Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

1–10 of 293 posts

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

#2
I am 26 and just graduated college 3 years behind my high school class. I have accepted a software engineering job, but will be living at home commuting 3 hours per day until I can save up enough for an emergency fund to be able to move out and afford a 12 month lease in case I get fired. I'm planning on getting my own place in the beginning of Q2, 2017. Unfortunately, I'm a little behind salary wise.

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

#3
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 years ago.

What happens in a few decades when all these adults who lived with their parents and hardly saved for retirement due to lower salaries and student loans are too old to work? It seems our tax dollars will be supporting them and this looks like a big problem. Curious what others think or if I am looking at this problem from the wrong perspective.

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

#4
post #2

I am 26 and just graduated college 3 years behind my high school class. I have accepted a software engineering job, but will be living at home commuting 3 hours per day until I can save up enough for an emergency fund to be able to move out and afford a 12 month lease in case I get fired. I'm planning on getting my own place in the beginning of Q2, 2017. Unfortunately, I'm a little behind salary wise.

No judgment either way but >50% of the people I know cannot afford a full year's lease out of their savings.

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

#5
post #4
post #2

I am 26 and just graduated college 3 years behind my high school class. I have accepted a software engineering job, but will be living at home commuting 3 hours per day until I can save up enough for an emergency fund to be able to move out and afford a 12 month lease in case I get fired. I'm planning on getting my own place in the beginning of Q2, 2017. Unfortunately, I'm a little behind salary wise.

No judgment either way but >50% of the people I know cannot afford a full year's lease out of their savings.

That's fine. I just think it's a good idea to have that fund in case I get fired, company closes (startup, series B), etc.

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

#6
I think one of the other reasons is that parents this day and age are more liberal minded than previous generations.

I remember talking to my mom and dad about this. When they left the nest, their parents held very strict conservative view, and were often very opinionated in how their sons and daughters should conduct their lives.

Nowadays there's not much to rebel against, especially among the educated class.

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

#8
Rising rents and harder to get home loans do sound like the primary cause.

That being said, I also believe there is not quite the same urgency to leave home for current young adults. Just from personal observation they don't necessarily see increasing their expenses just to be more independent as worthwhile. Same goes with getting a driver license and a car.

I don't think it's necessarily being lazy, I think they might rightly see that building up all these expenses just to be independent is a bit overkill.

Mix this with people in general getting married later and I find it quite natural that more people are living at home.

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

#9

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…

The problem already goes beyond millennials.

Increasing automation is going to make unskilled labor a huge liability for countries. This is one reason I don't think some of the anti-immigrant position of many Americans (and Europeans) is unwarranted. Every country should want highly skilled labor to help improve their current account, but unskilled labor is huge future liability. There is already a huge surplus of domestic unskilled labor in developed countries. Allowing unskilled labor to increase through immigration is only going to exacerbate the problem.

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

#10
post #2

I am 26 and just graduated college 3 years behind my high school class. I have accepted a software engineering job, but will be living at home commuting 3 hours per day until I can save up enough for an emergency fund to be able to move out and afford a 12 month lease in case I get fired. I'm planning on getting my own place in the beginning of Q2, 2017. Unfortunately, I'm a little behind salary wise.

I think you're doing the right thing. The first step towards financial independence is building a reasonable emergency fund. The peace of mind is liberating.
Post reply on HN