Yoga Pants Life

It’s almost always awkward to explain my living situation to people. I mean, it doesn’t come up very often, but when it does, I find myself shifting my eyes to the ground and I do my best to dance around the subject. I would almost rather admit that I had some kind of exotic venereal disease or a third nipple than talk about my housing situation (uh, neither of those are true in my case, just FYI.)

It doesn’t matter that I pay rent and half of all utilities (which, incidentally covers my landlord’s mortgage minus HOA fees.) It doesn’t matter that the situation saves me a boatload of money. It doesn’t matter that the situation benefits my roommate/landlord just as much, if not more than me. It REALLY doesn’t matter that I lived alone for four years and with roommates for seven. Because none of it matters when you tell people you live with your parents (or, parent, in my case.)

I feel like I’m viewed as a slacker and I’m pretty sure some friends, coworkers and family members feel sorry for me and wonder just how effed up my financial situation is to still be living at home. To be honest, sometimes I’m ashamed of my living situation because I know how it’s viewed by society.  When you live ‘at home’ people no longer view you as a capable adult, but rather as just another millennial who can’t get their shit together long enough to cut the cord. I mean, I must not have a job or benefits and surely my mother coddles me and takes care of my every need and I’m bleeding her dry (of course, almost none of this is the case.)

My living situation came up with someone new today and I could feel myself doing everything I could to avoid saying “I live with my mom” until I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I don’t want to be embarrassed by my situation, and yet, here we are. The thing is, if I said I was living with a friend or a random roommate, I probably wouldn’t be embarrassed at all. This really shouldn’t be that much different.

I need to learn to fully embrace things as they are and take full advantage of it for as long as I can and as long as it benefits both of us. (I should have done it four years ago when I first moved back home, but I was too busy enjoying purchasing all the things I couldn’t when I was furloughed and living alone in Los Angeles, one of the most expensive cities in the world)

While I no longer live in LA, I do still live in an area with a very high cost of living and while I can rent an apartment on my own, it would probably be in horrible condition, in a sketchy neighborhood and would cost more than double what I pay now for rent, utilities and student loans…and that means I’d be apartment-poor. It would also mean that early-ish retirement would be off the table…and really, the sooner I can do the ‘all yoga pants, all of the time’ thing, the better.

I’d love to get into all the ins and outs of my living situation and break it all down financially and maybe one day I will. After all, while this is mostly a running blog (maybe?) there’s a lot of other things I want to write about and finances are one of them. I’m going to need another car in a year or two. I want to retire early. I want 6-12 months of living expenses saved and I want to travel and enjoy my life. I can’t do any of those things if I’m not somehow accountable and maybe blogging will keep me accountable. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I need to be proud of who I am, down to my living situation. Heck, I openly admit that I’m a clumsy nerd who would rather be at home watching House Hunters with my cats on a Saturday night than out partying at the OMGbest bars (that ship? sailed a loooong time ago.) Why shouldn’t I embrace everything about my life right now? Because it is what it is and I’m at where I’m at and there are much worse places I could be.