I think a lot of the responses here are overly harsh towards the “living with your parents” thing in general… but I think they’re being deservedly harsh towards your specific situation, which very much comes off as “I want to extract as much value from my parents’ generosity as possible”. A lot of college grads are living at home for a year or two after college today while they get everything in order, maybe even moreso than people who didn’t attend college because of the debt issue. But you don’t have any of that hanging over your head. So go experience the world a little bit while you’re in your 20s, use the good start you’ve already got to develop yourself personally and professionally, and keep in mind that most people aren’t buying their first house in the big expensive cities like you’re talking about until they’re married and in their late 20s/early 30s, on average.
I apologize if it sounded derisive. What I meant is that given the opportunity I have to save this amount of money, it would be wasteful if I shunned it and wasn’t as prepared for unexpected events (e.g., job loss) and ended up significantly poorer by the time I’m 40. This lifestyle choice was probably less necessary a few decades ago as the starting income-to-home price ratio was nearer 10x than 20x as it is now. And in cities like Toronto, $700k or $900k is really the minimum for a decent house. There are many expensive homes in the city with price tags starting at $2M, some are just a couple of blocks away from where I live. Unless I want to live in an apartment my whole life, I don’t see how it’s possible to afford such property without saving early - especially with the incoming rise in interest rates.
In the summers, I do take on a regular workweek job and a part-time job at McDonald’s or Tim Hortons during the weekend. After graduation however, I don’t think that it’ll be possible to get a second job. The positions that I think I’ll work in are salaried and require 50+ hours per week.
One of the only things I need to decide is what to contribute. While a minority (e.g., those married and paying off debts) don’t usually pay anything beyond utilities, discussion on other Internet pages seem to suggest $300-500 as a good starting point.
Also, stuff in houses breaks. And when stuff breaks, it pays absolutely no attention to your work schedule. When you’re renting, this is not your problem, it’s your landlord’s problem. You go to work, and the landlord or the building super will fix things while you’re away. But I can tell you from experience, when you own a house and a pipe breaks or your furnace conks out, it will not be on a slow day at work. No, it will be on the day you’re scheduled to give that Very Big Presentation at the Extremely Important Client Meeting. And the repairman - he’ll be coming sometime between 8 AM and 4 PM. Have fun! That sort of crap is easier to deal with when you have more seniority in your workplace, for with power comes added flexibility.
Too often people only think about the upsides of home ownership and the downsides of renting. You need to take both advantages and disadvantages of both into consideration before saying yea or nay to home ownership.
Referring to other posters as trolls in this forum is not allowed. Don’t do this again.
If you could take advantage of your parents’ love for you and trick them into signing over all their assets to you before killing them and harvesting their organs for black-market transplants, you’d be really taking advantage of the opportunity before you now. Heck, you’d be set up for lif and be able to get a nice place without dipping into your savings.
How on earth can you figure $10k a year for a car? WTF are you buying?
I mean, nothing wrong with public transportation - when I lived in Chicago I spent about 15 years without a car so I understand the trade-offs but honestly, if you feel it’s a minimum 10k a year for a car you’re doing it wrong.
Well, I remember a time when my family lived six people in a two bedroom place (parents in one bedroom, us four kids in the other) and we survived the experience. Kids don’t actually require ownership of a home, it’s nice, but it’s not necessary in the way that, say, oxygen is necessary. Or warm clothing. Or parents who give a damn about them.
Honestly, though, living at home post-college makes you look like a LOSER. Not wanting to even contribute to the household makes you look like a stingy jerk. You’re not going to have to worry about kids in that apartment because you’ll be unlikely to get a date with a live woman.
Why on earth would a woman be interested in a man so damn cheap?
