AIBU to expect my adult son to move out so I can finally live the life I've always dreamed of?

[YourUmberOP]

AIBU to expect my adult son to move out so I can finally live the life I've always dreamed of?

I'm after some honest opinions because I'm increasingly frustrated with the situation and wondering whether I'm being unreasonable.

A bit of background. I've worked continuously since I was 16. I've never had a gap year, never had that period of freedom to just go and explore the world and do the things I've always wanted to do. I've always put everyone else first, or something life threw at us has taken priority.

Living by the coast, having a boat and being able to sail and explore Europe has been my dream since I was six years old. This isn't some recent midlife crisis or a whim I've suddenly developed. My late husband and I always planned to do this together. It was something we'd always talked about and intended to make happen.

My husband died four years ago. That's really the only thing that's changed about the dream. I still want the same life, even though my world has fundamentally changed.

My son is 20, nearly 21, lives at home and works full-time. He earns around £2,000 a month after tax. I've explained that I want to relocate and that he needs to start making plans to get his own place. This isn't news to him; we've been discussing it for months.

His only regular fixed outgoings are car insurance (£160) and a phone contract (£40), plus the usual costs of maintaining and running his car. I charge him £300 a month board, which I've actually been putting into a savings account for him. He doesn't know about this, as I want him to have a little nest egg when he eventually moves out.

Even allowing for fuel, food (which I buy all his meals to take to work anyway) and personal spending, he has considerable scope to save. He has £1,500 each month after his fixed bills and board. We're now four months down the line and he's saved virtually nothing.

i personally earn about the same as him so I know how to make money stretch.

There seems to be no urgency, no real plans and no apparent recognition that he needs to start taking responsibility for his own future. I appreciate that I shouldn't be the one saving for him, but equally I'm trying to make sure he has a decent start when he does leave home.

I understand that renting is expensive and that moving out for the first time can be daunting. I'm not expecting him to buy a house or live in luxury. A room in a shared house would be a perfectly reasonable starting point.

I, on the other hand, have very little tying me to where I currently live. I moved here 12 years ago for my husband's work. I have no real friends here, I hate my job and there are very limited alternative employment opportunities locally.

Most of our friends were through my husband's work and, since he passed away, we rarely speak or meet socially. I feel like I'm in a bit of a hole here.

My son is settled. He has lots of friends locally through school and work and understandably doesn't want to relocate with me. I understand that, and I'm not expecting him to give up his social life and move somewhere he doesn't want to live. But I don't think his preference to stay here should automatically mean I have to stay here too.

There's another reason I feel quite strongly about doing this sooner rather than later. My parents are getting older. Realistically, I know there may come a point in the next 5–10 years when I'll have caring responsibilities for them. I want to make the most of the time I have now, while I'm still young enough, fit enough and able to sail, travel and explore.
If I put everything off for another five or ten years, I could easily find myself having spent my entire adult life looking after everybody else, only to reach a point where I'm too old or have too many responsibilities to do the things I've dreamed about since childhood.

It sometimes feels as though I've spent my entire adult life fulfilling responsibilities and putting other people's needs first. I don't want to reach retirement age having never actually lived the life I've spent decades dreaming about.
I don't want to spend my life waiting for the next family responsibility to finish before I'm allowed to start living.

I love my son and I'm not looking to abandon him. But he's an adult, he's earning a decent wage and I think it's reasonable to expect him to start building an independent life.

I've worked since I was 16, raised my child, dealt with losing my husband and kept everything going. I see this next chapter as my opportunity to have the gap year or two I've never had.

So AIBU to say that I'm moving ahead with my plans and that he needs to make alternative living arrangements, rather than continuing to put my life on hold because he hasn't bothered to save?
At what point do you stop organising your life around your adult children and start living it for yourself?
And more importantly, how do I actually get this message across to him? Do I set a firm deadline and stick to it, regardless of whether he's saved enough? What do I do if that deadline arrives and he still hasn't made any effort?

