Alright, so here’s the deal. Imagine you’re sitting in a crappy cafe with flickering lights, a cup of too-bitter coffee, and just way too many thoughts ping-ponging around in your head. You ready for it? Let’s jam.
So, California. Always sunny, you’d think everyone’s living the glam life, right? Nope. Not really. Turns out, a bunch of young adults in their late twenties and early thirties are still crashing at their parent’s places. What is this, the 21st century slumber party no one asked for? Apparently.
Places like Vallejo and Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, yep, a mouthful – but also, a whopping one out of three young bucks are still bunking under ma and pa’s roof. El Centro too, getting all snug up there with 32%. The big cosmic joke? All these spots are a stone’s throw from places where you think everyone’s rolling in dough – Bay Area, Los Angeles – take your pick.
Across the whole ‘murica, only about 18% of these young adults are living with the folks. Meanwhile, some places laugh at that, like Odessa, Texas, and Lincoln, Nebraska, wagging a tiny 3% at the stats. Just 3%, like some cosmic anomaly in the universe of extended adolescence.
Now, the big brainy types at Pew Research and Federal Reserve figured out that staying at home saves about $13 grand a year, $6,400 of that is from skipping rent and utilities. But let’s be real, who’s doing the equations here when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, amirite?
Nationwide – half of these parents are still funding their adult kids. Whether it’s a lifeline or a hammock is up for debate. Either way, the average spend is about $1,474 a month. That’s like a brand-new laptop every month, but instead, you get the joy of staring at your old bedroom wallpaper from 2009.
The kicker here? Demographics. More young adults in these high-stay-at-home metros are from minority backgrounds – Hispanic, Black, Asian. For many, a college degree isn’t just a sheet of paper to hang; it’s a luxury. Meanwhile, a lot of these white young adults are marching off to collect their bigger paychecks. The racial earnings gap? Still very much alive and well, folks. Ridiculous, isn’t it?
Oh, but some of these places with low stay-at-home rates? College towns. Ithaca, where you’ve got an Ivy League lounging like it owns the city, and Bloomington with Indiana University doing its thing. Smart kids come in, graduate, then poof – off to live their seemingly independent lives or get buried in student debt elsewhere.
Years ago, right after the Great Recession socked everyone in the gut, a lot more young adults moved back home. I mean, duh, money dried up and jobs ran out the backdoor. But the thing is, even now, student loans climb like they’re trying to touch the sun.
Life, man. It’s a wobbly roller-coaster without seatbelts, and sometimes, the safest place is in the house you grew up in. Until it’s not.
