It was so long ago I don’t even remember: like 41 years ago 
In Denmark, the norm is when you leave high school, which would place it around the 19 year mark. My friends were 19~21 when they moved out - I was 22, and the last among my friends to do so. However, I had a good explanation, as the reason to that I held off was that I was planning a 1 1/2 year stay in Taiwan, and that’s moving out with a venegance.
I mean, I moved 10,000 kilometers, while most of my friends moved 1-2 kilometers only. (So mummy could stop by once in awhile and pick up the dirty laundry).
Then I has a 2 month rehab upon returning from Taiwan, while I was finding and fixing up a flat for me and my pregnant wife.
However,my Taiwanese wife was 16 when she left home - the purpose was to go to school somewhere else.
My sister in law has not moved out yet, bespite being a very independent girl. She’s 33. My brother in law will never move out.
I’m still living with my folks. Never left the house.
I “officially” left home at fifteen after several years in boarding school prior to that. Haven’t lived with parents since then although I have stayed with one of them for a short term after illness. In some aspects I really wasn’t “grown up” enough to have left home then but on the whole it was most likely best for all of us. Thankfully, I have really great parents who have always been there for me - even financially at times.
They are now both retired and I do worry that I cannot provide for them should they need it financially. Had I the resources I would certainly not hesitate to do so. That being said, they would never expect that any of their children should be “repaying” them for their years of raising each of us. Nor would I expect that from mine.
I moved out at 18, and have lived in a different continent from my parents in the almost 12 years since then. Miss them though. But I’m probably used to it… we moved house 8 times before I was 18 (and I’ve moved 12 times since then.
Well, see, I wouldn’t count going off to boarding school or uni as ‘moving out’. As long as you’re still tied to your parents financially, you’re still a dependent. By that measure I didn’t really move out and fend for myself on my own dime until I was 22 & had graduated from university.
Left home when I was 15 after a falling out with the folks. Didn’t make up till I was about 22-23.
Some hard times and university was a bitch, but I don’t regret it.
18, and not a moment too soon.
I moved back for a while when I was 21ish, and paid rent.
Go for it, Jen. And don’t give your parents a penny. They made the decision to have kids and accepted the ‘costs’. You didn’t ask to be born, and certainly didn’t enter into any agreement to repay their ‘investment’. You are your own person and your financial affairs should be your own at your age.
If your folks NEED your help than that’s a different matter, but all this talk of ‘obligation’ or ‘duty’ is crap. If they ‘gave’ you life then it’s yours to do what you want with. That’s the whole point of a gift.
Thanks for all responses.
I discussed it with the oldest sister but she disagrees with me of the high rent, cuz it is about 1/3 month salary. She said I can rent a cheaper one to save money and buy one apartment in the future instead. Life is short and I have spent so many years living in a poor situation. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? I’d rather to spend that much to have a better life quality.
If you count being sent off to boarding school, then it was 8. It was because my mum loved me enough to send me to a good school, and it was too far to travel everyday being over two miles away.
Living by myself, 21, and that was many years after I should have.
[quote=“arabe”][quote=“Maoman”]17, but often home for up to 3 months at a time after that.
BTW, why do you have to support your parents? Did they fall on hard times or are you just being a good Confucian girl? I think that the concept of filial piety has been carried on too far here. It is against nature for the younger generation to support the older generation at the cost of their own development. I’m reminded of the story of the peasant boy who used his own body heat to melt snow so that his parents might have water to drink. He died, but this example is often used as an ideal example of filial piety. I think it is a horrible story. Even animal parents will sacrifice everything so that their offspring have a chance at life. Chinese culture obviously holds up different ideals.[/quote]
Actually, this happens in the states, too. It is compulsory and conducted in an organized fashion mandated by law. It is called “social security” and “medicare”. It is taken out of paychecks from working age people, and handed out to old folks. It is exactly the older generation being supported on the back of the younger generation. The working parents bearly making ends meet are paying into the pockets of some retiree in Florida.[/quote]
I’m going to guess that you don’t know too much about just how much of their incomes Chinese singles give up to their parents. Throwing away money on things like SS and medicare in the States is a bitch, but it is peanuts compared to what most Chinese kids fork over to their parents every month. Most of the single adults I’ve known in both Taiwan and HK paid between 1/3 and 2/3 of their monthly incomes. This is not even considering what they may have to pay in taxes. In HK, taxes are not deducted monthly, but paid at the end of the year, so single people there get hit even harder by contributions to parents. I know people in both Taiwan and HK who paid for their own tertiary education, but still have to pay their parents up to 2/3 of their salaries every month. You may then think that this doesn’t matter too much since they only have to do it for just the two or three years before they get married. In my experience, this ain’t the case. Most young couples don’t have the money to get married until they are in their early thirties precisely because they are giving everything to their parents.
