Some say 18 your on your own, some say 21 and some different ages. I left home with two paper bags of old clothes the day I graduated from the eighth grade and been taking care of me and mine since.

Bryce

With the governments' endless support programs, is any one really ever on their own?

My son is 18 now. He bought his own truck at 16, pays his gas, insurance, and maintenance parts. He has spent the last four years working at a riding stable where he guides rides, takes care of horses, hays, and does everything that needs to be done. During the summer he was working 14-17 hours a days, generally 6 days a week. He joined the Army National Guard last summer and did his Basic Training that year, did his Senior year in high school, and just returned from Artillery School of Friday. He's at work today. Will leave for college on the 16th. He's a working machine outside the home. We'll help with college, but so far, he's been paying his way all through high school. Very proud of him, as I see other his age barely working a cash register or having cars and things given to them by their parents.

We are thinking about it house is paid off but there is still insurance and taxes to the tune of just under 300 a month figure in labor and headache an apartment kind of looks good

my 22 yr old tends the missile fields of N. and S Dakota.
20 yr old works for a gas field specialist in town,makes awful good money,but still lives in my basement.

i'm proud of them both,big time.

Children of people on this forum are the exception not the rule. Most are raised right, the old-fashioned way. There are still a lot of good kids out there of all ages.

There are few jobs for kids these days, with so much being automated, that's especially true in the farm country, where as a kid I could keep busy making money all summer but most everything is done by machines now.

Today's kids will not know how amazing it feels to have a pocket full of cash after a long week of haying, or the feeling of jumping from the rope swing into the gravel pit after 9 dirty, sweaty hours of walking beans or picking rock. Too bad for them.

Sounds about right

Well put Bernie

33, moved out at 18 to attend college, my parents helped me out a bit but I still had to take out some loans. After college took a job that was part design part running machines, worked up from there. Did move back in with mom and dad at 25 when I moved back to the area I grew up in, lived with them for a year until I got engaged, then moved in with her for 6 months until we closed on our house. Most of the people my age I know went to college and work in STEM, bought homes and are starting to have kids. Most of us graduated college in the 07-10 range, jobs were hard to come by we had loans to pay and it took a few years longer than we all planned to get on our feet, and out from under loans, and be able to secure a mortgage.

I hear you!. i never got an allowance , but i had all the above chores workd on my grandpas farm next door and my father sheep farm. and trapped when fur had value in the 70's on up.
i'm not either mad or unhappy. i have never once asked for free cash or handouts, if i borrowed some money from Dad a couple times he was paid back.
if any of you are like me ,were a dying breed.
as one person stated on TV once. " I weep for your future"

I remember about 4th grade dad asking if I wanted an hourly wage at the farm, or just work and when I needed money he would give me some. That didn’t take long to figure out. I remember thinking if I ask for money from him more than once a month I’d have to here a speech on financial responsibility. I think I started out at $.50/hour. After college I came back in 98 and started full time at $4.75. Wife and I bought our first house then.

I forgot to mention I also worked at a local gun club my dad was a member of. I was a trap boy. I used to sit in the little concrete house and feed the clay pigeon targets onto the thrower. One hundred twenty-five per squad, fifteen-twenty squads on a Friday night and maybe double that on a Sunday monthly league shoot. I got paid a quarter per squad. Later, I became a scorekeeper; the guy that pushes the button when a shooter calls for a bird then marks whether or not it was a hit (dead bird) or miss (loss). It was double the trap boy rate at $0.50 per squad.

Today it is all automated, no more trap boys.

That industriousness seems to have rubbed off on my daughters. All three worked for me on my construction crew at one time or another. That was more to teach them the value of a good education than anything else; "this is the kind of work you can expect to do the rest of your life if you don't educate yourself."

My middle daughter was my trapping partner for more than then years. Not many girls her age could claim the number of fox she skinned. She also mucked out stalls at a local stable in exchange for riding lessons. All three turned out to be hard-working, industrious young ladies willing to, and capable of, paying their own way through life. I'm very proud of them.

All three are millennials.

just right, that's when I fathered my daughter........took me THAT LONG to find the right woman, we were married almost 1 yr when the baby was born.

....oh, and I beat my Dad by 4 yrs.......since he was 39 when I was born and only married 2 yrs.

Lots of great millennials out there. Too bad for them they will have to pick up for the many slackers we baby-boomers have produced.

When I hear so many in one of the media sources gleefully bash the millennial generation, I can't help but wonder why they never talk about the generation that raised these folks............. Talk about refusing to lay the blame where it belongs.....

I am sorry it took so long for you to find the right spouse but here is where I am coming from.

I got lucky and found my wife at 20 had 3 kids by 25

finding the right woman is definitely needed but the risk of births past 35 climbs exponentially. sometimes this is out of our control and some of it is life decisions, but so many just party and pretend they will live forever for much too long.

if family is generations of people who partied till reality caught up with them before settling down and having kids or if kids weren't an intentional decision , that is very sad.

if having a family is a important thing to a person they need to quit partying and get on the task of finding a proper spouse to start a family with , not leaving it to be a last minute thing as their biological clock starts running down.

it is very sad that the pool of good souses is so low these days but another sign of the values of many people in current culture.

when I was a kid the oldest man with my last name had been 64 that is now 84.

I know my dad missed a lot hardly knowing his grandfathers , luckily he had an exceptional step grandfather who who taught him alot.

when you start off with a 64 year life expectancy in mind , it can change some life decisions maybe put a little pressure on not wasting time.

I look back at all the time I spent with my grandparents especially grandfathers and what I learned from them I can't imagine the scores of knowledge and experience that would be lost to generation after generation of grandparent less children. they might start to look an awful lot like much of present society.

our connection to our past and to our elders is huge in shaping who we are.