35-year-old man, who still lives with his parents, asks The Ramsey Show how to retire by 55 — turns out moving out is the first step

Ian from Portland, Oregon, has enjoyed living in a multigenerational household for most of his life.

At 35 years old, he’s still living at home with his parents and sister. He recently started a new job and with his new income in play, Ian’s starting to consider his long-term goals.

"Just trying to figure out where to go from here, to get out on my own and to start building to be able to retire by 55, if I wanted to,” he shared on a recent episode of The Ramsey Show (1). Ian called into the show primarily for advice on how to save up for retirement, but the conversation quickly veered toward his living situation.

“Ian, you need to move out”

Ian earns around US$1,400 a week at his new job. Although he’s had some trouble with credit cards in the past, he’s currently debt-free with a paid-off vehicle. This newfound income has him thinking about retirement, but as co-hosts Jade Warshaw and Rachel Cruze explained, there’s one thing Ian needs to do before he starts thinking about retirement savings.

“Let’s take the first step of moving out of your parents’ [house], I think that’s a great first step,” said Cruze.

“We would say that your rent or mortgage should be no more than 25% of your take-home pay per month.”

Warshaw and Cruze advised him to prioritize moving out of his parents’ house immediately, even if that means renting instead of buying a house. And while Ian asked for advice on saving for retirement, the hosts didn’t really shed any light on that major financial question.

In Ian’s situation, 25% of his take-home pay would work out to around US$1,500 per month to spend on rent or a mortgage payment, but he pushed back against the idea of moving out right away. “I don’t want to immediately move out because I don’t need to,” he said. “I’m more than welcome, it was set up this way so that I’d be able to live there until I’m ready to buy something.”

His plan is to move out in the next six months to a year, likely because that would give him some time to build up his emergency savings or put aside money for a possible down payment on a home. But Warshaw and Cruze continued to push Ian to consider moving out as soon as possible.

“Ian, you need to move out,” said Cruze. “You’re a 35-year-old man. I don’t care if mommy says that you can stay as long as you want. You’re 35!”

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Is he making the right choice?

While Warshaw and Cruze are adamant that moving out is best for Ian, not everyone agrees. A quick look at the comments on YouTube shows that many viewers think the hosts steered Ian in the wrong direction and completely skipped over his main question of how to save for retirement.

The hosts focused on the idea that moving out would provide him with more lifestyle freedoms and mental bandwidth. But Ian seemed fine with living at home for a little longer to take advantage of an opportunity to get his financial ducks in a row.

Ian wants to buy his own house and get a jumpstart on retirement savings, and without a rent payment in the picture — at least for now — it’s likely he could make much more headway on those goals if he stayed at home for the time being.

If Ian decides to stay at his parents’ house, he’s not alone: Young men are more likely to live at home with their parents than young women. The most recent data from Statistics Canada (2) found that more young men live with their parents than women. In 2016, for every five men aged 20 to 34 living with their parents, there were four women doing the same. By 2021, more than a third (35.1%) of young adults (of all genders) aged 20 to 34 lived with at least one of their parents.

Not surprisingly, most adult children living at home found the arrangement benefitted their finances, which makes sense when you consider that the average rent for an apartment in Canada is $1,778 a month (3). Renting an apartment can be expensive, even if it comes with social trade-offs for some.

The average rent for an apartment in Calgary is approximately $1,500 a month, according to Calgary.com (4). And while Ian could technically afford this expense — according to the suggestion of spending 25% of your income on rent — that’s still a significant amount of money to spend on housing each month.

Of course, Ian has the option to simply ignore Cruze and Warshaw’s advice. If he were to stick to his plan of living at home a little while longer, that could give him an opportunity to save money or potentially invest it.

For example, let’s say he’s happy enough at home to live there for another 12 months.

That represents around $18,000 that he won’t have to spend on rent during that period, which is money that he could then redirect into saving for a down payment on a home or retirement savings.

Article sources

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The Ramsey Show: You're a 35-Year-Old Man, Move Out Of Your Mom's House! (1); Statistics Canada: Plateau in the share of young adults living with their parents from 2016 to 2021(2, 3); Apartments.com: Rent trends in Canada (4); Calgary.com: Find your Calgary area home (5)