There’s no shame in living with your parents. Somehow, the average ‘Americanized’ person believes there’s more shame in living with cooperation than with competition. It somehow seems more responsible to move out, rent a smaller home in an impoverished area, rack up debt and cop a huge penalty to your ability to get ahead. This is opposed to staying in a larger house in a welcome environment, save money up and get ahead by investing your savings.
The Americanized world sees shame in people still living with your parents. The idea of adult children living at home conjures up images of basement dwellers and socially awkward man-babies. This isn’t true. Living with your parent’s means having a support network, accountability partners and keeping a strong family connection. It is a point of pride in other cultures, particularly in traditionalist European ones. Love it or hate it, Dynasties all started with children living at home. From the Rothschilds to the Rockefellers.
What I did
I lived at home with my parents until I was 25. I would be nowhere without them and for that, I am very grateful. Living with them allowed me to save, devote a huge chunk of my time to working, advance myself on a developmental level and purchase multiple properties for my own portfolio which served as the fundamental platform to garnering an above average level of wealth for my family.
Once you set out on creating your dynasty, you need to build your human capital and the culture it encompasses to allow for the cohabitation of adults. An atmosphere of monumental, mutual respect, starting from when our children are young. This comes both from following philosophical parenting style. Remember this; when it comes to building a dynasty, you cannot go back a generation..more on that another time
Pulling Your Weight
As an adult living with your parents, you don’t have to be the child. You should be working, and saving towards a particular goal. You should also be pulling your weight, do the dishes, cook you mother a meal a few times a week, and wash your own clothes. Help out in any way you can, because this is your home, and if you were living on your own, you’d be doing all this and probably more anyway. This dilution of the chores makes your life easier in the immediate term, while helpign you prepare for managing or participating in your own household. It also lifts the burden form your own parents, freeing up their time to get on with life.
You should also be contributing financially. Paying a fixed amount each week or month as though it were rent will go a long way. If your parents won’t accept any form of compensation, then you can put this into a separate account and use it as Genesis money for a family fund in the future(if that’s one of your goals). Or give your parents a trip away or offer it to them later to help them reduce their mortgage, if they still have one. Get creative.
If you’re the parent in this situation trying to build generational wealth, you may choose to apply an aspect of The Collective Method here. You can take the rent you are paid from your children and put it into the family bank, or pool it in with some of your own to use as a means to set up your first (or next) family asset.
Getting Ahead
It’s a hard world. While our connectivity is higher than ever, there is a greater sense of isolation and it’s harder for the average person to get ahead – especially the blue collared among us. Living with your parents for as long as possible can be a great way to level this difficulty curve for all parties involved.
One of the huge benefits is sharing chores. Just as when you were a kid, you should be doing chores around the house. These tasks don’t suddenly go away. If you weren’t chipping in when you were younger, it’s never too late to start. This isn’t to say you’ll be doing all of the work. Your mother or father may prefer cooking, or you can take turns with them, yourself and other siblings. By spreading the load, you’ll actually have a lot more free time.
This free time shouldn’t be squandered. Utilize this time to study/get a degree, personally develop, learn about investing, start an emergency fund, further your career or even to start a business. If you’re working a job, then you can try to get some overtime and crunch the hours. The work you put in now will accumulate wealth which in turn compounds over the rest of your lifespan(especially if you value growth over income) – and that of your children, if you’re building dynastic wealth.
The Math
On an average individual income, you could be able to save upwards of 10k/year by living with your parents. Say the average single apartment in your area costs $1000 a month to rent. You can discuss with your parents and work out something fair. You may decide on more or less, but let’s keep this figure the same $1000/month board. This will hopefully cover utilities and subsidize food as well. Your parents will be grateful for the added income and you’ll be grateful for the place to live, and the saved money.
Remember that there’s a lot more to pay on top of rent. Let’s make some assumptions. I’m guessing in the middle for the sake of being conservative.
- Rent: $1000
- Utilities: $175
- Food: $250
Total Sum: $1425
Savings/Month: $1425(would be spending)-$1000(living with your parents) = $425
$425 is a significant difference to most young adults, especially as this is compounding.
A Little Further
Take that $425 and multiply it out over a year: $5100 total saved. this is before compounding interest and before utilizing your extra time. so let’s go one step further. You’re now only parting with $12,000/year in living expenses and that money is staying in family hands.
Next, say you earn a modest annual income of $25,000. After tax let’s assume you keep $21,000. So if you’re saving $5,100 out of this, that’s a total of 24% of your income from living with your parents.
