I'm 30 and live with my girlfriends parents. Why?
They have 20 acres of woods and famland, a massive house with tons of empty space, no rent, huge reduction in food costs, privacy, our own accessory apartment with wood burning stove, zero heat bill, zero electricity bill, gardens, patio, walking trails, 1 mile from work (I spend about $5 to $10 in gas per week because I bike everywhere), etc. I eat good fresh home cooking every night and have saved over $25,000 in the last year.
The house would otherwise be just her parents -- the rest of the kids are either in college or already graduated. They're lonely and my girl and I bring some energy to the house and can help deal with the farm work on weekends. My girlfriend is a teacher with a masters degree and I'm a newspaper reporter about 6 months from getting my masters. We both make enough money to buy a really nice house of our own but we felt that spending time with her folks as they enter their golden years while saving buckets of money made a lot of sense. It's a situation that we wanted to take advantage of because her parents have the land and space to accomdate us without it being like we're living in a damp basement.
I've been toItaly three times in the last year,France twice in the past two years, we're going to Japan later this year and next year we're planning on going to Australia, Korea, China or maybe back to Italy again. Meanwhile, we're saving money hand over fist. By the time we move out we'll be able to buy the house we want in cash, all up front. We plan on buying some land nearby and building our own house and incorporating a large solar array and wind turbine into the construction cost.
Living with family makes a lot of sense economically and environmetnally. Maybe if your parents live in some tiny condo in some benign and unpleasant place like Tampa or Detriot, it might suck to live here. But not where I'm at. And, as I said, we have an accessory apartment so it's like we have our own place. We can have wild sex as loud as we want and have complete and utter privacy. In fact, we have a lot more privacy where we are than anyone living in an apartment building or some cramped suburban community where people can peer into your back yard through their bathroom window while they're taking a dump. I can sunbathe nude and sometimes we play badmitten naked in the field without concern. Good luck doing that in a condo complex, apartment building or anywhere that isn't surrouned by 20 acres of agriculture and forest. And no, it's not the middle of nowhere -- Southern RI is densely populated and I'm about 20 minutes from Providence, 1.5 hours from boston and 2.5 hours to NYC. I can walk to the market and bike to the beach.