Saving money when you have the opportunity to do so is a good thing (which is why I am not completely shooting down your plan to live with your parents for a while). But you need to understand one very important thing: there is no way to completely guarantee your future security. No matter how much money you pile up, it’s possible for events beyond your control to leave you ruined and destitute at age 40. Conversely, events you can’t foresee now might transform your life in the most wonderful ways. Luck plays a far bigger role in our lives than most of us want to face. So don’t spend so much time worrying about the future that you fail to enjoy the present. Enjoy your good fortune while you have it!
Plenty of people live fulfilling lives without ever owning a house. Don’t make home ownership your biggest goal in life! Owning a house is nice, but so is having the freedom to travel when and where you will. I like my house, but there are many days when I wonder if remaining an apartment renter wouldn’t have been more satisfying in the long run.
I genuinely don’t understand the angst that some people seem to have over the idea of adult children living at home to save money.
As I posted above, my kids do it. I enjoy having them around, they do their own thing and I do mine. I buy the groceries and do some cooking, they can eat what I cook when they feel like it or buy their own and cook for themselves.
I don’t feel like I’m being taken advantage of, I’m giving them a head start that I wasn’t fortunate enough to be able to have myself, so that instead of paying dead money for rent and utilities, I provide that for them.
Why is it considered such a bad thing?
Mind you, if you are that way inclined there’s no one forcing you to let your kids move back home.
To flip it around a bit more, my mum recently broke her hip and I spent a reasonable amount of money buying equipment for her (shower stool, toilet stool, walker, hand held shower etc) and doing construction work around the house to make it safer for her. When she returned home, the first thing she asked me was how much I’d spent as she wanted to pay me back.
I just told her, “no, what goes around comes around. you looked after me financially when i was young and needed help, now it’s my turn to do the same for you”. I refused to tell her how much or take any money from her. I fully expect that my kids would do the same for me at some point in the future if they were able to.
Why the need to boot kids out and disown them as soon as they turn 18?
No great harm. But in the end it comes down to this… discuss with your parents the situation and come to an agreement on what seems fair compensation for them as well as you. As long as no one feels taken advantage of, you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Its not really anybody else’s business.
HOWEVER, realize that some others most definitely will look down on you (though as some posters have mentioned, perhaps less than now than in the past). You need to make the best decision you can based on your circumstances. This may seem to be a 180 turn from my previous post, but not really… I was just cautioning against assuming a sense of superiority based on the amount of green pieces of paper you’ve managed to accumulate.
So, living with your parents will undoubtedly benefit you financially, but there will be other “costs”… hard to define things like relationships and how society looks at you. Only you can assess the impact of those based on how important they are to you… they are inherently very subjective, besides being hard to predict.
NOBODY will look down on you if you are working hard and doing your best, even if you don’t have nice stuff. SOME people MIGHT look down on you if you have nice stuff but don’t seem to be earning it (at least in their eyes). Personally, I would choose the former, but YMMV.
It’s not embarrassing or unexpected, at least in certain socioeconomic circles. Young people in the U.S. are getting a raw deal in terms of student debt, low pay, and the weak economy. If we had a sensible government it would’ve been addressed by now, and maybe at some point it will be.
But there’s no reason you should be living with your parents if you’ve saved a bunch of money, have no debt, and expect to have a job.
“Broke” is no money in the bank. $10k is savings is not broke. You need to recalibrate your measuring tools.
Well, hell, up until 2007 I could afford an apartment, TWO vehicles, supported my spouse, and flew airplanes for a hobby for $50k a year and still had a year’s salary in the bank when I was laid off.
If Toronto is that expensive (though I doubt that it actually is) then maybe you should consider relocating to somewhere with a lower cost of living.
WHY are you leasing a car? WTF? If you don’t want to actually BUY something new (which you could, easily) then buy a quality used car.
Or take public transit, and simply rent a car if you should actually need a car for some reason.
You know, that might be why there are 20 and 30 year mortgage options. Yes, there’s a huge slice of interest served with a house mortgage. At the end, though, you own a place to live that has some actual value, and the equity can be utilized for all sorts of things.
And your point is…?
