I went straight from college in CA after graduation to Seattle for work. Never looked back. My siblings and I love our mother, but she drives us all insane to the point that we fled as soon as we possibly could.
I do still have a whole buttload of stuff in my old room at my parents’. But that’s all pretty much cruft, except for a few items that I need to figure out how to move up here. Like about half a crate of books, some sentimental items… the rest can go off to Goodwill. Every time I go home to visit my parents, I swear I’ll get rid of it, but somehow we’re always too busy lying around and being stuffed silly by our mother (who is ecstatic at having more than two mouths to feed).
I moved away to go to college when I was 18, but was in close touch with my parents and lived at home during the summers. After graduation I didn’t have a job but had some definite plans of what I was going to do, so I lived with them for another year while I studied Japanese and sent out applications to schools all over Japan.
I took a job offer and applied for a working visa, and at the age of 23.5 I got on a plane left the nest for good. I have a good relationship with my parents and keep in regular touch with them.
I didn’t go to college, just sort of vegged after high school, bouncing from job to job. My parents were pretty frustrated and often terrified that I’d never get on with the business of growing up, but other than charging me a tiny token rent payment, never threatened to kick me out or anything.
At 21 I got pregnant, so I figured that was a fine time to grow up. Married and got my first place a few months later and that was that. Although, I did sorta stay there temporarily a few times, once for a month as I tried to work out the failing marriage and years later a 4-month period following a house fire, but both times it was understood by everyone that it was temporary.
I was almost 18. My mother had sold the house I grew up in. She rented a small apartment in another town with my younger sisters and told me I was on my own, so I found an apartment.
We did decide to (equally) share the rent of a large house when I was about 23. We lived as roommates, her still raising my youngest sister, me raising my 2 sons. That lasted for about 3 years, and had its ups and downs, mostly downs. She purchased her current (3 family) home after that and I rented the upstairs apartment from her for about 6 months before I decided I needed to really break away from my family. So my kids and I moved about 6 hours away from everyone we knew just before my 27th birthday. Even though I’d been financially independent of my mother and father by age 18, I still think of that move to PA as my ‘leaving the nest’ in a way.
After my oldest son dropped out of high school last year he was given 30 days after his 18th birthday to move out, which he did. I can’t think of many circumstances where I’d consider allowing him to move back in with me, but he pops in 2 or 3 times a week for dinner or to just hang out.
I thought this was a straightforward thread. But it’s complex, isn’t it?
I moved out when I went off to college, but college was in the same town (Berkeley) so I checked in often. After college I spent a year in SF, then went overseas on a series of jobs. Came back after a couple of years and bought a house near Mom’s. Went off on some more adventures, came back to town and got married, had kids, moved around in the Bay Area several times but always close enough for grandma to hang out with the kids whenever she wanted to.
About 9 years ago I bought another house even closer to Mom, and while we remodeled it to fit my growing family we moved in with her. That was interesting.
A few years later, the marriage disintegrated. While I looked for a place to rent for me and my kids, guess where we stayed? Thanks Mom.
I moved out of home when I was 21, not long after I had finished my degree. I had worked part-time while I was studying and had managed to save enough for the deposit on an apartment. So I bought, rather than rented.
I was about 19 when I more or less moved in with my now-ex boyfriend. Weird thing was, I went home on the weekends sometimes, or sometimes drop in mid-week and crash. I paid them board, just to keep my old room mine, even though for well over half of each month, I didn’t use it. I moved back in with them when I was 23, but was rarely home.
I finally moved most of my junk out or packed it into boxes and stored it in their basement at 25, but several months later, I moved back into my parent’s house when my mom got fed up and decided to “rescue” me from the evil roommate from hell (I didn’t complain to my mother, she was just always dropping in and seeing what was happening for herself). She had to ask me a few times, but I finally admitted that it was a shitty situation, swallowed my pride, and moved back home. A week later my then-friend now-husband flew in to visit, then to take me back to Seattle with him… and the rest is history.
So… I launched, but I had to run along the dock for a while, and I took a few jumps when I thought I saw the end of the pier when I really didn’t. My depth perception always did kinda suck.
Failure to launch, ha, what a funny way of saying it. If that was the case, then I’m the Russian manned lunar mission
Took about 5 and a half years to get my batchelor’s, and school was only a 20 minute drive away, so it seemed pointless then to get a dorm when my part time jobs were so close to my house. When I neared graduation I started keeping an eye out for full-time jobs, but what really screwed me over was being over-confident about getting hired as a manager for the tutoring job I was working in.