I genuinely don't know whether I'm being unreasonable, whether I'm expecting too much or whether I just need to accept that it's time to put myself first.

I suppose that's why I'm asking the internet!

To be devastated that a 25 year old moved out suggests that you had nothing in your life other than the home and family

I would have had plans for her bedroom before the last boxes were packed (reptile room!)

Craft room when mine moved out 👍🏼

It was the same with mine. In their 30s now and independent, but they always had that safety net and a place to come back to. They still do.

You are being a bit unreasonable.

Its not unreasonable to want a life once your DC are adults, no. But you have done things for yourself. Children involve lots of hard work and responsibility, but I would argue its a choice you make for yourself. You presumably chose to have a child over travelling and sailing, you havent sacrificed your life for others.

Tbh its sounds like your making a bit of a fuss over nothing at this stage. Its over 2 years away, theres no urgency from your DS to save because there is no urgency. Its quite normal for a 20yo to live at home these days if they havent gone to uni, and he maybe slightly behind others given he lost his dad in his teens. Hes got a decent job for a 20yo, hes paying board.

How old are your children?

Especially alter your update, I think YANBU at all - go and live your life!

As a pp pointed out , this is your problem -

2028 will feel like forever away for a person in their early 20s. What does he need to be doing now if he has over a year to sort it out?

Ime (x3 - it can be frustrating!) life is lived almost day to day at this age. The future is a lifetime away and will take care of itself! I’m sure that once your house is on the market, whenever that is, it will focus his mind. I appreciate that it will then be too late for him to start saving in earnest, but he has a decent job, and the money you’ve put aside for him (I wouldn’t mention it!), so he’s not going to end up on the streets, and he must know you’ll always have his back.

@YourUmberOP he is still young and I don’t think he is on that a decent a wage the way things are these days . He will be living from home age to wage in today’s world . I’d spend more time getting my son started instead of planning to care for elderly parents . That’s not your job. Your job is to be a parent and you moved your son there .
I think you will regret pushing your son away. .

I think it would be a good idea to make your son responsible for more of his own living expenses (even if you add more to the amount you are saving for him each month). Otherwise it's going to be a huge shock when he doesn't suddenly have £1500 every month for 'fun'. Also ensure he knows how to (and actually does) cook and clean. 2 or 3 years in the future is going to feel a long way off for him.

Imagine telling your kid to fuck off so you can live the life you want

I mean, fair enough but the wording of it, Jesus Christ

Do you understand the paperwork involved with running an HMO? from fire doors ro registration with council?

Leaving home for uni is so different though. Its a very protected environment, ready made accomodation, friends, a loan, lots of people in exactly the same boat at the same time. Plus you dont really "leave home", you still have holidays

I "left home" for uni aged 18, but my parents home was still there. I then always had friends available to live with. By the time I actually rented on my own Id had so much practice, uni is a very gently start to adulthood and is absolutely not the same as your mum moving abroad and selling the family home and living in a HMO

Yes, it's a very different circumstance, isn't it?

I don't think it is different

this op wants to move elsewhere, the son can visit just like he would visit hime at uni. He is nearly 21 so would be finishing uni anyway and possibly staying in a different city to get a job.

The alternative is he leaves all his friends, job and moves to another place with his mum - both want to live in different places and what should either of them not make their own plans

A friends mum did this when she was away at uni, put the house on the market and just got it done. Communicated what was happening and storage arrangements were made for my friends belongings, and she had time to arrange a room in a house to rent when she graduated. Get it done, time to live life for you! It definitely caused some friction for a bit as my friends nose was put out of joint, but soon resolved.

The ages between twenty and twenty-three is when many parents and young adults naturally go their separate ways so that the youngsters can attend university, or travel, or work abroad. It’s an entirely natural process in which the YA gradually learn through trial and error to depend on themselves.

