“At 18 years old, you’re out of the house!” is something I heard a lot growing up. My parents weren’t trying to be mean, but this is what most American families preach to their children. Being 18 years old and graduating high school signifies the passage of becoming an adult.
And sure enough, I left the house ten days after graduation and never looked back. I joined the military, traveled the world, got married, and had kids. I did it all without the assistance of my parents. I proved to the world that I could survive independently, succeed as an individual, and can do this adult stuff alone. Or did I?
I like to always ask my wife, “At what cost?” How much did succeeding on my own truly cost? Psychologically, I was still making life-or-death decisions. I met these grand forks in the road (like marriage, buying a home) in a bubble, my bubble. Nobody was there to soften my fall if I made an error. Making tough decisions does make life challenging, but how hard does a person need to be?
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Emotionally, succeeding on your own can cause irreparable damage. Remember, when you are on your own, you can’t make moves for the sake of happiness. A lack of mobility can lead to staying in jobs you can’t leave, building relationships for habitation purposes (splitting the bills), and living in towns far from family.
Individually, succeeding on your terms leads to living on your terms. Never have I seen the divide between women and men so great. Everyone has built their lives by themselves- for themselves—no need to share these lives with anyone.
Women have built impressive careers with a strong foundation of education. Their careers must now come first because they have their mortgages, bills, and investments to satisfy. When dating, women need to find men more successful than they are. These requirements make it hard for women to find men that benefit them. When they get married, it is more of the union of two workers, splitting the bills and chores. Love is a secondary option.
Men, once great providers, are now looking for women to help spread the load. Instead of seeking great mothers, wives, and daughters, men are looking for great businesswomen, leading to a shift in mindset. No longer are men looking to build vast generations of wealth- they are looking for someone to help them afford better cars, boats, and motorcycles.
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Financially, starting on your own is devastating- beginning with college. Our youth are piling on loads of debt that is crippling them for years. Once they finish college, they then need to live the American lifestyle, which is needlessly expensive. By the time they realize that something is wrong, they could be 50-60 years old.
I am here today to offer another way to live life—a way to break these negative trends of individualism, emotional turmoil, and financial destruction. It is a practice that reunites families with themselves, assisting each other throughout a lifetime, not just from years 0-18. My method involves adult children living with parents.
If I were in a movie theatre, people would be throwing popcorn at me right now. In America, people despise the idea of adult children and parents cohabitating. It is just something that is frowned upon by the masses. Thus, this arrangement’s only disadvantage is also the most significant deterrent of people using this easy solution. I want to address this disadvantage before I move on to all the advantages.
The only disadvantage of adult children living at home is everyone is worried about what people may see or think. That is it. Everyone is concerned about what their neighbors or family members will say if their children live at home. So Josh, let me get this right? You are saying that people are sending their children off into the world alone because they are worried about what other people may say? Yes. I give some examples.
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My wife and I make a boatload of money renting rooms. Making so much money should be a crime. It is like free money falling from the sky. This room rental money has allowed us to build a significant nest egg in a concise amount of time. When we decide to no longer rent rooms, guess what? The nest egg is still there. Amazing stuff. And if we fall upon hard times, we can always get our money printer out again.
However, when you tell people about this simple idea to make a ton of money, they scoff at you. They are “above” renting rooms, or they “like their privacy.” My wife and I just laugh every time we hear this. My wife and I may only end up renting rooms for five years out of our 80-90 year lifespan, but we accumulated enough wealth to last multiple generations during those years. The real reason people do not rent rooms is that they are worried about what people will say. The same feeling they get when you talk about adult children living at home.
Facebook presents another example. I am at the age where most of my Facebook friends’ children are leaving for college. Every day I log in, I see posts about how many colleges a child is getting invited to or what universities have accepted the child. I am genuinely proud of these children; however, we are setting our children up for a lifetime of grief.
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Parents love to brag about their children; this is a fact. But not about how caring, loving, and giving they are. Nope, about how successful they are. Therein lays the trap that we can never escape- bragging. We start by bragging about our children’s grades. Then it turns into colleges and universities. Next are careers and job positions. They still boast as this continues throughout careers (high-paying), getting married (huge expensive weddings), having kids (superior toys), buying houses (huge homes), and going on vacations (luxurious vacations).
You see, we expect our children to have it all- doing it all on their own. Look at how ridiculous the above paragraph is- let’s write in money terms. Careers (+$150,00), Married (-$90,000), Kids (-$200,000), Houses (-$500,000), and Vacations (-$100,000). As you can see, even high-income people cannot afford the cost of an American lifestyle.
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To put it bluntly, none of this crap matters. We want our kids to be happy, find the right person, and be able to raise their children as stress-free as they can. We want to be involved in their lives and their kids’ lives. In America, we put all this crap in between the most straightforward goals of our children. It gets worse. When people are shooting for these lofty life goals, often, they can’t meet these huge expectations.
Our children can’t always be a bragging post for us. They need to decompress, unwind, and, most importantly, be able to tell us the truth. We may not be causing all of the stress in their lives, but expecting them always to be moving forward, we are giving them no options to ask for help. They don’t want to tell us that they need help, made a mistake, or are scared.
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I have lived in a few third-world countries throughout my lifetime- experiences that most people will never have. These experiences are life-changing and life-shaping. In third world countries, parents don’t kick their children out at 18. Families celebrate that they get to see each other every day. I visited a local guardsman family when I served in Niamey, Niger, back in 2002. There were four generations of family all living in one household. They treated me like I was the guest of honor- and I was only 21 years old. These are my experiences.
Now, I look at all the families I have seen across Africa, Turkmenistan, and Turkey and see how pleased they were. No one cared that the children lived with the parents. It was expected for the sons to take over paying the bills and such. Mothers helped raise their grandchildren. For the few people who read this article, listen to my words: “Family is the only thing that matters on this Earth.” Make all your decisions based on these words.
I am going to wrap this article up right here. I will write with part two very soon. I didn’t predict that I had so many words to write on the topic. I am very passionate about protecting our children from consumerism, materialism, and individualism. Who would have guessed?
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Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. I am an Amazon Affiliate. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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