First, that is something you should negotiate with your parents.
Second, in my family it’s always been a division based on number of adults in the household. Assuming just your parents and you that means you paying 1/3 the household costs is reasonable. Generally, in my family, it’s been a matter of someone staying with the parents 6-12 months after graduation, or during various sorts of problem times, again, for less than a year. Oh, and when mom was dying I moved back for two months to care for her, and help out dad but I doubt very much that’s the sort of situation you’re considering here (and I hope you don’t have to face that sort of thing any time soon). In that case I didn’t kick into the household because I was providing support in the form of 24/7 care of a dying parent. Frankly, paying rent is preferable.
You have more cash than about 99% of the world population - yet you somehow think you’re “broke”. Really? How much money is going to be enough for you?
Here’s another way to look at it: you understand the concept of investing in the stock market, where you have to run a certain level of risk to reap the rewards of the opportunities presented. OK, the same holds true in the rest of your life. At some point you have to spend a little capital to get some reward. If you care about things other than just money you have to do things like live as an independent adult.
Yeah I said age 30 but obviously the guy is scared out of his wits right now about not having enough money for retirement. Just remember none of us know how long we’re going to live, ok? When you have a house and kids, you can’t take the career-changing risks that you can right this very moment. Now’s the time to seize life by the balls, as it were.
There’s studies on wage growth and one aspect of wage growth is, yes, the ability to move where the market is. A large amount of wage increases comes from changing jobs early in life, and it helps to be able to move where the jobs are (Job Mobility and the Careers of Young Men* | The Quarterly Journal of Economics | Oxford Academic) Tie yourself down too heavily too early and who knows, you may end up living in the equivalent of Detroit with a mortgage over your head and nobody buying.
Of course for the whole “why so much hate for the simple act of staying with the parents responsibly?” Well, I’ve seen way too many people stall in their personal growth by staying home, becoming seriously dysfunctional adults. I’ve seen too many people have their relationship with the parents turn disastrous. I personally could not stand to be around my parents a single month more. We created this society that values adult independence above all else, and now that’s a bed we have to lie in. One that often causes resentment between cohabitants, because our western society has conditioned many of us to be more independent than cohabitation will allow.
I’d posit that your parents have an idealised notion of you moving back in. You’ve been out of the house, what, four years? I betcha they’ve actually grown accustomed to living without your Highness, and your moving back in will throw a spanner in their works.
This will become apparent within a week because there is no way in hell you are intending to pay for the privilege of moving back home, nor contribute to the household chores in any way shape or form.
I suggest you stash your $50k in some investment account, buy a cheap Kombi or a one-way ticket to South East Asia, go travelling with a few bucks in the bank, and see a bit of LIFE before you embark upon your boring (but fiscally prudent) future.
And I can absolutely vouch for this. My cousin teaches engineering at a university in Lima. He makes an OK living. He is 55 years old and has NEVER left home. He lives in the SAME home he grew up in with his mother (my aunt). She’s 81 now.
I don’t know how much he contributes to household expenses, but I’m about to find out. I will be traveling there in February for the first time in 40 years!
Ají de Gallina, PM me if you’d like to meet up for a Pisco Sour and a bite to eat. Are you in Lima?
I am so excited to be traveling to Perú!!!
Well, you could do what a lot of people your age do. Get a condo or townhouse with a bunch of room mates or find a cheap shithole apartment until you save up enough to buy your own place.
The problem with living with your parents as a grown-ass man is that people tend to fall into adolescent-like relationships.
Not to mention that you are sponging off your parents. You get to live a much higher standard of living than you would if you had to pay your own way.
VT, if you choose to move in with your parents and if they choose to let you live with them, you should pay them some rent. Why not prove to them you are an adult and treat them like your potential landlords? That’s what they are. Tell them you are willing to contribute to household expenses and that you wish to pay rent as well. Work out the terms from there. The best way to find out what to pay is to look at ads for roommates and see what they are listing for.