Many Taiwanese or Chinese young people would not have been able to go to university if their parents had not made substantial sacrifices. I think this is one reason why Taiwan has developed so rapidly and why we see parents who had no education at all with children who’ve gotten bachelor’s if not higher degrees. There are still families around where the parents sacrificed everything to give their kids an education, and I think that those kids should be ready to pay back. Nevertheless, I’ve seen two kinds of problems with kids giving their parents money.
Taiwan, HK and some places in the PRC have reached a phase in economic developement where many parents just don’t need to take money from their kids. I know some parents who recognize this and who refuse to take a dime from their kids. I also know quite a few parents who still insist on taking their kid’s money even though they’ve got plenty of their own. Some parents see it as a sign of respect. Others think their kids are just too immature or stupid to know how to spend or save their money wisely. They aren’t willing to let their kids experience the growing pains of managing money in their twenties or experience financial freedom. I find that pathetic. The parents not only do not need the money, but they also won’t let their kid grow up.
Another problem I see is that in families where the children have university degrees but the parents have no education, the parents are very often the least qualified to handle the family finances and the large incomes that their uni-grad kids bring in. Most of the time, mom and dad have a country bumpkin attitude about managing money and don’t want to spend a dime on anything. They are completely yi1mao2 bu4ba2. They won’t let their kids manage the money or invest it because when they were younger, stocks, bonds and other investment instruments were either unknown or completely speculative. They not only won’t let the kids spend the money, but they also won’t spend it on themselves. I know of parents who have died from very minor diseases because they didn’t want to go to the doctor, but they had millions (that’s millions US, not NT$) in the bank. Conversely, I’ve known parents who saw it as their right to blow their kids salaries any way they pleased, whether on horse races, the lottery or majiang. Some of these people had absolute discipline when putting their kids through school, but as soon as they got into some real money through their kids incomes, they just lost it.
In most western families, we see it as a necessary thing for young people to waste a little money as they learn how to live independently. I used to think that Chinese kids giving money to their parents was something that would fade away as society became wealthier; as parents begin not only to have enough money to send their kids off for a degree but also to pay for their own retirement, they will start letting their kids have more financial and personal freedom. This would make perfect sense in the west since we see independence as a good thing. We know that that is not necessarily the case here, though. This sort of transition will take quite some time here because a.) parents often feel that being given money is a sign of respect, b.) parents think their children are not mature enough to handle their own money (which is a catch-22 since they’ll never learn unless they have to handle it) and c.) parents don’t always see independence as a good thing; they want their kids to be bound to them forever because that’s the only life they ever imagined.
I’d say it’s pretty bad; I could have afforded to buy my ex-house outright if I hadn’t been forced to pay into Social Insecurity. As it stands, I have zero expectation of ever getting a dime out of SocSec; at best, I will get a minimal benefit after age 70, assuming I even live that long. (It’s even worse for a friend of mine’s mother – his parents immigrated, but his father didn’t live long enough to make the mandatory minimum payments into SocSec, so all the money he was forced to put in was stolen outright – the woman doesn’t get a dime of survivor’s benefits.)[/quote]
OT, sorry, and if you’re not an American citizen or someone who has a hint of interest in Social Security, skip this post now.
If you’re an American, however, and worried about Social Security, you might want to read this publication of the Social Security Advisory Board. In fact, you can limit your reading to page 25 (p. 29 of the pdf file) and choose your own “fix” to SS’s inflow<outflow problem (as presented, your solutions must total to about 5% to provide a comprehensive solution; just go there and you’ll see what I mean).
MaPo, I think you’ll find that SS’s future isn’t so dire.
I’m really tempted sometimes. Especially when the wife has PMS and the kids are driving me crazy.
Actually, my mother only could afford to provide my transportation and a place to stay on breaks and a little spending money until I got into my studies enough to balance them with work my sophomore year. I always paid her back, though, when I worked 40+ hours a week on my breaks. By your standards, though, I suppose that means that I became financially independent (excluding scholarships, grants, and student loans) when I was 19 and paid for my semester in France with my own wages from a job in the dining halls and a small additional scholarship from my school. I used to help her out with her bills if she got low in cash while I was in school, but nowadays all of the extra money I have goes into paying my student loans.
