…even if you don’t have no porno mags.  Beastie Boys! Ok, I am dating myself.  Plus who doesn’t know about internet porn? Not that I go to internet porn sites.

*cough*

SO living at home.  I am not sure if I’ve ever divorced living at home from the shame of unemployment and/or student debt you can’t pay off. This makes sense given the fact that without those two circumstances you presumably wouldn’t be living at home.  I tried to think of reasons why someone not in that situation would be living at home.  I came up with terminal disease, either your own or your parent’s…then I got depressed and couldn’t think of anything else.  Right before I decided to think of something else to write it dawned on me.  People also live at home on the other side of the economic stupidity wall: in order to save for something, like a house or to not go into debt or childcare. Ok, fair enough.  Let’s break it down.

First there is the honeymoon period.  The good meals, the nostalgia, it will feel a lot like when you’d come home from college and being at home will actually be a source of comfort from your recent lay-off, inability to find a job, or pay the bills.

Second there is the learning period.  You learn that home isn’t “home” and hasn’t been for awhile.  Just like you’re a different person now (and your parents are learning about that) your parents are different people too and eventually they will stop acting the way they act on the formerly special occasion when you’re around and start acting like their current selves.

Third there is the “coming out” period.  Your neighbors start noticing that it’s damn near February and you’re still there.  Friends start asking if they can chill/crash at your place when they’re in town.  The borderline senile woman at your church keeps asking in a loud voice what you’re up to and where you’re living now during coffee hour.

Fourth and finally there is acceptance.  Unfortunately this is not a step but more like the beginning of a sub-process.  In a lot of ways this is harder for your parents.  They feel like they’ve failed you in some way.  They realize that grand kids are unlikely (at least in their lifetimes).  They look at their friends’ kids, most of whom where stupider and lacking in character when compared to you growing up, driving around in Audis with a blonde wife and 2.5 kids.  The worst is when your parents hand you $20 so you have spending money when you go meet this guy for a drink.  Yeah, I know $20 doesn’t even buy a round anymore, but your parents don’t and this ignorance makes it all the more uncomfortable, but you both know why you have to do this…because this idiot might be able to get you a job.  Unfortunately you never get out of this cycle.

It sounds pretty terrible and it is.  The question is how do you make the best of a bad situation, and if you can live at home in order to save during a period of your life when you know money will be tight should you do it?

To make the best of a bad situation there are two steps 1) have the smallest footprint possible and 2) contribute to the household in some way.  No matter what you have to do, make sure at least two days a week you are not sleeping at home.  Crash with friends, sleep in a car, do whatever it is you have to do.  It will make you appreciate home more and relieve some of the stress that naturally builds up at home.  Next, contribute to the house in some way.  Pay the cable bill, get the mail, take out the trash, do something.  No, it will not make you feel better.  No, your parents will not appreciate it BUT it will prevent the awkward conversation when your parents start asking you to do these things.

Finally, if you can live at home to avoid debt later on do it.  Living at home just gets harder as you get older and if you think about it, the only reason you could stand to live at home during the summer in college (or really the last two years of high school) was the knowledge of a set date in the future when you’d be out of there.  That’s really the worst part of moving back home, I mean really moving back home.  You can’t shake the feeling that you might, just might be there forever.

I caught the housing bug from an eighth year associate who thinks she is going to make partner. She thinks she is cute making comments about how she was being promoted at the expense of her ovaries. I thought such hackneyed cliches only existed in the nail polish smeared pages of a Lisa Scottoline novel. However I decided against it based oddly enough not on student debt but on what it might mean for my love life.

A dental hygienist friend of mine made a killing about two years ago buying stocks short. Being the responsible type she bought a house and immediately saw her love life shrivel and die until she started referring to her house as her parent’s house…parents who were mysteriously never there.

When a man is unemployed his ability to start or maintain a family is compromised.  What about when he has substantial student loans? Even taking a best case scenario, borrowing money to go to school and the loan payments eating into your first paychecks pushes out the timetable for buying that first house and accumulating equity and wealth. Even if that time is only 5 years, and your rent only $1000 a month that’s $60,000 added to your debt.

Now things could be much worse. You could be Benito building a house out of sticks in his mother’s backyard, desperately waiting for the dorms to reopen after a roof collapse due to record snowfall. This is a pitfall of the successful debtor…It doesn’t make sense to pay rent into your thirties.

Now I know what you’re thinking. I just said I wasn’t going to buy a house. But I am also in my early twenties. I don’t want to miss out on meeting my Simon because my house subconsciously reminds him of his depleted ability to provide despite his six figure job, shiny car, and flatscreen TV. Taking another page out of SG’s book… She may not have a house but she certainly is not paying rent. In the meantime I think I will buy some stocks and deduct recent repairs from my next rent check. It’s a start people.

Oops. I forgot. The Associate with the shriveled ovaries. She is getting laid off next month after she closes on her house. If I meet someone special maybe we will buy her house for cheap after the bank seizes it.