Thursday, June 21, 2007

Moving Out...?

I have been living at home with the parental units the past 3 months, which is about 20 miles from where I work. As I approach my 90-day review, I have increasingly become aware that I need to move out from the parents for three reasons:

(1) The commute is 1 hour each way
(2) I'm not learning independence by having the parents do everything for me
(3) I need to move out before I became a sad pathetic loser living in my parent's basement

I don't have any relationship issues living with the parents. I enjoy my parent's as much as any child can, and having my little brother around is an added bonus.

However, it is the nagging fear that if I don't do it now, I may never want to later that prompts this. But that fear is difficult to quantify, so I have been busy trying to place dollar values to my issues living at home.

The nominal cost of living at home is $0. The cost of the 2BR apartment I want to share with someone is $1200 per month per person. The best justification for moving out still remains the commute. Two hours a day versus 15 minutes a day is a huge difference. Multiplied out to the usual 20 business days a month, that is a 35 hour savings! On top of that, I will probably save about $100 worth of gas.

If I consider my personal time to be worth at least $25 / hour, that is a combined savings of $975, leaving $225 of my rent as a proxy for what I value as my independence and the value of not being called a sad pathetic loser.

Are those two things worth $225 a month? I'm not sure. And my parents do add value to my life, so to do an accurate cost-benefit analysis, the cost to me would be more than $225 a month. I think all together, the cost is really $500 a month to move out, versus staying at home.

And... I still have to buy bed, furniture, and my own food. Is my independence and not being called a sad pathetic loser worth that much a month? It's not a clear-cut decision.

4 comments:

Teeny said...

But you also have to factor in the sense of accomplishment you feel when you are truly living on your own, but there is still the weird limbo of which is home, you apartment or your parents house?

Well Heeled Blog said...

I say move out. A 2 hour roundtrip commute sounds horrible. I find that commuting is the worst way to spend your time. It adds on to your work day, but you don't get any credit because you haven't actually worked.

GoldnSilver said...

The commute is too long. That'd be my motivation to move out.

Finance Guy said...

Thanks for all the comments! Definitely the commute is a huge factor, and now I'm 80% sure I'm going to move out in two weeks.