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Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

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Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#71
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 hours a day is a huge amount of time and commute time is one of the biggest, easily changeable factors of happiness. Nobody in a software engineering job should have to live with parents for financial reasons. I appreciate OP's dedication, but they should be able to save up an emergency fund pretty quickly and move into their own (small) apartment.

3 hours per day is going to kill me. I did it over the summer for an internship, and just plan to save for 3 months until I have a solid base to add to my savings account. I'm targeting a solid 9-10 months of emergency fund. If I moved out right now, I could afford the first and last month of rent, but would not have that much left in my bank account. And for the record, a reason I want to move out is so I can start…

+1 if you move in with this woman and keep saving.

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#72
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sneaking suspicion is correct for baby boomers and gen X: http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases/2... . "Gen Xers have less wealth and six times more debt than their parents did at the same age," despite having higher salaries. I think you're right to be concerned. Not being able to strike out on your own delays family formation, which leads to some attrition of people who never have children…

This was surprising: "Among Gen Xers who have exceeded their parents’ income, those with college degrees are less likely to surpass their parents’ wealth, mostly due to student loan debt."

Gen X here, just turned 40. If you compare how I'm doing with how my parents (who were solidly middle class) were doing, it's not even close. At 40, they had multiple homes, were secure in their savings and retirement through generous pensions, and practically debt free. This was on school teachers' salaries!

Me? Student loan debt set me back years, crippling housing costs, and a crappy 401(k) that is probably worth around what I put into it due to multiple deep recessions during my prime working years. I can't even begin to imagine how bad it is for you under-30s!

This is not sustainable. All the value captured through productivity increases is being captured by shareholders and asset owners now rather than the working class.

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#73

Cost of tuition continually grows, most graduates are not falling into extremely lucrative salaries and average salaries are not keeping up with inflation. This is far from surprising but is very concerning. Another avenue to pursue this discussion from is the % of income allocated to retirement savings. I have a sneaky suspicious most of my peers are saving less for retirement than the same demographic 10, 20, 30 ye…

By the time the young adults of today are too old to work, they will have long since inherited their parent's house. I would bet in 25 years when 10,000 baby boomers are dying every day, housing prices will be in free fall. So many of today's young adults will pay little, if anything, for the house they retire in.

Thanks to reverse mortgages, I doubt there will be a massive housing transfer when the boomers die out. Boomers in general will outlive their retirement savings and all that will be left is their home equity. We'll see tons of bank-owned homes but today's young adults still won't be able to afford them.

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#74
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 hours a day is a huge amount of time and commute time is one of the biggest, easily changeable factors of happiness. Nobody in a software engineering job should have to live with parents for financial reasons. I appreciate OP's dedication, but they should be able to save up an emergency fund pretty quickly and move into their own (small) apartment.

3 hours per day is going to kill me. I did it over the summer for an internship, and just plan to save for 3 months until I have a solid base to add to my savings account. I'm targeting a solid 9-10 months of emergency fund. If I moved out right now, I could afford the first and last month of rent, but would not have that much left in my bank account. And for the record, a reason I want to move out is so I can start…

Don't worry. I commute 4 hours a day. You get used to it. You have to live where you can afford, man.

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#75
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your parents are willing to let you live with them, why not just save the cost of exiting your lease (mine is 1 month's rent) and U-Hauling your stuff back home? Or would you not be able to go back once you left?

My parents tell me I can stay at home forever. I'm not sure about this type of contract. Is it common to have a clause that allows you to "exit the lease"? If so, how would I go forward with asking the people about this without seeming high risk?

The lease should specify a fee, large enough to deter you from walking away for a slightly better deal, but (generally) smaller than paying rent for the remaining months. Giving the required notice (mine is 30 days) and paying the fee lets you terminate the lease early while still fulfilling your legal obligations.

It's there primarily for people who need to move because of work, and usually the employer who is relocating them would reimburse it. So, you could probably ask something like, "what if I get transferred to a different office before 12 months is up?"

That will signal some risk that the landlord will have to find a new tenant. My landlord is a REIT, and I live in a large complex with 2 full-time leasing agents onsite, so finding new tenants is not a huge burden for them - they're fine with high turnover. A mom-and-pop landlord might be skittish about that possibility. But it is still better than "what if I can't pay rent because I am unemployed?" Definitely don't ask that :).

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#76
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your parents are willing to let you live with them, why not just save the cost of exiting your lease (mine is 1 month's rent) and U-Hauling your stuff back home? Or would you not be able to go back once you left?

My parents tell me I can stay at home forever. I'm not sure about this type of contract. Is it common to have a clause that allows you to "exit the lease"? If so, how would I go forward with asking the people about this without seeming high risk?

[deleted]

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#77
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how politicians don't consider that a crisis. Too many fat happy landlords I suppose.

Even if you artificially lower apartment rent, there would still be a lack of housing in cities. It would actually make the problem worse because more people could afford to live in cities, and less people would want to build new units. Either young people need to be okay not living in cities, or governments need to encourage more housing to be built in cities. But, instead, young people want urban living and municip…

How many homes are investment rental homes or apartments with nobody that lives there? I'll bet a huge amount.

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#78
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how politicians don't consider that a crisis. Too many fat happy landlords I suppose.

I think you could solve the problem by rightous forbidding cars and non public transport in and around the city and replace them all with taxis,trains and underground trains,busses and shared cars. So you can travel within 30 to 45 minutes to the city even when you live 150 km away. But that, that's just a pipe dream.

Everything with housing is a pipe dream, until the right person comes along for people to get behind and solve the problems for real

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep this up as long as you can if it does not affect your social life (girlfriend/boyfriend). There is nothing like money in the bank.

3 hours a day is a huge amount of time and commute time is one of the biggest, easily changeable factors of happiness. Nobody in a software engineering job should have to live with parents for financial reasons. I appreciate OP's dedication, but they should be able to save up an emergency fund pretty quickly and move into their own (small) apartment.

Depends on the mode of transport too. At my last job I had a 1 hour commute but it was via public transport. I sat down and worked on my personal projects during that time, now my commute is a lot shorter and I'm getting a lot less done.

Re: Percentage of Young Americans Living with Parents Rises to 75-Year High

#80
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 hours per day is going to kill me. I did it over the summer for an internship, and just plan to save for 3 months until I have a solid base to add to my savings account. I'm targeting a solid 9-10 months of emergency fund. If I moved out right now, I could afford the first and last month of rent, but would not have that much left in my bank account. And for the record, a reason I want to move out is so I can start…

Don't worry. I commute 4 hours a day. You get used to it. You have to live where you can afford, man.

At 4 hours a day it's time to look at what else you can cut, like house/apartment size.
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