Living on Your Parents Salary

Let's be honest: Recent years have produced some of the most co-dependent adults out there. A huge percentage of us in our twenties and sometimes in our thirties are still depending on our parents for financial security. I think back to when my dad went to college. His father wouldn't even pay for that! He had to work his way through, and hard, then work his way into the business wordl before finally becoming successful. Me, my parents paid my tuition and most of my expenses through college, and now are my unofficial "roommates" in New York. I'm not even ashamed of it, because up here i imagine more than half hte poeple living on the island of Manhattan who aren't in on the Wall Street thing are surviving because their parents help them, whether it's with rent, clothes, food, cable. To even rent an apartment here, you are required to make forty times your rent. So if you were making 140,000/year, you would be renting an apartment that cost roughly 1/40 of that. Name a person making that much who's living in a studio.

you would think I would be really ashamed of this. In some ways I am. I have two degrees and a minor from an excellent University. I live a fairly modest lifestyle, especially for New York, meaning I have some nice things but for the most part shop at Gap and H&M. I eat in most nights and my friends and I try to find cheap places to eat all the time. Because we're all in the same situation. An extremely small income for one of the biggest and most expensive places in the world. I'm sure if i had picked mexico city instead, my life would be much different. If I had even picked a town instead of a city my life would have been different. But instead I chose New York. I chose a dream that had been coming on for more than a decade. A dream of seeing whta life outside of a small state and small town would lead to. I have found it to be the most amazing decision I've ever made. Imagine changing everything about yourself in under a year- how you live, how you work, what you want out of life.

I've come to appreciate the idea of an apartment or house with more than one room, of having a car to drive, of being on highways with the windows down and music blasting. Of not feeling bad that your suit isn't real Chanel, of not having to dodge hordes of people in lower Manhattan on Thursday and Friday afternoons. Then there is living in the Village, of being able to get up on a Sunday morning, pick up a Times and head to a local diner for breakfast. Of taking the train out to Queens to see a basketball game. Of ice skating at Rockefeller whenever you felt like it. Just because you felt like it.

Living like this takes money, money that I don't have. So yes I ask my parents for help. The best part is, they give it to me.