I graduated, then applied for the manager position, didn’t get it, and was stupidly despondent over the whole thing. Had a few opportunities to move- I did get offered a job as a police officer for a mental institution which had a decent starting salary, particularly since the place was out in the middle of nowhere and hence probably cheap to live. But I turned it down because I didn’t want to be any farther away from my girlfriend :smack: Then, my girlfriend and I had been talking about moving in together, whether she was going to move to the Bay Area, or I was going to move to the central valley. I didn’t really want to live in the central valley, particularly because a majority of people my age seemed to want to leave Fresno, and the only reason I’d be going there is to live with my girlfriend. She didn’t want to move to the Bay Area because she didn’t have enough confidence she’d be able to find a job and us be able to support ourselves. So we both hemmed and hawed about it.
Then, we broke up, and I realized, holy shit, I just wasted another year. Well, it wasn’t that bad. I was/am working as a substitute teacher, and really enjoy it, considered going the extra mile and getting a credential; if I do that the financial burden might keep me where I am even longer
It is a depressing thought; I don’t admire the choices I made or my current living situation, in spite of people patting me on the back about making a ‘smart choice’ and ‘saving money’. I have considered just up and moving out if I don’t get into the credential program; and just scrape on by living in a hole in the ground that I could call my own. It may not be the smartest move, but at least it will be a change of scenery.
I moved in with my grandmother the day after graduating high school, to escape a very negative and unhappy household. By living with her, I was getting opportunities and experiences I never would have gotten by staying. I started working and saving my money for a car and college. It took a while, but I graduated last year, ‘left the nest’ and moved into my own apartment 4 months and 1300 miles later. I’m loving it!
I left home permanently at 19, about a year after my mother’s death, and had no further outside financial support from that point. In fact, I didn’t have much contact of any kind with my father for the next few years. I would rather have been homeless than go back to live with him. I stuck around a few months longer than my younger sisters, ironically enough.
This is definitely not the norm, it seems. When I had done everything I could at the local community college and transferred to a regular university, I had to fight to have my income alone considered for financial aid. They wanted to use my father’s income as the basis for my aid package despite the fact that I’d been living on my own for four years and hadn’t received a penny from him in that time. It took quite a bit of back and forth and documentation to convince them that I was on my own.
It didn’t really matter that much, I think. Almost all of my aid was in the form of loans that I’ll be paying back for years. Even having a close-to-poverty-level income doesn’t seem to offset the disadvantage of being a “white” male from a middle-class background in the eyes of the financial aid office.
I moved out a few weeks after graduating college. Then I technically moved back in with my parents when I went to grad school. I say technically because I moved a lot my stuff there and was at my parents’ house for most holidays, but I wasn’t there over summer and, for the most part, I had an apartment while school was in session. So I wasn’t really in my parents’ house all that much. After grad school, I stayed with my folks for about a month or so to save up and find a place. I finally moved out for good at 25.
I moved out when I was fifteen. Got a job as a P.C. tech with an extremely shady company and moved in with my girlfriend.
The major motivation was that I had enough in the way of responsibility in the household that I was actually doing most of the work, but my mum was playing the “not under my roof” card when it came to my personal life (which by then I was managing with better judgment than she was applying to hers.)
At about 21, I’d say. I went to college at 18, but Mom and Dad were still paying the bills. I came home the summer after freshman and sophomore years and got a summer job while living at home. The next summer I had a research gig on campus, and I spent a few weeks at home after graduation before moving to Santa Barbara and starting my job. I originally lived in a studio, but moved in with some friends of mine about 5 months ago. It’s a few $hundred less in rent, a nicer place in a nicer neighborhood, and it got kind of boring and lonely living alone.
I was 19. During the last years of high school I resented being dependent on my parents. I had made a couple half-assed (quarter-assed?) attempts to find a job the previous year but without success.
Towards the end of my last year in high school, I began a long-distance relationship with my first girlfriend, and roughly at the same time, I was expelled from school because I was present only when I felt like it. I had some splainin’ to do with my mother and during the argument she told me that if I wasn’t happy, I could leave (though she didn’t mean it). So I did. I moved in with my girlfriend in Paris, passed the high school final exam as an independant candidate, requested to be drafted immediatly (there was a mandatory military service in France. I should normally have been drafted only some years later) applied for a consciencious objector status and worked for two years in a semi-public non-profit organization in the social sector.
I’m not sure I would have left the nest lacking the convenience of dropping at my gf’s place. But that’s very possible, because I was really fed up with living with my parents (I’ve nothing against them, mind you, they were OK parents, I just needed independance). I would just have had to choose some form of civil service that would have included being lodged and fed, like national parks or somesuch.
I felt guilty for a long time (several years!!!) for having left, because I was the youngest child, and I was leaving my parents alone (and actually cowardly didn’t tell them I was leaving for good but pretended it was only for some months).
But I went to boarding school, so it’s not really the same as being on one’s own. But there was certainly a big difference in living with your parents at 14 and living in a dorm with 40 other guys and 2 adult supervisors. Many summers and holidays i went back home, and while it was my “permanent address”, i can’t really say i lived there anymore.
