OK, so, I'm curious how in line with most other people my thinking is on this...
Onodrim and I began seeing one another December of my junior and her sophomore year of high school. My first year of college, I was about an hour away while she remained home and in HS. The past 4 years, we have been about 2.5 hours apart except in summer. At first we would see each other maybe once every two months...these past two years have seen an increase in the regularity of us seeing each other because she now has a car at school with her. This year, we probably saw each other, on average, once every 2 or 3 weeks. Anyway, the point really is that 5 of 6.5 years of our relationship have been spent apart and we're well beyond having that effect the quality of our relationship.
Onodrim is getting a Bachelor of Music degree as a vocalist. That means she will be auditioning for lots of shows while generally working some other relatively crappy job. At least initially. Right now, she has a job lined up working as a teller at the bank her dad is a VP at, located at the northwest edge of Chicago. It also means that she'll be finding a vocal coach to continue her training which could end up costing about $300 a month.
I'm getting a BA in Political Science and have...no idea what I'm going to do with it
Basically, that means I'll just apply to everything I can...eventually I may decide to get teaching certification in secondary education or a master's or something, but not immediately. Both of us are going to private universities and, collectively, will probably have about $150k in student loans to pay off.
So, we're faced with a decision: we can start living together, or we can live at home with our parents for a year or two to save money. Now, I've already established that the living apart thing is not detrimental to our relationship. In fact, our parents live about 10 minutes from each other, so it would certainly be an improvement from 2.5 hours!
Living with my parents would not be a terrible experience. They're relatively easy to get along with. Ono's parents are a different story, but if it's anything like during our summer breaks she'd just spend most of her free time during the day and evening with me at my parent's house anyway
Our parents live in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, about 45-90 minutes from the city (depending on traffic). This is something to be considered since ono would need to drive at least half an hour to work at the bank and also since most of her auditions will likely be in the city. Aside for the commute for onodrim, there's also the fact we'd just like to live in the city right now.
Now, because I have a lease with a roommate for an apartment right now that doesn't end until August 31, we couldn't look for an apartment in the city if we were going to do that until then. But as an example (and a place we would be interested in if there are openings when we start looking), there is
this apartment we found on craigslist which is located in a
pretty decent location too. It has a pretty
livable floorplan and the
amenities aren't bad either.
For the sake of argument, and because it's pointless to consider if the following isn't true, let's say that ono and I could afford to live there and pay our bills and loan payments and such, but little else. Remember, $400 a month, plus electricity, plus food, plus loan payments, plus health insurance, plus all those other things that are necessary and important adds up. We'd be living together and enjoying that, of course, but we would not have much money beyond what we need. Another thing to keep in mind is that if ono were to move in with me without us being married, her parents would be quite upset and would be *much* less likely to help out if we ever did run into a situation where we needed extra money, and my parents are taking care of my grandpa who has alzheimer's all by themselves among other things so they don't have money to throw around by any means.
The other option is to live at home with our parents for a year or two. They would provide rent-free shelter, food, internet, etc. With that $600/month or more that each of us saves by not having to pay rent, electricity, food, etc, we could possibly pay twice the amount for each loan payment, causing it to develop less interest and help us get debt free more quickly (neither of us even owns a credit card, let alone has credit card debt). We would also quite possibly have extra money which we could put into an IRA, something we may not have the luxury of doing if we were to live together. But, we would be spending another year, probably two, living apart, making it about 9 years that we'll have been together before we move in with one another. We would also be living in the suburbs, and while we don't have anything specifically against the suburbs, we'd prefer to live in the city right now.
So, I think I've covered everything...what would YOU do?