Next step, let’s say with the alleviated time, you’re able to work 20% more(I did 120% for reference, yep 90 hours a week!). This means you’ll earn around $25,000(rounded for a bit extra tax). that’s an extra $4000 bringing the benefit up to $9000. We’re not done yet.
If you’re going hard with the frugality, and you’re only personally spending another $500/month(you can probably do better!) combined with ‘board’ you’ll be spending a total of $18,000. This means you can save $7000 a year. If you shave that down to $200 personal spending month, you could save $10,600 a year!
Now let’s add interest in at 7% compounded. The $7,000 becomes $7,267 and the $10,600 becomes $11,006. This isn’t even the hard limit. Imagine if you had a higher income from career progression, or started a business.
The Extreme Example
A lot of the time parents appreciate you trying to get ahead and will try helping you in any way they can. So let’s make an extreme case. You work 50% more, only spend $200 personally a month and your parents are generous and let you off with $800 a month for board.
With 50% extra work your original $21,000 after-tax income swells to $31,000. You only spend $800*12=$9,600/year on board and $20*12=$2,400 on personal spending. This leaves you with a total of $12,000 in spending. This means you could save $19,000/year. Invested, this becomes $19,731…nearly $20,000!
Starting at age 21, if you were to do this over the course of 5 years up to the age of 26 all things staying the same, you’ll wind up with approximately $114,000. Wowza. This isn’t even accounting for career progression(like with a trade or climbing the corporate ladder) or side-hustling(rental properties, freelancing, starting a business etc).
How on earth is this shameful? It’s totally lost on me, and probably now on you too. Most 26-year-olds are tens of thousands of dollars in debt. You could buy a house or 4 with that kind of money.
Each month you’ll be a little closer to something like this. Or more humble, depending on your situation.
The Opposite Sex
This can be a big one for people. Now, I’m a Man the patriarch of my dynasty, so I’ll tell this from a guys perspective. A (2019 update: former)friend of mine is still living with his mother, sometimes it comes up when we’re having a man-talk and he does express concern with how this impacts his sex life(or lack thereof). I can understand his concerns. If you’re bringing home stray women, you can’t really bring them home to mom’s house. He feels shame and this puts a dent in his gender-related confidence.
The Right Kind of Partner
Here’s the thing: he’s not looking at this problem in the right way. He isn’t really the type to bring loose women home. He hopes to have a girlfriend of his own, and potentially start a family. Admirable. The kinds of women who you would want this kind of relationship with are not ‘loose women’. The type to have a deep connection with are the type that understands frugality, delaying gratification, and the love of family. These are the kinds of women who would admire you for staying at home with Mom. It’s a big house, and his mom isn’t a big lady. She loves her son, and he loves his mom. This is a highly attractive trait in a man. Hang in there man, there is no shame in living with your mother.
Premature Independence
From the above angle, it’s strange but not surprising that a lot of women find men living at home a turn off(even if they aren’t man-babies). But equally, she will complain about a man who is stressed and works constantly, and she never gets to see.
In turn, the man will resent her for every dollar he spends on her as it comes out of his modest living expenses. If she truly liked the man, why would it matter where he lived, and more so, would she want him to be struggling? If it does work out, 20 years down the line he will have significantly less.
This puts a strain on a romantic relationship. She will see her friends and colleagues with guys who hustled and stayed with their parents doing so much better later in life. She’ll look at her man, and resentment will also grow for him not doing the same, even though it was because she demanded her man be prematurely ‘independent’.
Becoming a Provider
As a male, at some point, you need to prove your capability as a provider. It would be a rare instance where living at home permanently would be favorable. This is especially true if you’re the first in your lineage to have the sort of mentality we have here at the Dynastus HQ.
Living with your parents as long as is realistically feasible will enhance your ability to provide for this future family, as the math above illustrates. It’s all about delayed gratification
Arguments Against The Stigma
Frequently I was labeled a mama’s boy. I made up for this with confidence and patience. These people labeling me, now approaching their 50’s, still live hand to mouth, are still paying a mortgage and have next to nothing in investments. all the while my wife and I live comfortably in our mortgage-free home. We may get a mortgage again when we upgrade homes(, but the mortgage will still be much, much smaller than these folks have.
Often times, we conjure up images of basement dwellers. This to me is kind of like bad news. It’s more interesting than the boring, prosperous reality. Not to say that there aren’t a bunch of children in adult bodies living at home. This sort of behavior is shameful and gives those aiming to get ahead a bad name.
