This is a great piece outlining the historical threads of the “yuppy” tradition of being kicked out, never looking back, and moving away from your parents at age 18, versus the more clannish cultures that prefer multi-generational living.

I realize this is presently an unpopular thing to say on both sides, who are busy hailing the virtues of the multi-gen living thing, but I am ABSOLUTELY on team move away and stake your own claim.

My only difference with the author is that this absolutely does NOT mean you have to move into an overpriced city. Just the opposite actually, finding a new location is like picking stocks: you’re looking to buy low and find places with FUTURE value that hasn’t yet been recognized. The point isn’t to go stuff yourself into an already-popular place, it’s to go where the opportunity is and get in on the ground floor because others haven’t yet seen the potential.

This is not a money/no money thing. When I decided to move across the country to a place I knew no one, I was choosing between Salt Lake and Austin, because at the time, they were both totally underpriced and affordable but with so much obvious untapped potential that people hadn’t recognized yet. At the time, they were both CHEAPER than my home town, and are now 4 times as expensive. I picked Salt Lake purely based on lack of humidity, packed up a Ford Escort with trash bags full of my clothes and my cat and no money, and drove three days out here. My first apartment was in Salt Lake’s version of the ghetto, surrounded by pawn shops. You move to get the money, not because you already have it. Anyway, it was the best decision I ever made so I’m team get the hell out and don’t look back.

My parents and their parents and my siblings and nieces and nephews have all done the same, never to existing fancy places but to random places, and it similarly worked out great for them. The thing about being willing to move wherever the opportunity is is that you really don’t need to be that great or exceptional to find a lot of success…pioneers get paid huge dividends merely because they took a bit of risk and got somewhere first, before everyone else sees the value. The first mover, ground floor advantage cannot be overstated.

Also, I honestly think it’s BS when people extol the virtues of multi-gen living. I get it that when you have little kids, free baby-sitting becomes highly attractive, but almost no one pre or post kids seems as interested. More to the point, I have known tons of close friends who DO come from cultures that live like this, and they can talk all they want about how warm and close it is, but they also do a ton of screaming and yelling and fighting and literally going for years in some instances not even speaking to their own family members who live in the same house. One of my best friends lives like this and claims it’s the greatest, and yet she and her family members treat each other in a manner I would never tolerate, and have literally on some heated occasions thrown each other down stairs and through windows, and regularly go through periods where they’re not on speaking terms (yet have to see each other every day). No thanks.

BTW, it’s perfectly fine if you prefer familiarity and want to stay in the same place forever and stick with family! It’s not necessary for me to want to live like that in order for your preferences to be validated. I don’t give a crap if you don’t like or validate mine. Just own what you like and who cares that a lot of people would rather stick needles under their fingernails than live like that.

But it doesn’t really seem questionable that the “seek out your fortunes elsewhere” thing tends to lead to better economic outcomes. I went to my high school reunion this summer and you could almost draw a perfect correlation between everyone’s level of economic success and how far from our home-town they’d moved (most successful guy by far had moved to the other side of the globe). $$ isn’t everything, of course, and in fact I don’t even think it’s the most important thing, I think taste/temperament is more important.

Whenever my parents or in-laws visit us or we them, everyone’s good for three days and by day four everyone’s dying to get away from each other. I think there’s perhaps just a different level of peace versus chaos that some people can tolerate, and being in close quarters with one’s extended family for more than a few days is excruciatingly annoying, to me. I have to calm my husband down so he doesn’t jump out of his own skin and just go full-dickhead by the time day 6 or 7 rolls around.

Good for you if you like it, but I would be miserable…everything about my life improved 10x the day I could move out at 18. So, I don’t care, I’m team yuppy/Hajnal I guess.