About the Author
Madeline Williams
Madeline Williams completed Year 12 in 2004, and transitioned directly into university the following year. She considered moving out of home during her Bachelor of Arts, but realised that she didn’t particularly feel like eating two minute noodles for the next three years. Rumours of uni students who had given themselves scurvy due to this particular diet finalised her decision.
By
Madeline Williams
To Stay or Stray?
More and more students are choosing to live at home while they study at university. It makes sense; it helps to save money on everyday living expenses like rent, bills, insurance, food, and groceries. Some parents or guardians may ask their children to pay board, or to contribute to weekly household costs, but in most cases, this will still work out cheaper than living away from home.
Of course, you may feel it is impossible to stay at home. Freedom and independence may be too important to you; your university may be too far from home; or household tensions may be too great. Moving out may be your only alternative.
Most people, however, have a choice. Should you stay at home while you study, or move out? Here are some pros and cons to help weigh up your options.
Career Advice - To stay at home or move out.
Pros for staying at home
- It’s cheaper. You won’t have to worry about paying bills, rent and food.
- You’ll be able to spend the money you save on a car, socialising, impulse buys, travelling, and other non-absolutely-essential things.
- Home cooked meals. You may cook a few nights a week, but out of home, making dinner is up to you every night.
- Your family knows you. You can be moody, upset, removed, or just plain unmanageable, and you won’t be asked to leave. Housemates, However, are less tolerant of loud music and sulking in the lounge room.
- On the other hand, you know your family. You don’t have to deal with housemates you don’t know or don’t like.
- You don’t have to put friendships in jeopardy. It’s no fun to learn your friends’ annoying habits, and have to turn into ‘mum’ because they’re not doing their fair share or respecting your way of living.
- There’s already a routine for washing, cooking, cleaning, dishes, and other chores at home. You won’t have to deal with the hassle of drawing up a roster – and having to enforce it.
- If you live as a resident on campus, you get one room to yourself. One room to fit all of your belongings. A bed, desk, clothes, other furniture, anything you take out of home with you. One small, measly bedroom and a communal bathroom.
Cons for staying at home
- Less freedom. It’s unlikely that your family will welcome a twenty-four hour party lifestyle. You may have a curfew to deal with, and your family might actually check that you are studying.
- Living at home delays learning vital life experience: you can’t live at home forever.
- Dampens the mood if you bring home a special someone.
- Limits your independence. It can feel liberating to have your own private space, to do what you want, when you want, and to feel capable of running your own life.
- You won’t get the swingin’ party house you’ve always wanted, with the psychedelic black-light posters on the roof.
- You miss out on the unique experience of meeting strangers, and then learning all about their idiosyncrasies and quirks by living with them. It can be painful, but you can also make friends for life.
- You’re family may ask you to contribute to the weekly spending. This can feel like paying rent or bills as if you’re in your own place, but without the perks of living out of home.
- Housemates have more respect for personal space. Family members don’t tend to see a closed door as reason not to enter your bedroom.
Moving out of home can be one of the biggest adventures of your life. There’s the thrill of scouring the local neighborhood on hard rubbish day for ‘new’ furniture, consoling friends or housemates at midnight when they’re having relationship trouble, and cooking two minute noodles for dinner four nights in a row or creating an amazing culinary spread out of what’s left in the cupboard and half a bottle of wine. You have freedom, independence, privacy, and responsibility. And there’s no life experience like remembering you haven’t paid the final notice when the electricity flickers out on a cold winter night.
But moving out can also be stressful for a student. You may face financial difficulties, lack of time to study, serious personality clashes with housemates, an overload of responsibility, a limit on your social life due to lack of funds, and homesickness. Staying at home has its advantages. There’s nothing like a hard day at uni, where you’ve studied until your brain has liquefied, and going home to the smell of dinner and a hot shower you don’t have to pay for.
If you’re uncertain, weigh up the pros and cons. And if you just can’t decide, then relax with the knowledge it’s not an irreversible decision. You’re family is likely to give you back your old room if you need to move back home, just as you’re able to choose to move out whenever you know the time is right.
What are you thinking? Stay at home to avoid more debt than HECS, or stray from under the wings of your family to embrace life as a free, perhaps somewhat impoverished, student.
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