I understand you’re not wanting to waste money. That makes sense. However, unless you set a rate and living arrangement boundaries with your parents from the get-go, you are indeed going to look like a sponge for living with them and having them “do” for you. You must do for them as well and respect their household rules even though you are now an adult. Most young adults are not willing to do that because not every young adult has parents with reasonable rules and, as pointed out previously, living with your parents basically means you will have little or no romantic life.
So, basically, ask yourself what an adult should do in your situation and then do it.
$50,000 is a lot in savings, probably more than most working adults ever accumulate. I am more familiar with parents doing it because their kids don’t really have anywhere else to go. It’s up to your parents if they want to help you out in that way, but I wouldn’t consider it typical. Personally, as soon as I moved out and rented my first college house at 18 I never wanted to go back and was willing to do what I had to do to stay out. I did spend one summer on my mom’s couch when I was 23. Fortunately, I spent much of my summer hanging out with a bunch of girls who didn’t hold that against me and didn’t mind me staying over.
Depending on your age when you buy the car, insurance would be up to $6k per year if you’re under 25; we have the most expensive insurance rates in Canada. Parking is another $1k/year, gas would be anywhere from $1k-2k, the cost of the vehicle would be 2k+ if it’s new, and even if it’s not you’ll need about $1k or more each year for maintenance and registration fees. Even buying any vehicle will cost 13% of the sale price immediately in sales taxes. So even a new Yaris could cost me $11k or so a year. Obviously I would never own a car with such insurance as a transit pass only costs a bit over $1k/year.
How? Toronto is the 2nd most expensive city in Canada. The average property (including apartments) is over $530k. For a typical 3 bedroom house, a starting price is $700k in a decent neighborhood and $1M in midtown. Slightly over 1 million households in Canada have a home worth over $1M, which is probably over 20% of those who live in major cities. You would need an income well over $100k to even think about flying here. Parking for a small aircraft at Buttonville used to cost $8500+/year.
It seems that one thing that keeps coming up is personal development. Honestly, I rarely am ever at home. I have some type of work everyday when I’m not in school and some other commitment on most nights. It’s more like I just need a place to sleep at night. I doubt that I would The money that I’m saving isn’t necessarily all for a house, and even then, $50k isn’t a lot of money. A master’s degree alone would cost $60k+. There’s also medical expenses (Canadians with the means travel to the US for surgery as the wait lists here are so long for non-emergency surgery), job layoffs, and other unexpected expenses.
The main point of this thread was to assuage if it was a social taboo. As in, is it important enough that I should mention it to future friends or girlfriends? A “dealbreaker” so to say.
And kambuckta, I’ve lived on four continents, including part of Southeast Asia: none of them were as appealing as North America.
Apparently you haven’t heard of sharing a cheap apartment so it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve never heard of used cars either.
As you can see by the condescension in this thread there is a very negative stigma associated with living at home. It will be more difficult to attract girls, for some it will be a deal breaker, and some people of both sexes will definitely look down upon you for it. The upside is it is one of the most financially sound decisions you can ever make. Saving money early for use later in life and letting compound interest work in your favor is the single easiest way to become wealthy. If your main goal in life is to get a nice house or retire early this is one of the best decision you could ever make. If your main goal is to find a wife and have some kids, it would probably make sense to strike out on your own. I will just say that even if it is with a lot of parent help, congrats on saving 50k so young, keep it up!
I am assuming you have a good relationship with your parents and have open communications, this is absolutely critical for both sides. I would say you definitely want to contribute to household expenses. This is something you should discuss with your parents and come to an equitable arrangement (again this is part of having good communications with your parents). Your parent may say nothing, but that is not a good arrangement. A reasonable arrangement would be paying a third of the costs of utilities, taxes, mortgage, exc. This is necessary because to make this work you need to be on a somewhat even footing and no longer just their child. If what you are saying is true this still should be a pretty good deal for you.
Best of luck.