Honestly I really appreciate having a throwaway account to ask these sort of personal questions to other comrades in a well-meaning community.
Here’s my living situation, regardless of current disability (still not gone btw if anything it’s morphed now lol)
I’m 31 and live “at home” in that the house is technically my parents’. However, they themselves work and live abroad, so it’s just me and my 2 brothers living there for most of the year. Parents come back once in a while to see family and hang out.
When people ask I try to remember and say my brothers and I are housemates, basically. I feel the word housemate/roommate has a more ‘serious’ tone, like more grown up lol than saying “I live with my brothers”.
– Before proceeding, what are your thoughts on this so far? –
I ask because now at 30 I feel that I’m “stuck” there, still living with my parents, even though they only come back a few times a year. I feel like I should outgrow this at my age, do everything like an adult, so I’m wondering what the good people of lemmygrad think when they hear about this living situation. Is it off-putting, is it smart, or do you just not care?
I feel like I’m still living in my childhood home, in my childhood town, with my parents, even though as a kid I only lived in that house for like 3 years before we moved away for work lol. I came back in 2012 and have been living here non-stop since then, I have never rented my own place or tried moving out. I think some part of me is scared of doing it, but that’s another topic lol.
I guess it’s a source of shame in some aspects to still be in that living situation at my age. It feels like people my age are having their own families, have been living alone and working since their 20s, and I’m here not ready to take the plunge at 31.
Despite this I remind myself that I’m otherwise completely independent, aside from the rent situation. Well, I don’t pay all the bills but people don’t need to know that lol, and it wouldn’t be a huge dent to split the internet bill three-way. But I pay my personal bills (groceries, phone, health insurance etc). I also get access to the car they leave here but I fill the gas. I guess that’s another source of shame, when I drive and friends ask about the car and they learn it’s my parents car lol. I’m not sure they even care, but I feel like I’m not performing up to expectations, you know? Like I’m seen as a kid, or someone who refuses to grow up and take responsibilities.
I agree with everyone else. There is no shame to live with your parents at your age. Especially if you have a disability. Many people nowadays in our age bracket and outside of it can’t afford to rent a place, anyway, with a job or two. So, why not take advantage of that as long as your parents are okay with it? I would definitely take this time to be involved with an organization or club, or anything that can definitely help you in some way.
Living with family in your 30s is nothing to be ashamed of. The world out there is fucked. If there is no pressure on you to move don’t even bother trying to move out. Getting your own place gets framed as freedom but really it is just signing up to be a wage slave for the landlords.
Save as much as you can because your parents house will not always be there and it would be smart to have a parachute for that day.
If you want to avoid a negative stigma you can say you are looking after your parents house while they are out of the country. It sounds like you are doing them a favor. The only people who would look down on you for taking advantage of a good situation are jealous and petty and their opinion doesn’t matter.
That’s a great way to put it lol I’ll have to remember that one, about looking after the house.
Don’t worry about it. It’s only weird in atomized western cultures, it’s normal for generations of families to live together. An author I like, Xiran Jay Zhao, talked in a video about how yeah of course they live with their parents even though they’re in their ¿late 20s/early 30s?, it’s not weird in their culture, it let’s them focus on their writing career, they love their parents and enjoy being around them. I’ve got a friend in his mid-30s who says “hell yeah of course I live with my parents, I love my mom and dad and like getting to see them, my girlfriend and I get to have our own personal space so we’re not up in each other’s business all the time, I help my parents out, it’s cheaper than renting on my own or dealing with roommates I don’t know or trust to be covid-safe”.
If it works for you, own it and be glad that this is working for you, because plenty of people could benefit from getting to live with their parents but we can’t for various reasons.
This is a young person hangup
I am older than you and make good money. My mom is in a different country. Now I am increasingly aware of how little time we have left and I would live with her if I could.
Family is everything
If you’re living with a disability, I wouldn’t feel bad about it. Remember these good times as we don’t know what the future holds. perhaps you just need to push yourself in other ways, as you seem to want to feel a sense of accomplishment.
If you and your brothers get along well and you don’t have any other compelling reason to move, I wouldn’t worry about it. Capitalists, particularly landlords, want you to feel ashamed of not having your own apartment. If you do eventually decide that you want to move, saving the income that would’ve otherwise been spent on rent over many years could help you buy a house or apartment rather than having to rent
I don’t think it’s an issue. It might help to “move”: to fully strip your bedroom and then intentionally refurnish it. Lots of people live with siblings as housemates. I think it makes it better to have a space you’ve intentionally chosen as an adult, instead of “your childhood bedroom”, if that makes sense.
I think it would to have a sense of forward momentum - education or employment-wise or whatever. As someone who briefly lived in a similar situation, it’s easy to get a sense of stasis, as if this will go on forever. I think it’s a good idea to think of potential futures: what happens when this living situation ends? What would you do if you met someone and wanted to think towards marriage?
I know the health issues complicate things, so I don’t know how helpful that is. Best of luck with everything!
I don’t see a problem with it unless it’s impeding on how you want to live your life
Not knowing you well, I can’t really comment, because there are so many, many facets I’d need to consider.
You might consider working with a therapist to think through your options and concerns. Considering the permanent cost of living increase moving out would create, it might be a cost saver in the long run, on top of the clarity it may bring.
I’m in a similar kind of situation, early thirties, still living with parents. Without going into a bunch of personal detail, I will say for various reasons it has been difficult over the years to have done differently. Given the forum we’re on, I feel compelled to point out the larger context of a thing like this. I live in the US, for example, and given how many people are struggling, how bad rent is, how much of “people don’t want to work”, yet “we won’t give them jobs to work at, much less ones that pay a fair wage, so maybe we’re a little full of shit”… in that context, it shouldn’t be surprising that someone like me is a thing. I could view it as a source of shame and have plenty of times over the years, but is that being fair to me?
If I were actively refusing to take responsibility for things, refusing to contribute anything where I can, or generally being a combative problem for those I live with, at that point, I’d say yeah, go ahead and judge. But I’m not like that and you probably aren’t either, and I don’t know which country you live in, but if it’s anything like the US, it is a shameful system. I still remember all the stuff about evictions that was going on during the height of covid. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the stories I’ve read about homeless encampments being bulldozed. The capitalist treatment is brutal and the people who do “succeed” in the stereotypical sense of stable job and family are often struggling even within their “success”, whether because of finances or relationships issues or health problems.
So there is how people perceive you, or potentially perceive you, and then there is who you actually are, in context. And sometimes the people who are judging you are not in any position to judge in the first place. There are liberals and conservatives alike who would no doubt judge me for my political views, but I have strong conviction about them and so they can shove it. I don’t have “conviction” about my housing and finances situation and would rather it be different, so it’s easy to feel insecure about it, but that’s the difference, is how vulnerable I feel and how inclined I am already to be down on myself about it, not that others are suddenly more qualified to judge me about it compared to my political views.
