Raising your kid to be a wuss

Read an article in the latest Newsweek about the millions of 20-30 yr olds who are allowing their parents to support them. Many of these so called adults are actually moving back home.


If my daughters try this, I'll jump off a bridge(but only during high water).

Its a very strange phenomenon that I have noticed for a while now. I am 32 and have seen my younger sibs and their friends routinely move back into the family home whenever their money runs tight and they need some free rent to help them build a savings again so they can go out on their own (until they lose a job and move home again, often). It seems that many parents are more than happy to let them back in because they have not developed independent interests and like the activity that the kids (now adults!) bring into the house. Plus, some of these kid-adults are just plain spoiled. I asked one sister why her friend moved back home after leaving town for a master's degree and landing a teaching job in her hometown. Her reply "have you seen their house...its HUGE". She is right, her father is a millionaire and I guess the daughter would rather live off him than slum it in her own apartment...and the parents oblige her.


Still Ed, I wouldn't be jumping off that bridge if I were you. I'd be hanging a kid over it by the ankles and screaming "what did you ask me?!?"


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KJS

i read the article too. it was interesting.


i am 23 and have lived on and off with my parents ever since i left adn went to college. i never finished because of $$ and haven't always lived in the same place and had the same job, and sometimes i needed the free rent. i don't mind the free rent. i don't mind helping out around the house, or having mom tell me to get a haircut all the time. i can even handle the 1-hour drive to do anything social (my parents live in the burbs, all my friends live in the city). but id rather live on my own. i was just laid off last month (worked at same company my dad was CEO at) along with my dad and pretty much everybody but the Pres., Sr. Acct. (my old boss), and some techs. they are refusing to pay my last paycheck (or anybody else's) and my 2wk severance that i am entitled to according to the contract i signed. but i am broke, and the Pres. (depsite being an asshole right now) is a good friend of my family's (and it is a very sensitive issue right now) and i don't think that legal recourse is the option yet.


anyway, im broke, and i needed a place to stay and eat for a while as im looking for a new job/trying to get back into action. i don't think that it is always bad for people to live with their parents again. i think of it as cheap rent with roommates that i know well. (mom is a good cook too!)


i don't feel ashamed to live with my parents. id rather have my own place closer to my social life, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

baggins,


One thing that made it different when I was young (saying this is a sure indication I am now well into middle age) was that we generally were willing and able to live very cheap and not spend much on stuff and going out. All of my friends were like that and it seemed natural to have flea market furniture and all your possessions fit in your car or closet. No one thought to wear designer clothes, buy real furniture or pay any more than the minimum for a car, apartment and so on. When we went out slumming was SOP. It was a way of life.


Housing was cheap. Shortly after college (around 1978) I shared a two-bedroom apartment with an old teammate. It was located near the waterfront in Newport, Rhode Island and within walking distance of restaurants, clubs, sailing, docks with fancy yachts, fine mansions from the gilded age, the America’s Cup waterfront area, and historic downtown Newport (I later had an apartment across the street from a house built in 1710!). My half of the rent was $60 a month. Activities and work were so close I barely put 3000 miles a year on a car.


The apartment had only one sink. You washed your dishes and shaved in it. The shower was made of sheet metal. The guy downstairs wouldn’t buy heating oil and turned on the stove when he wanted it warm in case he brought back a “chick” from the club he worked. The place was about 100 years old and a firetrap. You had to get in via a staircase facing back that looked like an old spooky covered bridge (a few years later after I moved out the lower steps crumbled from rot and the tenant had a ladder stored in the enclosure – he would lower it when he wanted to get out).


When my friend and I found it the kitchen was lit by a bare light bulb and the only thing other than the bare walls was a standalone stove, a corner cupboard and a lone book shelve to store cans and food. We put a $2 shade upside down over the light. We made a counter by nailing an old door to the wall and covering it with some left over floor covering. I remember paying $10 for a used mattress instead of $20 for a nicer one. Their was no closet in my original bedroom, just a shelve with a rod for hangers underneath. (I eventually got the other bedroom and it had a small view of the harbor - nice).


