If you had been kicked out on your 18th birthday with no money, what would you have done?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not me or anyone I know just a hypothetical question. Your parents are arguing and the mood at home is bad in general. You make them pissed by failing HS and not going to any college that they say next week when you turn 18, you are out. You can pack or leave your things but you’re getting no help and no financial aid.

What would you do? I think I’d have called it quits. Didn’t and still don’t have any friends whatsoever and although I’m a citizen, I wasn’t born in the UK and don’t have any family here. Besides, I’m on either bad or “iffy” terms due to some things in the past.

I definitely wouldn’t be homeless in the sense of being on the street so…no other options left in my opinion.

But what would you personally do yourself?

2

Presuming I can’t promptly move in with a friend’s family? (I had one or two friends whose families might have taken me in at least for a while.)

If I couldn’t do that I would have most likely ended up promptly on the streets due to literally not being aware of any other alternatives, and if I didn’t quickly die I presumably would have soon been arrested, either for some form of vagrancy or due to committing some kind of crime out of desperation or nihilistic apathy. I don’t imagine I would have fared well in prison. Even with all that I don’t picture myself committing suicide, but who knows.

Of course, getting kicked out at 18 would have been basically impossible given my home situation - my mom is very protective of family and has repeatedly taken people in for years-long stretches when they needed support and a place to stay. Had my living situation been one where getting kicked out was a possible outcome, I might have prepared for it or something.

3

I would have enlisted in the military. Which I ended up doing anyway.

4

I expect that friends or relatives would have taken me in until I finished high school. At 18 I was only a few months into my senior year of high school.

I guess it depends on what I did that was so bad to get me kicked out? I was a good student and, while I participated in a few hijinks as a teenager, nothing that a reasonable parent would kick me out for.

After that, I don’t know. My parents helped me pay for college, so while I think I still would have gone to school, it would have been a very different path.

5

Me personally, at 18, I would have moved in with my boyfriend, which I in fact did a few months later when my mother declared I had to get a job or get out, while living in a tiny village with no job opportunities within walking distance and no car.

In the version where that wasn’t an option, depends on the local council options and any charities (I’m sticking to UK, that being where I live); some are much better equipped at providing emergency housing than others.

If I had a bit of time to plan in advance, I’d try and find work in one of the tourist areas with accommodation included. Hotels will do this for entry level stuff like KP work or room cleaning. It’s generally seasonal, but even doing a couple of months gives some savings to try and move on with.

I also know a few people who’ve got an arrangement with a farmer to live in a caravan (owned by the farmer, or in on case acquired free as slightly damaged) in exchange for helping out on the farm a bit. Depends on knowing the right people, but it can work. I also know quite a few people who live in vans parked up on backstreets, that use a friend’s house as their address. I know a buncha hippies, tbh.

There’s options. Not easy options, and they can be questionable options, but they exist, at least for a young healthy person trying to avoid becoming homeless.

It gets harder once you are homeless, trying to get back into housing, especially if you break one of the council’s housing rules (if you voluntarily become homeless, they don’t have to assist, which can include if you move out after a breakup, or after a fight, when you don’t legally have to). Then you wind up having to find the unicorn landlord who will take housing benefit in arrears with no references and no deposit, which basically means a charity.

6

Given how emotionally immature and unprepared for life I was back then combined with the fact that we lived out in the country, I would have either wandered around in shock until I died from exposure, or gone nuts and killed my parents.

7

I’m trying to realistically think of what I would do at 18. At that age, I really thought I could do anything, so it wouldn’t have stopped me. It’s hard for me to imagine a scenario with me failing high school, but, for the purposes of the hypothetical, I’m assuming I’m still who I was at 18, but, for whatever reason, decided to just not give a shit and fail high school.

I assume I would find a job, get a GED, and go from there. I really don’t see any other option for myself. Military, I suppose, is an idea, too, and I certainly wouldn’t have been against it at that age. At any rate, I’m confident I would have figured something out, being the cocky confident sonofabitch I was at that age.

8

I would have become a successful gigolo.

9

Crime or the military.

10

When I turned eighteen, we had just pulled out of Viet Nam a few years earlier. And I could type. So I probably would have joined the military with a good chance at a stateside desk job. Then, GI Bill, college, and back on track with my original time line (only a few years delayed).

11

I would have enlisted in the Navy. I had thought about this anyway but went to college instead. But if college was not an option due to my parents not paying for it, I would certainly have enlisted in the Navy. But your hypothetical has me failing high school. Can you join the Navy, or any branch of the American military, if you failed out of high school?

