When Mary Walden graduated from college and took her first full-time job, she lived with a roommate. Both were young teachers with little money, and they thought they could share many of the expenses and cut our total living costs almost in half. She asks her husband, N.C. State University economist Mike Walden, whether this strategy still works today.<\/p>\n
Dr. Walden responds:<\/p>\n
\u201cWell it\u2019s interesting you asked this question now … because we had a new study just released by the federal government that analyzed data for young individuals — by young, I mean between the ages of 21 and 29 — on this particular question (can two of those individuals live more cheaply than separately?) and the answer is, as you might expect, yes for some expenses, no for other expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what you found \u2013 yes, you can live cheaply, more cheaply for things like food and shelter. And that makes sense. I know you and your friend rented an apartment, so the common space, living room, kitchen, you were sharing. You each had your own room, but that came out to less per person than if both of you have had your own apartment.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso in terms of food, there are lots of foods you can share. Oftentimes \u2026 you can cook more cheaply if you make it in quantity. So for food and shelter, definitely, the data still support the idea that you can live more cheaply together than apart.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut other expenses like transportation, health care, entertainment, the recent study found, no, that you didn\u2019t save money by two people living together. And, again, this makes sense because those expenses tend to be more individualized. Transportation, unless you can share rides to work, if you\u2019ve got \u2026 to work in two different places, you both have to have transportation. Health care, of course, is an individualized expense. And even entertainment, if you have different tastes in entertainment, you\u2019re going to do your own thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think it really depends on what expenses you\u2019re looking at, whether the answer to \u2018Can two live more cheaply as one?\u2019 is a yes or is a no.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"When Mary Walden graduated from college and took her first full-time job, she lived with a roommate. Both were young teachers with little money, and they thought they could share many of the expenses and cut our total living costs almost in half. She asks her husband, N.C. State University economist Mike Walden, whether this strategy still works today.\n\nDr. Walden responds:\n\n\u201cWell it\u2019s interesting you asked this question now ... because we had a new study just released by the federal government that analyzed data for young individuals -- by young, I mean between the ages of 21 and 29 -- on this particular question (can two of those individuals live more cheaply than separately?) and the answer is, as you might expect, yes for some expenses, no for other expenses.\n\n\u201cI think what you found \u2013 yes, you can live cheaply, more cheaply for things like food and shelter. And that makes sense. I know you and your friend rented an apartment, so the common space, living room, kitchen, you were sharing. You each had your own room, but that came out to less per person than if both of you have had your own apartment.\n\n\u201cAlso in terms of food, there are lots of foods you can share. Oftentimes \u2026 you can cook more cheaply if you make it in quantity. So for food and shelter, definitely, the data still support the idea that you can live more cheaply together than apart.\n\n\u201cBut other expenses like transportation, health care, entertainment, the recent study found, no, that you didn\u2019t save money by two people living together. And, again, this makes sense because those expenses tend to be more individualized. Transportation, unless you can share rides to work, if you\u2019ve got \u2026 to work in two different places, you both have to have transportation. Health care, of course, is an individualized expense. And even entertainment, if you have different tastes in entertainment, you\u2019re going to do your own thing.\n\n\u201cSo I think it really depends on what expenses you\u2019re looking at, whether the answer to \u2018Can two live more cheaply as one?\u2019 is a yes or is a no.\u201d\n\n "},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Mary Walden graduated from college and took her first full-time job, she lived with a roommate. Both were young teachers with little money, and they thought they could share many of the expenses and cut our total living costs almost in half. She asks her husband, N.C. State University economist Mike Walden, whether this strategy still works today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-perspective"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19775"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=19775"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}