But it was in a safe neighborhood and you could go for a walk at midnight and see people on the streets and have places to go. There was a diner down the corner that has 25 cent grilled cheese sandwiches, 45-cent tuna, 70 cent two egg and toast breakfast (85 cents if you wanted home fries) and breakfast included coffee. A turkey diner was about $1.75 and if you left $2 your were a relatively big tipper. I used to love that place and treated myself to a breakfast a week and perhaps one lunch.


I bought a bunch of tins and made these giant slop casseroles. One portion I would eat that night. Another I would save in the fridge (naturally a flea market special – maybe we spent $45.) Then I would store two tins of tuna or hamburg casserole slop in the freezer for later use. I had a variety of frozen tins on hand at all times. My food budget was about $12 per week.


Even adjusted for inflation you can’t live like that anymore. In Los Angeles you would be in a bad neighborhood or way out in the burbs. In Newport that apartment has been remodeled and the neighborhood “gentrified” and probably rents for $1500 a month.


So I guess if I were 23 now I’d love to live at home and enjoy having more than four shirts.


Regards,


Rick

when you gotta go there...


they gotta take you...


i have been there...depends on overall motivation..gl

I understand that everyone goes through hard times, but, how does moving home help? Unless a tragedy has happened. You lose your job, get another one. I guess I feel that rather then move back home and get comfortable with the surroundings why not work harder to make things work? Moving back home, I feel, can trap you into staying longer then you should.

Ed,


There is a lot I forgot and I worry about my memory these days. But certain things stick out. The places I lived are among them, especially that place.


The bareness of that kitchen when we first moved in no one could forget, along with the one sink, sheet metal shower, and creepy staircase. The place had a goofy character. I remember the price because even then it was about the cheapest place near the center of town. After a year my roommate moved out to get married so I got the nicer, bigger front bedroom (we flipped a coin when we first moved in - I lost). A few months after my roommate left my brother and a friend moved in for the summer (summer rentals in Newport are expensive) and they paid me $50 per month each so my remaining rent was $20. It was a good deal for them and a good deal for me.


I remember the super cheap diner, called Utility Lunch, which was next door to a slightly nicer diner called the Handy Lunch. The Handy is still there but has been expanded and remodeled. A cheeseburger cost me $4 when I was there last summer (I thought this was very high). Ted Turner and Dennis Conner preferred the Handy during the America’s Cup races in the late seventies and early eighties. But I liked the extra funky atmosphere of the Utility. The owner/cook was an old geezer who would cook right at the corner of the “L” shaped counter with a cigar stuffed in a corner of his mouth. There was a giant poster on the wall with Andy Capp holding his wife with a leash (she was on her knees) with the quip “If your wife doesn’t cook, keep her as a pet and eat at the Utility Lunch”. I don’t think that would last in today’s politically correct times. I remember the prices because even then it seemed impossible for a tuna sandwich to be that cheap, and I felt like a big spender when I bought the 85 cent breakfast and left a 15 cent tip (since the owner usually slopped the food over the counter most didn’t tip).


But there will come a time when memories fade. I hope it won’t be soon.


Regards,


Rick

I'm in my 20's and still live at home, though as a med student with minimal income it's a chance for me to save on loans. Honestly, I don't see what's so bad about it, as long as you aren't mooching of off your family. COuld it be that some people actually prefer living with their family (gasp! horror!) Also, keep in mind that among many immigrants to the US, it is not altogether abnormal that people live with their extended family their whole lives. The just put an extension on the house every time a member gets married and starts their own family.

18 and off to college and I was out of the house. I haven't been back. Sure it'll cost you more to live on your own during university. But maybe you'd better give that some thought before embarking on your History of Irish Poetry degree, and consider taking something that will give you a marketable skill.


I also think I was better off learning how to budget and cook for myself and take care of myself in University where if it was too much, I could blow off a class or two, rather than waiting until I got into the working world, where if it became too much, I couldn't exactly blow off a few days of work.


Parents who coddle their kids will not be pleased with the results. Kids who know that their parents will take them back don't save money and don't prepare for the worst.


I like parents who take their kids back. They are preventing those kids from becoming a danger to me in the business world by ensuring that those kids will never get the motivation to go out there and get ahead.