12

This is just impossible for me to answer. My life would have been completely different if I was flunking high school. That just wouldn’t have been me, so I can’t know what “I” would have done.

13

Moved out when I was 17, allowed to take the clothes I was wearing and my music library. Moved into a bachelor pad with 12 of my buddies (it was a huge house), got a job at a lumber yard by the beginning of the next week and thrived for almost a year until the owner of the house kicked us all out and sold it. Since I was successful enough to legally support myself without any help from my parents, the fight with my mom that got me kicked out was forgiven and I was allowed to move back in instead of having to try to find a new place. after a couple months of not having to spend my paycheck on rent and groceries, I bought a 20’ travel trailer, put in the backyard, moved into it and started paying rent and buying groceries again.

ETA I didn’t flunk high school, that was the summer after I graduated high school.

14

It wasn’t on my 18th birthday but I was kicked out at 18 while I was still finishing HS when my parents found out I was gay.

I ended up on my older brothers couch for a short time before finding a cheap apartment. At the time I was working part time and had my own car. I was a crappy HS student to begin with and it pretty much ended me finishing HS because I needed more money/hours. I got my GED instead of finishing HS. I took a job at Home Depot and was promoted shortly after I started so was making decent money for my age. The college classes I did end up taking were paid out of pocket.

If I’d been kicked out earlier, on my birthday, it might have actually made things easier. I might not have been outed against my will and would have had more people to turn to for help. Having been raised Mormon my list of contacts outside the church was limited.

15

I was putting myself through college, so I’d continue doing that. But I’d hold a party and celebrate being liberated. No more boring monthly phone calls and putting up a pretense, “for the sake of the family”, that we had some kind of relationship I wanted to maintain. Woo-hoo!!

I’m not seeing why I have to assume I flunked out of HS. If that were indeed the case, I probably would’t have blamed my parents, and I’d go get some type of job in the trades as best I could. I’ve always had enough friends I could rely on to help me thru a rough patch, if need be.

16

I can tell you exactly what I did, excluding the failing out of school part. I was raised with the expectation that I would become financially independent on my 18th birthday. That is the ‘‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’’ culture I came from. No expectation of help with the rent, college support, nothing. And I was an excellent student - one A- on my transcript.

Well, life has ways of surprising you, because I ended up on my own at age 17. How to cut a long story short? I had an abusive childhood. Things got very bad at home, eventually, both of my parents moved out to be closer to work, I think I was 16 then, sort of living by myself most of the time but being micromanaged from afar, and my Mom was trying to figure out a way to legally throw me out of the house anyway. Things were very volatile. When I had just started my senior year of high school, she came home and the floor hadn’t been swept so she launched into yet another abusive tirade and I utterly fucking snapped. I knew she wouldn’t let me take the car, so I pitched the keys on the floor and said, “I’m out.” I knew I was never coming back and I didn’t care if I had to sleep under a bridge that night.

I walked with nothing but a pocket full of change to the pay phone about a mile down the road and called my grandparents. They sheltered me for a while, and when it became evident I wasn’t returning home, I moved in with my Aunt. I got my car back. (Fun fact: My mother told my Aunt at the time, "If she comes home, I’m afraid I’m going to kill her’’ so my Aunt persuaded her to let me stay there.) Things were okay at first, with my parents sending her money to take care of me, but it wasn’t long before my Mom got a bug up her ass about me driving a car to school - my only means of transportation - so she came to the school and she cut up my driver’s license in full view of the school counselor, and told me, ‘‘I don’t give a fuck if you never graduate.’’ That little episode proved helpful in court.

At the time I had hoped to attend one of the finest educational institutions in the country upon graduation, I was ranked #2 in my class and I lived 45 minutes away from school. She has just made it impossible for me to finish my education. My aunt and her friends took turns getting up super early and driving me to school for a while, but finally, it became clear that if I wanted to finish school that year, I had to legally emancipate and get my driver’s license back. I still remember the moment I decided to do this. I’m 17 years old. I take out a yellow legal pad and I make a list of things I have to do. Get Medicaid. Order checks. It was so mechanical. I couldn’t afford to feel much in that moment.

So, the first thing I did is get the car transferred to my (or my Aunt’s?) name. I can’t remember how I pulled that off but it was necessary to protect myself. I had to play my cards just right to make it work. Once I had the car, and pulled the $600 I had saved out of my bank account, I took my parents to court. The only thing I can compare that kind of planning to is a victim of domestic violence leaving an abusive spouse. I had to get a police escort to get my personal items from their house. I had to do it the safe way or I could get hurt or killed.

