I’m working on having a more open mind about such things, but as yet I don’t. Living at home at 18 is mostly normal, 21 is ok if you’re in school, 25 and I start to wonder what’s wrong with you. Aside from extraordinary circumstances like caring for a disabled parent, I wouldn’t have considered dating anyone 25 and up who lived at home still.
Dunno if this has been posted before, but here’s an article with some stats:
Apparently, more than 1/3 of people under 31 are now living with parents - and their numbers are on the increase. The numbers are heavily weighted against those in their late 20s though. Only 16% of those 25-31 are living with parents.
To my mind, that supports the anecdotal notion that the stigma of living with parents is on the decrease in society at large: it has simply become more of a commonplace event.
Out of curiosity and a desire to understand this mindset more, what are you imagining when you imagine going out with a guy who lives at home beyond 25? Awkward visits to his house where his parents walk in? Him taking calls from his mom for trivial things while you two are out dating? His mom barging in while you two are alone with a plate of cookies?
Also, as long as one of you lives alone, why does it matter where the other person is living? He could just come over to your place most of the time.
To me they aren’t showing that they are capable of taking care of themselves. At 25, I had been working full time for nearly a decade and taking care of myself for 5. (I moved out on my 20th birthday, would’ve been sooner but mom didn’t want me to go) Like I mentioned, if there are extraordinary circumstances, that would be different. Mostly, we just wouldn’t have been in the same place as far as life experience and such.