Why you should move back home after you graduate

There’s a lot of bullshit you have to deal with when you move back home: you lose the respect of your friends, you become the butt of every joke. They’re laughing at you when you almost bring home that guy from Infernos but then bottle it in case your mum hears. All that’s left to talk about is your commute, how many children were screaming on it and how many trains you had to wait on the platform for. Everyone knows how much you hate the Central line, and they’re getting pretty annoyed you keep on going on about it.

But I am here to finally say: there’s nothing wrong with living at home when you graduate. In fact, it’s a shame you don’t. It’s better than living in Zone 1, better than seeing your friends every day and better than bringing randoms home for drunken fumbling.

Why? It’s about more than just saving money on rent. It’s about going home to a nice, clean house with lovely food. It’s about still being able to go out, but when you wake up hungover, there’s a chance your mum might bring you some toast and a cup of tea. It’s about coming to the realisation that you’d rather hang out with your dog than people. And that’s okay.

The rest of your friends moved swiftly on with their first payslip, barely scraping together enough to pay their overpriced flat the size of a broom cupboard and feel like they are superior because of their independence.

Well, independence isn’t a bad price to pay for comfort. Your childhood bedroom might not be glamorous, it might not be sexy, but damn is it comfortable.

At first you miss living with friends. You feel like you should be sociable. Ignore this. It will pass.

After spending all day with people and after 12 hours out of the house you just want to binge watch a trashy TV show cuddled up to your dog. Your mum might even bring you a cup of tea once in awhile. This is the life, you think.

After a long day at work, there’s no need to detour to the big supermarket on your way home because you haven’t bought food in three weeks and you’ve run out of the tins of soup you were surviving on.

Instead of this, you can go straight home and if you’re lucky, dinner will be waiting for you. If you’re slightly less lucky you will make something yourself, but the ingredients will be ready, in your fully-stocked fridge, and they probably won’t be Sainsbury’s Basics.

Let’s go back to your friend in the broom cupboard: they’ve arrived home late, lugging their pitiful shopping. Once they’ve made something edible out of it, one of the housemates they found on the internet who’s actually turned out to be a bit weird reminds them that they have chores to do.

You might also have some chores to do, but a house full of grads in their early twenties means it will always be filthier and more disgusting than a family home.

It’s not just about being at home, though. The joy of living at home extends to work.

Sometimes the only thing that can get you through a long day of real life is going somewhere to buy a bloody nice lunch, so you can feel a bit less miserable as you eat it at your desk, and sometimes that costs more than £5.

Unless your family are super rich or you’re on a 30K starting salary and a borderline criminally cheap flat, as a grad this isn’t economically sustainable.

After your long day and nice lunch, you’ll probably want to go out for a drink or five with your mate who was up late scrubbing that questionable black stuff from the flat shower.

You can justifiably treat yourself to an overpriced cocktail stress-free. They will be having the one pint and then slouching off to get the bus home, leaving you to splurge on a taxi home because, well, you can.

A few years down the line you can move out and by that time it will be your turn to be smug because all your mates will have run out of money and be moving back home anyway.