It's official: boomerang kids won't leave in this economy (accounting, agent, taxes)
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Sometimes it is a practical financial move that has a huge pay off. For instance, take someone right out of college in a job making $40,000 a year, while having $30,000 in student loans. If done right, after 2 or 3 years they would have paid off their student loans n full and have a little money in the bank.
They are then 25 or 26 and ready to begin life without a huge financial burden around there neck. I don't think that's so bad.
The reason for this isn't some temporary economic downturn. The downturn is permanent. Remember, the capitalistic class intentionally offshored a big chunk of our manufacturing, including almost all electronics and computers. Now they're actively trying to offshore software development and everything related, and semiconductor fabrication.
This is all part of the great wealth transfer from the middle class to the wealthy. So now what do we do? We can't be like Germany and promote American manufacturing and fix the trade imbalance, because the ruling class says it's wrong to protect American jobs. We can't promote the hiring of American programmers, because we get called racist. We can't stop fabs from moving to China because we're told it's just the free market at work.
I can only surmise that it's different for everyone. Somebody may not have a job lined up yet right after graduating college (not uncommon I hear today, as some figures state 25% to 50% of recent college grads today are "employed enough", as in doing something other than MW to pay off loans, living expenses, and save enough for an emergency fund). A family member of a friend lived at home with his parents for 8 years despite having full time employment and being able to afford his own place. Say what you will of this arrangement, as by living together and being frugal, he saved roughly $400K of money this way. This $400K that's available straight up. It's not some retirement fund that he has to wait till he's 60, or be penalized and taxed by withdrawing early, or where he has to sell his house first for the funds. It's cold hard cash.
It's the same deal with marriage and kids. Not everyone gets married at 18 or 22, or 33, or some figure defined by the law. Not everyone has kids at the same time too. Not everyone buys a house by some set age either. I don't think moving out is that much different.
I wasn't referring to the scenarios you mentioned. There are valid reasons for living at home, most of them circumstances beyond one's control. I'm talking about people who refuse to move out because they "aren't ready" and they do have the means to move out. I should have specified a bit.
With girl's that has never been uncommon really. I also think that a lot more young people now than in past live in apartments at earlier age than before when often they lived at home. Rarely did a girl not live at home before marriage and recently since marriage age has risen; its changed. Many times as boomer the first move out was military service for young men and often that broke the bonds in returning.
Baby birds get pushed out of the nest, if they aren't ready to fly, they fall and die. Judging by how many birds I see flying around and how few I see lying dead around trees, I would say 99% of them fly just fine.
Point is, some people may "not be ready" to move out, but they really are they just don't want to do their own laundry or cook.
I wasn't referring to the scenarios you mentioned. There are valid reasons for living at home, most of them circumstances beyond one's control. I'm talking about people who refuse to move out because they "aren't ready" and they do have the means to move out. I should have specified a bit.
I would say that if it isn't an issue to the parents, we can't Monday morning quarterback what we would do. If the parents are contempt with the situation, that's all that matters.
Baby birds get pushed out of the nest, if they aren't ready to fly, they fall and die. Judging by how many birds I see flying around and how few I see lying dead around trees, I would say 99% of them fly just fine.
Point is, some people may "not be ready" to move out, but they really are they just don't want to do their own laundry or cook.
Your post will be true only when all jobs pay a living wage
I could have moved back in with my folks. My mom would have LOVED it, indeed she only made minor changes to my room for a good 6-7 years or so with the thought I might move back. But I couldn't stand to stay at home more than a few weeks, if nothing else, because of my own dignity. After I left for college at age 18 I never went back home to stay. The longest I stayed was 6 weeks.
Yes, the economy is not great and good jobs are hard to come by, but it's not the Great Depression out there. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in history in 2007. That's about as useless as useless majors get and I never had to move back home. The reason for that is that I would only have moved back as a worse-case scenario. It would have taken facing homelessness for me to go to my parents with my tail between my legs. Even though my parents would have been fully supportive, I would have felt disgraceful.
Instead of say "woe is me" when I couldn't find work I wanted, give up and move back home, I worked whatever crappy job I could find at the moment and expanded my search radius and applied for more full time jobs. Once I expanded my search nationally I found something in 4 months and had a number of options to choose from. I was applying to effing Alaska, Wyoming, anywhere.
There was a glorious period after WWII when college educated people could get a job easily wherever they wanted in pretty much whatever field they wanted. Those days are long gone. Today you have to go where the jobs are.
I could have moved back in with my folks. My mom would have LOVED it, indeed she only made minor changes to my room for a good 6-7 years or so with the thought I might move back. But I couldn't stand to stay at home more than a few weeks, if nothing else, because of my own dignity. After I left for college at age 18 I never went back home to stay. The longest I stayed was 6 weeks.
Yes, the economy is not great and good jobs are hard to come by, but it's not the Great Depression out there. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in history in 2007. That's about as useless as useless majors get and I never had to move back home. The reason for that is that I would only have moved back as a worse-case scenario. It would have taken facing homelessness for me to go to my parents with my tail between my legs. Even though my parents would have been fully supportive, I would have felt disgraceful.
Instead of say "woe is me" when I couldn't find work I wanted, give up and move back home, I worked whatever crappy job I could find at the moment and expanded my search radius and applied for more full time jobs. Once I expanded my search nationally I found something in 4 months and had a number of options to choose from. I was applying to effing Alaska, Wyoming, anywhere.
There was a glorious period after WWII when college educated people could get a job easily wherever they wanted in pretty much whatever field they wanted. Those days are long gone. Today you have to go where the jobs are.
Can you say for certainty that all of those who've moved back home with their parents haven't also showed the same due diligence in a nationwide job search, but instead returned with either nothing or something that wouldn't be worth it? It's great you made it work, but you're only 1 case out of a million. Never mind finding the work you wanted, where you wanted, even relocating is far from a guaranteed thing nowadays.
Most of the time, "boomerang kids" are not because of a lack of desire or motivation to get out on their own - it's a financial inability to do so. Some run themselves up to their eyeballs in various types of debt, but many just don't have the income even if they are debt-free.
I was making about $45k living in Iowa, living on my own, and then moved back home to TN to be closer to family, and hopefully relocate to a bigger city that was closer to home. My income was soon cut in half in TN, and I was under $23k a year with no benefits at one point. I had bronchitis last year and one round of antibiotics, an inhaler refill, and an office visit cost over $600 out of pocket uninsured on a $12/hr salary. I had the same bronchitis this year, but was insured, and cost $49 total on a $24/hr salary. Rather mundane things like this can easily send a low wage worker back home to their parents.
Surviving on anything less than $15/hr, even if you live alone in a relatively low cost area, is going to be difficult.
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