Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwerty9876 | Hacker News Reader

In Finland the Erasmus/foreign exchange students of universities also tend to hang out among themselves and the native Finns don't really care about them.

One thing I've heard is that the Finns consider many of the exchange students to be a bit juvenile since in their home countries people often live with parents until their 30s. Whereas most Finnish students move out and become fully independent by age 20.

View on HN

where on earth is it the norm to be living with your parents until you're in your 30s?

Kiwi here, a lot of us move out and go flatting at the first possible chance we get - which is right after high school/first year of uni.

Lol. How about pretty much everywhere in Asia? China? Singapore? Korea? The "norm" is to live at home until you get married, when you use all the money you saved living rent-free at home to put down a hefty deposit on a house. I know actual millionaires who still live with their parents!

Given the difficulty of affording a deposit for new home buyers who have been renting since 18 (like me - Aussie here), I can see the logic in it.

I would go so far to say that the only time this is not the norm is when children move to a big city to work, leaving their parents back in their smaller hometowns. Then they live as cheaply as possible in dorms that exist for this purpose. There's a whole infrastructure.

Adding Spain and most of southern europe to the list.

Still we can agree on the fact a millionaire living at hotel mom sounds outrageous.

Sounds outrageous, but it can also be clever in a counter-intuitive way.

Why is it outrageous ?

It's sounds outrageous to ears that value individualism and "independence" over community and family ties. Money is typically an enabler for independence in such societies, so a millionaire who doesn't use their money to acquire "independence" from their mom seems like an oddity.

yeah, on second thought, you're right regarding Asia.... to a degree. I worked in Singapore for a while and a lot of people my age didn't live at home, and a few did. Singapore was a bit different though, it's bloody expensive there.

In the Philippines I found that depending where you were from, depended on whether you left home as early as possible for better opportunities.

Never heard of the dorms thing though.

My wife and I will buy a house one day, but it won't be near any of the "big" NZ cities. Too expensive.

I see the logic too, but surely your mental health must suffer!

The reason people buy expensive houses in expensive areas is because of enhanced social networking and housing market stability. Strong communities tend to fare better in economic downturns. Moving to the countryside increases the probability of social isolation. This has far reaching consequences on mental and physical health.

> where on earth is it the norm to be living with your parents until you're in your 30s?

The south of Europe. Spain is probably the most outstanding country in this regard.

And increasingly common in the UK

Yes. It's much more expensive now to get one's own flat or share it with roommates in, say, London than it has been in the recent past. And it's only going to get worse.

Also southeast Asia! In the Philippines, for instance, it's quite common for both women and men to live with their parents until they get married.

Almost every developing country + Southern Europe. So most of the world.

I would assume it's the norm in most developing countries where young students cannot pay their own rent. At least it's the norm here (Venezuela), even before the crisis.

Interesting! I remember when I first went flatting, it was 4 of my mates. So rent+utilities divided by 4 people made it pretty easy. and it's not like NZ is cheap by any means.

“22 percent of people ages 23 to 37 now living with their folks from 11.7 percent of people the same ages back in 2001”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-millennials-are-living-at-...

Places where real estate isn't cheap essentially. More common in old world than colonies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com