#3: I finally moved out of my parents’ house!
I may have moved out of state too...
A couple months ago, I wrote a post on LinkedIn about living in my family’s house after graduating.
You can read it here!
It was kind of a vulnerable post to make, but I was pleasantly surprised to see all the reactions and the stories that people shared.
☕️ On the flip side, I got a DM from an older HR professional who told me it would hurt my job prospects because:
“You could be perceived as possessing less independent living skills than others”
But let’s be real - Most of us young professionals who live at home do it out of choice, not out of incompetence or over-dependency.
As a matter of fact, I gained so many living skills BECAUSE of living at home the first few years after graduating.
Growing up, when I pictured what my life after college would look like, it didn’t include living back at home.
But reality hits, and thanks to the pandemic, there were more reasons to stay at home than find my own place.
I know that I was fortunate to have this opportunity, as there are many new grads who don’t have a home to return to, or a home that is functional enough to live in.
And I appreciate the fact that living with your parents as a young professional is normalized in the US now, especially since it’s long been the norm in Eastern cultures.
But living at home isn’t necessarily better than living on your own, or vice versa. It just depends on your needs and goals in a particular season.
During the time that I did live at home, I took advantage of its unique benefits:
I saved up money. 💴 I maxed out my Roth IRA each year, contributed to my employer 401k, and opened up a High Yield Savings Account (which I’ll talk more about in the “Health & Wealth” section below!). Instead of paying $1,000/month for rent for 2 years, that $25k went straight into my retirement accounts and will be worth over $370,000 in 40 years! Isn’t that WILD? If that doesn’t convince you to live at home while you’re young and working, I don’t know what will 😂
Living at home is 100% delayed gratification - in this case, a free whopping $350,000 in 40 years.
I invested in myself. 🏋🏻♀️ Now, I can happily say that I am a better person because of these investments:
In 2021, it was a coaching program that taught me how to sell a high-ticket service-based offer online. This helped me launch my first business venture on LinkedIn, make entrepreneur friends across the US, and taught me so many lessons.
In 2022, it was personal training. I wanted to learn how to weightlift ever since I was a teenager, and now I finally had the means to learn properly. I did 3 sessions a week for 6 months, and afterwards I felt comfortable enough to do it on my own.
In 2023, it was therapy. Not necessarily because something was “wrong” with me or because I have a mental illness (that I know of, though mental illness does run in my family), but because nobody has had a perfect childhood, and everyone has their own battles that they struggle with internally. Let’s say that it also helped me survive living with my family 😅.
I learned how to cook. 🍜 I don’t know about you, but cooking for yourself during college vs. cooking a whole meal for a family of 6 are two entirely different things. You could feed yourself ramen for dinner every single day, but you’re gonna get some serious side eyes if you feed your family ramen more than once a week. So finding dinner recipes online I did.
Now for the big question you might be wondering:
Where did I move to??
🤠 I moved to Austin, Texas!
It’s a fun and vibrant city full of young adults, and I have a few internet friends who live here as well.
Stay tuned for my adventures in Austin! 😊
Health & Wealth 💸
Hot girls use HYSA’s 💅
I’m lowkey kicking myself for not knowing about High Yield Savings Accounts (HYSA’s) earlier. I let my money sit in my bank’s savings accounts for my entire life, and all it did was collect pennies from the ground.
An interest rate of 0.01%? Are you actually kidding me.
High Yield Savings Accounts give you an interest rate over 100X better than that. Most of them are FDIC insured as well. There are several options out there, but the one I use is Marcus by Goldman Sachs which has a 4.15% Annual Percentage Yield (APY).
If you use my link, you’ll get an extra 1% on top of that for 3 months too! There isn’t a minimum you have to deposit, so you can start small. There’s no “catch” either, HYSA’s are pretty straightforward.
What I will add is that HYSA’s aren’t a replacement for investing - they aren’t a long-term investment vehicle.
Instead, I specifically like to use my HYSA for 1) my emergency fund and 2) short-term savings (1-5 years).
So go get your bag 💰 for free and make wise financial decisions 👏👏👏
Career Inbox 📩
Got a career question you’d like me to answer in a future post? (Ex. How do I do salary research? How do I negotiate an offer? What questions do I ask at the end of an interview? ) Drop them in my inbox below!
Thanks for reading! 😊
Hope you enjoyed this article of 9 to Thrive!
Give this post a like if you’ve made it this far!
Until next time, stay healthy, wealthy, and wise!
Sincerely,
Sarena