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financial independence

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yelley:
the deal with my parents was always that school is my full time job and i have no time for anything else. so for my undergraduate they are paying off all of my loans and during school they gave me money for whatever i needed. i lived on campus for all four years, partially because it was cheaper but mostly because i had no close female friends that i actually wanted to put forth effort to live with. they have a lot of loans left to pay off from me... since ND was around 27K a year when i started and closer to 36K a year when i finished. i have a sister that is 20, she is a senior at purdue this fall, and she just could not stand to live on campus any longer... she got an apartment last year with a roommate that ended up being a bitch and this year she is renting a house. she has to keep a job while at school to pay for the rent and bills and our parents are not happy about this... especially since her grades are dropping and she rarely has enough money to cover everything for the month and someone has to wire her money every now and then. usually it is my parents, but on numerous occasions i have had to send her money too. i think she's up to around $1200 that she owes me, but i doubt i'll ever collect on that. i find it terribly annoying that she needs all this extra money all the time, just because the dorm scene was cramping her party style... and now i am off on a tangent.

after college i lived with my parents for a few months while working and saving for japan. as soon as i left for japan i was totally on my own and supported myself for the year i was there. when i got back i lived with my parents again until i found a job and moved into an apartment with jason. i was pretty stable there until i got fired (yes, i am a racesist, thank you) and then that summer my parents did help me out a bit with rent when my savings started to run out. now i am 24, i moved to california, i have a pretty decent job and money to pay my rent and bills and things, and i am financially independent unless you count that part where my parents are still paying off my student loans. but i know that if things go horribly wrong and i find myself jobless and unable to afford a place to live that i would still be welcome at my parents' house. i would feel really bad about needing their help like that again... but i'm not too proud to accept it or anything.

i think it's fine for parents to support their children through college and to help them out a bit when they get their first jobs and first places on their own. the important part is that the child (well, technically an adult) is genuinely trying to become self-sufficient through education or work. i know a fair few people my age or older that still live rent free at their parents' house and aren't really trying to finish college/get a better job/move out... that irks me a bit because i feel bad for their parents.

parm:
So yeah, this thread makes me feel old.

When I went to University, it was in the UK under the old grants/LEA system where your tuition costs were covered and students from "disadvantaged" families were given maintenance grants to help with their living expenses. The expectation was that parents from better off families would help out paying living expenses. The expectation was also, however, that students would live in borderline poverty, eat a shitload of pot noodles, drink 90p-a-pint beer and emerge into a moderately well paid job at the other end just in time to stave off malnutrition and buy some clothes without holes in, as opposed to the lap of designer-clothes-expensive-bars-and-iPods luxury that they seem to live in now, at least in the UK.

Anyway, the deal was that my parents would cover my rent and a moderate living allowance for food and general subsistence, and anything else was down to me - either I got a loan, or I got a job. My general approach was to take a job during the holidays, either back home with my parents or wihlst living in hilariously cheap (£12.50 a week was the cheapest) student houses and just save the money for spending during term time. Between my third and fourth years, I did voluntary work for the summer and ended up taking out a loan to cover that; I didn't return to my parents house beyond the first year, other than for visits at Christmas, etc. Once I graduated and had a steady job (the two basically happened simultaneously), parental support ended pretty much immediately, and it was up to me to clear my debts and manage money for myself. Which I think I've done okay on - my car is paid for, I've got no more than a couple of hundred quid on my credit card, my loan is paid off, and I've got no other real debts. Mind you, it's less than a year until I'm 30 now, so you'd sort of hope I'd have things sorted by now, really.

I know a few people who went back to live with their parents "just to tide things over", and ended up being stuck there for ages; responsibility and independence is a big scary thing and some people prefer to just hide away from it - but the longer you put it off, the harder it becomes to adjust, I think. So I'd definitely recommend moving out sooner rather than later, and learning how to, y'know, cook and clean and that. But equally well, don't be ashamed of parental help whilst you're finding your feet; the chances are, they're a lot more stable financially than you are, have some buffer and their interest rates are likely to be a lot more generous than your bank's. And you'll probably pay it all back, in a sense, if and when your kids go off to University too.

I appreciate the situation is vastly different in terms of fees and loans, etc. both in the US and in the UK now, compared to when I was a student, and that I was lucky to come out of Uni with no more than a couple of thousand of debt, but in terms of being independent both financially and personally, I think some of the same principles still apply.

Dissy:
I'm now 21, and I've been living off an on with my parents since I was 16.

I dropped out of High School after my junior year, and started college just as I turned 17.  I got a job, and my parents payed for my first semester of college, and I moved a couple of blocks away paying very cheap rent to a family friend for a room.  I was able to be financially independent for about 8 months, biking to school, paying for food and stuff.  Then, I got hit by a car, and chipped a bone in my elbow.  I was then too scared to bike for a while, and drove everywhere, and the added gas money practically bankrupted me.

Lately, I've been dorming with a friend, going home on the weekends and over the summer, working, and barely getting by.  Any time I need financial help, my parents are more than happy to help.

parm:

--- Quote from: tommydski on 23 Jul 2008, 08:39 ---Good post, Parm. I only finished Uni a couple of years ago so I managed to completely miss grants and my student accommodation was a fortune every bloomin' year. I worked the whole time I was there and I still finished uni with about £15,000 of loans. I have a pretty good job and hopefully if I ever sell this house, I'll be able to finally pay the buggers off.

--- End quote ---

For what it's worth, if you're in the UK financial advisors generally tell you not to worry about trying to pay off your student loans before you have to (ie, stick with the minimum payments) because the chances are you'll get more in interest if you stick the money you'd spend on paying them off into a savings account than the loans would cost you.

Of course, I'm not a financial advisor, so I could be hugely, embarassingly wrong about this, so don't blame me if you end up with a billion pounds of student debt at age 65.

As a side note, I noticed student accomodation got vastly more expensive just after I left University (my then-girlfriend, now-wife started Uni 2 years after I did) - a lot of the University owned halls of residence closed down and because of a change in regulations, a lot of them lost their subsidies. And of course, house prices going insane and correspondingly pushing rents up didn't help. I have some sympathy for poor students - just not the ones I see with high-def tellies, designer clothes and better laptops than I have  :wink:

tania:
most of my close friends in university, while amazing people, are also ridiculously rich and it kind of clouds my judgment about what it's like to be a student because next to them i constantly feel completely poor for having to turn things down on the basis that they are too expensive, yet at the same time as far as student life goes i definitely am pretty lucky. i think maybe sometimes they get the idea that i look down on them from a pedestal or something but i just don't feel comfortable buying things i don't need when the money i'm spending isn't actually mine... i know it's normal to get spending money from your parents when you're a student but it just makes me feel really guilty. anytime i borrow money from them i go into this sad reclusive state where i buy the cheapest food possible and that's about it. part of it might be that i don't like them, i don't know. i have sisters who are much older than me and they've constantly pressured me to grow up and act more mature, which probably did make me mature faster but also may have instilled some kind of guilt about being the age i am. i just don't feel okay being dependent on anyone and never really have, which is hard in university because you can't really be anything but. basically i need to sack up.

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