I had to document everything including what I was doing in exchange for room and board (housework counted as payment.) I had to get a full-time job. I didn’t have to pay rent, but I had to pay for everything else. The emancipation hinged on their permission, I think, and in a weird twist of fate my Mom was in a fucking bizarre emotionally neutral mood, her only statement was ‘‘I neither agree with nor contest this’’ which the judge interpreted as consent. I got my driver’s license back, opened a checking account at the credit union, and went and enrolled in Medicaid so I could get some critical medical services. I could afford to eat, but I was pretty poor.

Then shit went really unimaginably horribly wrong, but I’m not going into the details right now. That year is one of the most traumatic things that ever happened to me and I still fall apart every Fall. I don’t know how I did it, I just did it. I worked, I did my schoolwork, I even stayed involved in all my extracurriculars and took dual enrollment courses at a the local community college. I remember the last day of school all the seniors ran outside to celebrate. I was inside balancing my checkbook. No Open House for me, my Mom wouldn’t even commit to attending my graduation. There was absolutely nothing to celebrate. I eked my way through the year on a waitress’ salary, graduated Salutatorian with a full ride to university*, and 11 years later, finished with a master’s degree. It’s both a success story and not one, because some wounds do not heal, and all the external trappings of success can’t compensate for what I suffered.

*The full ride was a last-minute surprise. The FAFSA form requires parent income and SS# information and of course, my parents would not provide this, so I had to provide extensive documentation to my university to be considered an independent student and have my FAFSA processed without their info. My status as a legally emancipated minor was not sufficient, I had to prove I wasn’t receiving any financial help from my parents. I was on track to receive work-study when I got the last-minute news that all of my tuition would be covered by a combination of grants and scholarships. Halefuckingleiuah. I really think someone was looking out for me (not as in a guardian angel, but as in the director of financial aid.)

17

I was living in the dorms during my first semester of college on my 18th birthday. Everything was paid up till the end of the term so I would have a little time to sort things out without being homeless or starving.

Most likely I would have ended up in the Army. I wandered into the ROTC building just a couple weeks after my 19th birthday anyway. I hadn’t yet had the experience where I went from interest in the military to thinking it was a realistic option for me though. If I went that way, I likely would have been interested in staying in, but it was just before the whole end of the Cold War with massive cuts. That might not have been an option.

Who I was at the point of being 18, with the lack of confidence and extreme shyness just starting to crack… It’s hard to really know. I could have curled up into a ball and just fallen apart. I am a very different person three decades later than I was then.

18

I’d have gone to my grandmother’s while trying to figure out what to do next. I suppose I could have tried living off what I made ($35/week in 1954) and just continued as before.

A good friend of mine (still is, 63 years later) was tossed out of his house. His offence was going to college rather than going to work and earning money. He had finished first in his HS class and thereby automatically won a full tuition scholarship to Penn from the Philadelphia Board of Ed. His father threw him out and he went to the dean of men asking for advice. The dean (who also ran the dorms) said he had an unrented dorm room my friend could borrow. He used that for a year and then the two of us got a very cheap ($50/month) apartment off campus. My mother about blew a gasket because I was leaving home without getting married (I was 19 at the time).

19

With all due respect, fuck your parents. Fuck any parents who reject their children. I saw this so many times growing up. It’s one of the reasons I think I had so many gay friends - I could relate to a lot of the bullshit parental rejection and subsequent fallout. This absolutely infuriates me. Shortly after I moved out of my Aunt’s house, one of my gay friends moved in with her as his Dad threw him out - his Dad later went to prison for kiddie porn. Another friend’s mother found out he was gay and lit all of his shit on literal fire. She told him she wished he had killed someone instead.

Fucking hypocrite assholes.

I have a friend whose mother abandoned him in retaliation for him joining the Marines. She moved to another state, hooked up with a bank robber and just left him on his own at age 17. From our conversations, it seems his Mom was similar to mine in a lot of ways. He did great things in the Marines.

TBH, being kicked out on your 18th birthday is pretty standard for a lot of working-class people. Sometimes it’s for terrible, dysfunctional reasons and sometimes it’s just because it’s the default expectation within that culture.

20

Spice, once again, you blow me away with your strength and spirit. You have indeed by forged in fire.