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Comment by sho | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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