Just because it’s the adult moving away in this instance doesn’t mean it’s that different; op has stated very clearly that, “ I love my son and I'm not looking to abandon him” and her update makes it clear that she won’t be leaving before her son is twenty-three anyway.

Technologically and WhatsApp in particular nowadays also means that we can see and talk to our loved ones every day if we wish when far apart.

In my parents’ era, my father left school at fourteen, could recite poems in Latin and could do advanced algebra mind you, worked six days a week and was married and supporting a family aged twenty-three,

I am entirely unconvinced that allowing young people such extended adolescences where they are still half supported practically, financially and emotionally by their parents well in to their late twenties and beyond in some cases, is doing them any good at all, because it is a protected fantasy world which gives them an entirely false sense of independence which is no where near the reality when someone else is subsidising their rent, paying for boiler and car repairs and cooking for them ever night.

It gives them too much time on their hands in which mh problems can develop frankly, and gives them unrealistic expectations of living in luxury at home being pandered to, which makes it even harder to face the realities of independent living in future and it deprives them of skills and satisfaction they could be developing to make them in to good practical partners and parents themselves.

Sorry, but ultimately in life, even within a loving family set up, we are alone and dependent on, and accountable for ourselves. I think truly loving parents prepare their young adults gradually and properly for that and encourage them to have a proper taste of independence.

I think more mh problems are caused by young people having no confidence in their own abilities to thrive independently and not being able to trust themselves to survive the ups and downs of life in a harsh world.

Every child is different and some may need parental support for longer than others, and home and parents can always be available in a crisis, but home isn’t always a physical place, it can be wherever your nearest and dearest happen to be at that moment, and if that’s a yacht off the French coast somewhere, what’s wrong with that?

So you put your life on indefinite hold so they always have a (the same) place to come back to? How sad.

18, 20, 24, 28, 29 and 30.

Tell him you’re putting the house on the market in six months. He could save 6k by then which is a rental deposit for a flat easily.
Then do it!

“Fuck off son, I might have to take care of your grandparents soon”

Also you’re expecting him to move out but he doesn’t know he’s got that money you’ve saved from his board money. And that’s before we get into him losing his dad restively recently.

YABU

This sounds like a contest over the vibe that takes precedence in the environment you share with him.

Sounds like he's got control of the vibe knob on your stereo - some folk are very good at that, me included - and he's keeping it at the chill y'all end of the spectrum.

There will be no urgency unless you wrest control of the vibe knob and up it a notch. Do something tangible & definitive - it has to be physical, not spoken - and impossible to misinterpret.

I love sailing but I couldn't do this. My kids will have a home for life, should they ever need one, for as long as I'm alive.
I'd look for some other way to fulfill your dream.
Rent the house to him?
Get a job sailing other people's yachts from port to port?

Of course home is always a physical place....

I am in two minds about this.

Overall YANBU to want this time just for you.

Might your DS feel that most of his childhood was spent with his father’s care dominating the agenda, and that he is thinking that “finally” (to use his word) he might be top of your list?

Also, I’m not sure that working is “doing things for everyone else” - even if you don’t love your job, it’s something you chose.

I appreciate what you say re your parents but I would say you have a higher responsibility to an adult son than to elderly parents - alway a

You are absolutely not being unreasonable FFS. Your son is 20, not 12, and has a decent income. You need to pursue your dream.....you are not abandoning him, just moving. Time he found a flat share.

We are all different, but my DD will always have a home with me if I can offer one & she wants one. I hope she will want to have an independent life & would encourage it but if she wants to stay she can.
In your situation, I dont see why you dont start moving things on. Start looking for properties in the new area & put the house on the market if you own it. Discuss what your son wants, if you are willing for him to move with you. Does he want to come or get his own place in your current area? If you dont want him to join you explain he will have to look at getting his own place. Once he sees you making practical steps towards moving he will have to start making plans. Moving doesnt happen instantly. He has time to research & save. Whether you offer him the opportunity to come with you is up to you (I would), but regardless there is nothing to stop you taking the next steps.