*tips fedora* “M’Lady.”
Weakness?
A lot of people see living at home as a point of weakness. People assume you can’t make it on your own, and that why you stay at home. This is definitely a cultural trait handed down from parent to child. Perhaps as their parent’s wanted them out of the house as soon as possible, they too believe the same should be pressed on the next generation.
If they stopped for one second to realize living with your parents is the capable thing to do, they’d see it’s advantageous – for a time(more on that later).
Advantages of moving out.
I try my best to be non-biased. So I’ll offer a counter-argument. Staying with family creates a sense of dependence. Somebody ‘has your back’, and this can leave people lacking certain characteristics. The act of ‘flatting'(living with friends or complete strangers) builds character and strengthens friendship bonds.
Living with People Your Age
The mish-mash of ungrounded youngsters, imprinting a learned culture on one another might delay personal development. After all, you tend to be a cross-section of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Mature, responsible parents give a sense of ‘groundedness’, as long as they respect you as an adult and learn boundaries. You’re still an adult and need to be treated as one, even if you are always going to be their child.
Habits
Either lifestyle can also lead to bad habits forming, binge drinking for example. This is actually a serious problem in my country. Habits like these are later considered to be bad character attributes. a 20-something that can chug a beer bong is ‘cool'(it’s not), but a 40-year-old drunk dad is a sad sight. A 25-year-old ‘stoner’ is considerably sadder than a 21-year-old who gets high occasionally.
The same can be said about habits for living with our parents. Shrugging off a messy room of a teenager is ‘one of those things’ but when you have a pig-sty of a room at 25, its a real sign of bad character. I was kind of bad at this for a good long while. Now I like a bit of order and am gradually becoming more and more of a minimalist. My wife helps too…of course ;).
Privacy
Parent’s can be nosey, we all can. Often times youngsters feel the urge to move out for the feeling of privacy and independence. Don’t let this be your key driver. Discussing these issues with your parents will often time lead to a resolution. A lot of the time parents are just concerned with what their children are doing.
He’ll deny it, but my father thought I was a drug dealer after seeing my bank balance over my shoulder. I was smoking weed, to be fair, but not selling it(though I did sell paraphernalia at one point). Perhaps he had a misconception of the price of this humble drug. That aside I had saved enough though investing to put a deposit on a place of my own. With my parent’s encouragement, I did just that. It was my dad’s minor nosey-ness that pushed me to do this in the end. They still respected my personal boundaries, after some hard and awkward talks about drug use haha.
A Foundation for the Next Generation
If you’re a parent or planning to become one, you can do this for your children too. Provided you’ve raised them right, they will still be perfectly functional human beings. Living with your parents does not hinder adult development. Naturally, Planning in advance will help for this kind of lifestyle and raising your kids with the mentality that this is an ok thing to do while respecting their own boundaries.
If you aren’t building family dynastic wealth, having your kids at home will give them a kick start and help build your personal coffers with them contributing. Also, as a quick side note, I recommend reading Family Fortunes by Bill and Will Bonner(Review | Affiliate Link). A good read for those seeking to build dynastic wealth.
If you are building an intergenerational fund, then your children’s contributions can be put into the family money pool. They could later borrow from this pool to purchase their own homes, or the family could purchase a home or build additions onto existing property for the child to live in. This is part of a concept known as The Collective, and it is a way for everyday people to build generational wealth. I highly suggest you check out my article on that, and the other two methods here.
Forever?
If you have an average house or small property, I’m not sure this arrangement will work forever. As a family grows, a house will become crowded and small. Even if your appointed Emotional Officer is good at resolving conflicts there will always be rising tensions in an overcrowded house.
You could have a large home, but again, in time this will become crowded. If parents have 3 children, then each of those children has spouses and 3 children, you’re looking at a total of 17 people. In the average suburban home, that’s just not happening. The accumulation of wealth would be great, but at some point enough is enough.
There is a way around this, and that’s with Dynastic Land.
Dynastic Land
2019 update: I have since found the concept of “The Family Sanctuary” to be more attainable and more accurate for the majority of legacy families. You can read about it here.)
If you’re planning on building a dynasty to last for multiple generations, and avoid the old proverb “clogs to clogs”, property or land is going to come into the picture at some point. Acquiring it will typically require substantial accumulation.
