Hacker News Reader

Comment by in_cahoots | Hacker News Reader

My best friend lived with her parents until she got married. She went to a no-name college and became a teacher. I, along with my parents, spent 5 figures on a prestigious university and PhD, and I now work in Silicon Valley. With the money she saved on room and board she was able to put down a large down payment on a 0.5-acre house with her husband in New England. Meanwhile I am paying 5% interest on a jumbo loan. Who is the dummy here?

View on HN

I spoke to someone who started working in sheet piling when he was 16. This is in the Netherlands, so plenty of that to go around. He stayed with his parents and saved until he could buy a house out of pocket at 25. He was 30, said he was saving to retire at 35. It blew my ‘educated’ mind.

I'm not quite sure how you can save enough money in 9 years (including 2 when you need to go to high school) to save enough money to buy a house out of pocket, even when you assume you don't buy anything for those years.

You should be able to refinance that jumbo loan down quite a bit! Rates are real good right now.

Banks are not offering jumbo refinances. All the houses in my neighborhood are 1m+, and they’re all off the market now because its not possible to secure a jumbo loan at the moment. My be region-dependent, IDK.

My bank is offering us refinancing options, but we're currently at 3% so it's not actually worth it. Our credit is excellent, but our loan is over $750K, and we live in the Bay Area.

I just refinanced a jumbo at sub 3%. Definitely happening.

What institution? Wells, Bank of America, and a handful of boutique lenders in the Bay Area all recently stated they can’t offer anything below three.

https://www.rate.com/loan-expert/nicole

Thank you for passing on.

There is much less of a stigma for daughters staying at home with their parents than sons.

In my (American-Italian) family it's always been pretty normal for the boys & the girls to live at home until they got married (or moved away for work, etc.)

I lived at home until I got married at 27. Best decision I ever made.

Honest question, I moved out of town for work a week after I graduated. How does that work when you’re dating? No sleepovers, no privacy, having to come home at a respectful time, etc? But maybe my viewpoint is skewed by knowing how my conservative (not the modern version of conservative) parents are.

I'm not OP but I dated the daughter of very conservative parents for several years before finally marrying her. We each lived at home and in fact she moved into my home after marriage because I have an elderly (I was born late) widow as a parent and leaving them behind to rot from solitude was not an option.

I think I can summarize it as: it's never been ideal, but we always made it work, and I'm the kind of guy who likes to remember there are always much worse problems elsewhere in the world. if the worst problem I had to solve was not enough privacy with my gf/wife, then I was doing pretty good on a global scale.

> I'm the kind of guy who likes to remember there are always much worse problems elsewhere in the world.

I share the same attitude and it’s served me well - you never know when life will hand you a bad card. Our 19 month old son at the time (6 years ago) got sick - he developed type 1 diabetes. It wasn’t easy to accept but then you look at the kids with more serious conditions in the waiting room at the pediatric endocrinologist’s office and realize that type 1 diabetes is manageable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a disease that never takes a break. In 6 years we’ve probably left him in the care of someone else (my parents) maybe a handful of times because he can’t self manage yet. But we make the best of it. Yes it would be nice to be able to go on date nights once in a while, but the times we’ve tried usually ended in multiple phone calls or constant texting. In the end it just means we spend more time with our kids. Someday they’ll move out/away and we’ll have more time alone than we like.

My plan if I start dating while living with my parents (just moved back) is to go to hotels/airbnbs or camp out. I've also moved into the basement rather than a bedroom right by my parents' so if I get serious with someone I could probably just have them over. That of course requires having a large enough house for that to be feasible

I didn’t have a curfew, my parents just expected a call if I was spending the night elsewhere. Sleepovers were fine, sleeping in the same bed was not. It was never a big deal for me, I never knew any different. There were unplanned opportunities for private time (when no one was home, etc.)

I don’t think I’d change a thing in hindsight.

In less super conservative house with own room you are in your room for sex or chill. Basically it is exactly like dating when you have roommates.

For a lot of dating, you are not at home anyway, we used to go to parks, concerts and such to spend time together.

Rates haven’t been that high in over 10 years... You really should look into refinancing.

Yes, even if you have less than excellent credit you should be able to get to 4% on your loan, even in the Bay Area.

Outside of the major cities, houses in New England aren't a great investment. In many states the population is shrinking and property taxes are increasing to compensate.

I would think you can pay that loan off in a couple years working in SV. But with all the talk of forgiveness maybe you should hold off a bit...

Of course, it must be said that one doesn't get a PhD because it's the financially smart choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com