Yeah, that don’t count. went to school thanks to the parents largesse–and i did pass up up nyu for suny cause of that–but moved to forking TAIWAN at age 21, never looked back 
:)
like that new avatar Richard! you got it wrong though, the kids do that, you had your chance.
I hear you there. I have friends who live in crappy little places and tell me how much money they save, but not one of them is ever able to tell me I shouldn’t pay what I do for my place. It’s expensive, but it’s lovely and I come home in the evening feeling like there’s a reason for working. Quality of life is hugely important - the trick is to save enough to maintain that quality in future.
Can we come to your house-warming party?
[quote]and it was too far to travel everyday being over two miles away.
[/quote]
Two miles? Two piddling miles?
Why, when I were a lad we lived in a rolled-up newspaper in t’middle of t’M1 and us had to walk to t’school in us bare feet in the snow. Eight miles, it were, uphill both ways.
You young folk today? You don’t know yer born, I tell 'ee!
JT, I’m not for a moment questioning the accuracy of what you’ve written, but I’m rather puzzled as to why my own experience has been so different. Of the fairly large number of youngish working women I’ve got to know well in Taiwan, including my wife, I cannot think of any that has contributed anything to her parents on a regular basis. In fact, most of them have lived at home without paying a cent for board and keep, which has always surprised me, because in the UK most people in their situation would be expected to make some kind of contribution to the household finances as a matter of course. And far from forking over any part of their income to their parents, many have continued to be recipients of parental largesse even after they’ve become financially independent. As I understand it, one of the reasons why single career women are such a prime target for advertisers here is because they have such high disposable incomes, with most of their earnings entirely their own to spend freely on clothes, cosmetics, holidays, etc., and their consumerism often boosted further with extra cash doled out by their parents or grandparents. How come we’ve seen such contrasting faces of Chinese familial practices?
And on the primary subject of this thread: I seized the chance to move out of the parental home as soon as I went off to university, and never stayed there again except for short visits of a few days at a time (and up to a couple of weeks when returning from abroad in much later years). I couldn’t have imagined it any other way. It wasn’t that I didn’t get on well enough with the folks, but just that, like most of my peers, I wanted to lead the kind of independent life that being an adult entitled me to. If I’d stayed with the parents, I’m sure there’d have been endless friction, and we’d all have been unhappy about it. Living apart enabled us to appreciate each other much better and keep our relationship optimally healthy.
I think it’s almost against nature for an offspring not to leave the nest as soon as it’s old enough to fend for itself. If more Taiwanese could do the same, I’m sure it would do them the world of good and the sum of happiness in this society would be greatly increased.
My sister in law lives at home. her contribution is to pay for the telephone and then for the electricity as well, however it’s voluntary on her side. My wife does not live at home, she gives the annual hongbao, but for reasons I would like not to elaborate on currently, it’s somewhat slim.
I have heard of stories of young (read below 40) women living at home not paying a cent, adn of one, who gave her mother everything, and only got enough for a bus ticket. When she lost her job, she even had to borrow cash from friends, so she could continue the payments. Her mother scolded her rather badly, when she claimed that her lack of income meant that the payments would have to be suspended for a while.
So customs are different for every family it seems. Therefore, you are all right. 
Works for me in the same way, too. Since I have no property in Germany I will stay at my parent’s house when I go back for a holiday, and I do enjoy it. But after a few weeks I find me wanting some distance again, as such I am certain I won’t move back in there (temporarily perhaps, but not for good). Actually I had been staying away since the age of twenty but never moved truly out, first national service and later at a hostel when I studied/worked further away, but came home most of the weekends to get my laundry done. 
I would also contribute to the houshold should I have a fixed income and still stay at home, kind of rent if you want. If I don’t live at home I wouldn’t give any unless my parents would be in need of it.
Given that Germany has (still) a social welfare system which pays pension (or unemployment) and health insurance covers nearly any medical expenses it’s unlikely that German parents would need to rely on their offspring.
This is of course different in most Asian countries and I do know quite a few people who give money to their parents. I also was told that those who can afford it most “have” to contribute (if there are several siblings), but of course in the end it always depends on the individual.