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Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

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61–70 of 152 posts

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#61

I'm in my mid 30s and have always had a decent job with relatively decent income, but the cost of living has always made it impossible to save enough fast enough to get a down payment on a home. Now I finally have one, but with interest rates it seems like a poor financial decision to buy a home when I can rent the same quality of home for half the price. I feel for kids starting out today, I can't see how they will…

Is this a local or a national problem? Homes are a lot more affordable outside of the inflated West Coast metros.

That's true, but jobs outside of metro areas are nearly non-existent, or pay peanuts. Moving out of a metro area typically puts you in, maybe, a bigger home, but the pay is drastically lower. Food costs, internet, phone, vehicle, etc all cost nearly the same (if not more expensive), so you're probably doing even worse moving out of a metro area.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#62
post #27

Might be an unpopular opinion, especially in North America, but I think families living together is a great thing. I have a wife and child, and we all live with my parents in a largish 6-bedroom house. They are retired and I support them financially. While they bought this house before I entered the workforce, I now pay the mortgage on this house. A few years ago we did a total rebuild of the house, and it's now a gr…

> I have a wife and child, and we all live with my parents in a largish 6-bedroom house.

Yes, it's probably not so bad when you have twice the bedrooms (and I'm assuming sq footage) of an average house.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#63

I think learned helplessness is a real problem. We have friends in their late 30's and early 40's who still live with multiple roommates. They're "well educated" but can't seem to hold a job, or stay in a relationship, or pay for anything. They've got subscriptions ticking away that they didn't remember they had, and then they're shocked to learn about an overdraft fee or a big credit card bill. One of them recently…

> Lots and lots of weed.

The people you describe do not sound like the vast majority of people I know. The couple of people I know like this are on the "wake and bake" plan, so of course they can't understand interest or plan ahead or really any of that normal adulting.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#64
post #10

Then you will see 1001 theories about why the population is declining. People in their 30's can't afford a house, let alone raising a family. A whole population inside a certain age group seems completely unable to grasp this basic reasoning.

Sounds good, except that fertility rate correlates inversely with income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility If you gave a population a $10k raise (in a hypothetical world with no inflation) the birth rate would probably DECREASE

Right, low income causes kids, so what we need are more poors! We don't enact regressive policies because we want money, we only do it because we love you!

It couldn't possibly be that the causal arrow points in the other direction, that kids are an economic burden, cause hardship in an already economically strained population, and those who escape do so in part because they choose not to have kids. Nah, couldn't be.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#66
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in terms of wealth and power, the boomers dominate.

isn't it almost always true that older people - people who have been working for 30-40-50 years will have more money, on average, than people that have just entered the workforce? Once the boomers are all gone, will we just start blaming the next oldest generation for all of societies problems?

Oh for sure.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#67

I think learned helplessness is a real problem. We have friends in their late 30's and early 40's who still live with multiple roommates. They're "well educated" but can't seem to hold a job, or stay in a relationship, or pay for anything. They've got subscriptions ticking away that they didn't remember they had, and then they're shocked to learn about an overdraft fee or a big credit card bill. One of them recently…

sounds like the "lots and lots of weed" left a mark there...

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#68
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly every east Asian country that has a background with Confucianism. So at least 2 Billion People.

You want us to believe any culture has a contingent of 18-year-olds out-earning their 40-something parents?

I was not aware the premise of the comment had anything to do with out-earning parents. The responded to comment was

>Some cultures expect children to take care of their parents once they hit 18. This might not be financially, but culturally driven.

And the answer is, yes, you are expected to take care of parents as soon as you are able to.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#70
post #10

Then you will see 1001 theories about why the population is declining. People in their 30's can't afford a house, let alone raising a family. A whole population inside a certain age group seems completely unable to grasp this basic reasoning.

That makes sense, but it feels to me like the more educated and higher-income young adults are the ones delaying kids / choosing not to have kids. It feels like lower-income young adults are more likely to start families.

Higher incomes tends to correlate with better long term planning, and better controlled risk taking. Having a higher income also correlates with having grown up in a higher income household, and thus having more expensive ideas of what table-stakes childrearing looks like.

So, as some well paid techbro, I probably had a relatively well-off childhood, and my perceived cost of having a kid is going to include A) paying for their entire college education B) paying for childcare, because I met my SO through my similar socioeconomic social circle and thus they also have a career C) moving to the suburbs where I can own a house large enough to house a family and D) still maintaining a level of wealth such that I can smooth over any unexpected expenses/life events.

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