If your children are of the same mind, then all of you working towards and saving for this unanimous goal will make it a lot easier. There are some places where land can be acquired cheaply(not in my country). If you want to make these isolated locations your home, by all means, do. Really think this lifestyle through though, it’s easy to romanticize.
Land is one of the only things ‘they’re not making more of’ and should be a part of any family portfolio. Better still, is if you can purchase functional land which you can further develop. Your ultimate goal will influence where this land should lie. For most people, on the outskirts of your preferred town or city would be ideal.
I wrote a full article going into the intricacies of Dynastic land you can read here. You can alternatively read the updated article on The Family Sanctuary.
The classic Family Farm, an heirloom and culture, rarely seen in the modern day.
The Family’s Bottom Line
This land can serve many purposes. First of all, it can be your primary residence. You can build a home for yourself on it in which you can be living with your parents. But more than this, it should have space enough for other homes, which can serve as sources of income for, or residences for other family members, descendants, siblings or otherwise.
On top of this, if you’re so inclined, you could work the land in various ways. You could plant timber trees, orchards, run livestock, grow crops and more. Certain trees will have your children or grandchildren reaping the true benefit from. Walnuts and Olives are examples of such trees.
This land can also serve your family in providing a food, in the form of a large garden, or with livestock. You could also have a food forest, which is a system in which permacultural principles are applied to automate food production. This forest, with minimal maintenance, could provide an endless bounty for generations to come. A real asset to anybody who needs to eat.
Other Side of The Coin
I hear it a lot. The old “inheritance anticipation”. People that can’t wait for your parents to die, just so you can get a little money. What a way to be. Meanwhile, your parents are cooped up in a small room in a rest home, waiting for you to visit.
All too often people put their parents in assisted living facilities. These facilities, with the ‘best of intentions’, actually erode the wealth of older parents. The complete care package and boring lifestyle a lot(not all!) of these facilities seem to encourage actually cause their bodies and minds to shut down. This can lead to mental illness issues or physical deterioration. and send them to an early grave.
Prior to the modern era of retirement homes and pensions, peoples retirement plan was ‘having children that love you’.
Full Circle
Living with your parents can go full circle as well. Having your elderly parents live with you is a great way to preserve family wealth, and get a helping hand in your own home. They can, in turn, rent their(hopefully) mortgage-free house, which brings in even more revenue. If your siblings are spread out across the country or globe, your parents can use this as a way to travel and share the helping hand around. Again, them contributing financially, at least in part will help everybody out immensely.
This is a healthy way for children to give back to their parents and vice verse. This certainly beats having wealth eroded by rest homes and living lonely lives in isolated little rooms. Instead, elderly parents can help take care of the home duties, raise children(or grandchildren!) while staying active and mentally healthy by participating in family activities. This can also be a good chance to build a family culture and transfer stories, history and knowledge.
If they’re renting their old home out for income, or sell it and reinvest into other assets, then living with your parents works out better financially for everybody.
Specialized care
I can still understand perfectly if your elderly parents need specialized care. It makes sense to give them the best quality of life possible. Just don’t forget about them and see them every chance you get. If you can get away with having a nurse come around regularly prior to going full-time care, then by all means, do. There is nothing sadder than an industry set up to erode the hard earned wealth of those at the end of their lives. Nothing worse than the elderly surrounded by relative strangers and waiting to die, rather than spending their final years with loved ones, sharing their stories and wisdom.
Conclusions
Get Family Fortunes on Amazon (clickable)
Family Fortunes By Bill & Will Bonner
I owe a large part of my success to my parents and appreciate all they have done for me. Without being able to stay at home, which allowed me to work so much and hard, I would never have achieved what I have thus far.
If you are planning to be living with your parents you need to make sure you approach it in the right way. It isn’t an excuse to delay growing up. You should be pulling your own weight and working towards a greater goal. Discuss your objective and reasoning with your parents and help them out in any way you can. Practice gratitude and use the extra time to work as hard as you can.
The efforts you put in while you’re living with your parents will build a solid foundation in which you can construct the rest of your life on.
If you’re planning on building a full lifestyle out of intergenerational living, it pays to have the room to grow, the suburban home isn’t going to last very long or create a good environment as your family grows. Instead, Dynastic Land having a Family Sanctuary is the approach is the recommended method for multi-generational living on a longer-term basis.
Any thoughts? Opposing views? Are you living with your parents? Let me know in the comments below or follow me on twitter. I’d love to discuss any of the above with you.
