- What is the American dream of family life?
Since the early 20th century in the cultural imagination,
young people say “goodbye” to their parents at age 18
and strike out on their own to create the life they want.
- I've been on my own for the last 10 years or so.
And for me,
I thought this is like what being, you know,
a successful adult is.
But my wife and I,
we started our marriage with $105,000 of student debt.
We couldn't afford a house. We couldn't afford childcare.
It kind of felt like you either get one or the other.
But then my dad actually proposed,
we all try living together.
- Tae and his wife, Monnica,
are choosing multigenerational living
to fast-track their path to financial freedom.
But being around family, as we all know, isn't exactly easy.
- There is a lot of tension points
when you're enduring 24 hours of your parents
or your in-laws, but at the same time,
there's a lot of mutual benefit that comes from this.
- These are stories of people
reimagining the American dream
for a new generation.
- Oh my goodness. All these people.
- Mikey! - Yeah.
That's Mikey and Brother.
And then that's Peter’s sister.
- Tae, what did you say to
Monnica when you proposed to her?
- I have $87,000 in student debt.
Will you still marry me?
- You did not say that. Then I would have reconsidered.
- Tae and Monnica Kim
describe their wedding as big, unforgettable,
but expensive.
- This was 10 years ago.
- After the honeymoon,
as they settled into their new life together,
they wanted to flip their perspective on money.
- What's missing?
We started our marriage essentially
with $105,000 of student debt.
And, you know, up until that point, I personally would say,
didn't have good money management skills.
What we want to do as soon as possible
was to pay down the debt.
But at the same time, you know, like
being a young couple,
we were also wanting to have children.
- Tae and Monnica found themselves at the crossroads
experienced by a lot of new millennial parents.
- You know you can have the baby,
and then you can have, you know,
the very expensive childcare,
or we can try to pay down this student debt.
Our other option
is that one of us would have to quit our jobs,
and then postpone our debt paydown.
- Homeownership, another goal of the
soon-to-be growing Kim family,
seemed entirely out of reach.
- Homeownership, that's the symbol of the American dream.
- That was 10 years ago.
Today, they have two children,
careers they are both committed to,
they own a comfortable, accommodating home.
Oh, and what about that debt?
- We were able to pay off our student loans of $105,000
in three and a half years.
- So how’d they do it?
- I'm a 40-year-old guy living with my mom.
So the initial idea actually came from my dad.
When my dad proposed the idea, my initial reaction was like,
"There's no way. There's no way."
I didn't think it was the greatest idea,
but it was a workable idea.
- What made the idea a little bit sweeter
was that his father said that
Tae and Monnica could take ownership of the house.
- My parents had already put the down payment for this home,
but the cost of maintaining the house was expensive for them.
So he said, you know, "You guys can have the house,
just we get to come with the house forever—
in perpetuity, yeah."
So this is my office and our family room.
So this is where me, Monnica and the kids,
we normally hang out at.
- We have our bedroom, master bedroom
where Tae and I sleep, and we have the kids room over here.
- For my parents, the nice thing is
they have their own little area, they have their own bathroom;
it's a distance away from where we're at,
and then it feels like they have their own space.
This physical distance from where my parents are,
is very important.
To afford a home like this, I think would have taken us
at least a decade or more.
- But having your parents live with you while you raise
your own kids can be...challenging.
- Did you have any regrets
or second thoughts in that first year?
- Oh yeah, every day.
To be honest, we've had countless times where
we're actually looking at apartments or homes
that we were like, "All right. Like this is not gonna work."
Choice has a huge factor in a multigenerational household
because for both my parents and I,
we could have lived independently,
but with more limitations.
But then when we started living together,
it opened up more options.
What it came down to was there are trade-offs in order
to gain the benefit of living in a multigenerational household.
- Lack of privacy
or constant interruptions, unsolicited advice.
- How long will Jin-ho be playing soccer?
- Isn’t he too young to be playing? He should be older.
- My wife Monnica,
she is the hero of the story, right?
Like she's living with my parents.
- Combining households,
while complicated, has an obvious benefit.
You have one shared set of costs instead of two,
one insurance bill, one phone bill, one utility bill,
and everyone contributes to groceries.
And one of the biggest benefits
was that Grandma watched the kids
while Tae and Monnica both worked.
- We were able to grow our careers,
and that enabled us to maintain our income
and then pay off our debt.
- 'Hi, my name is Tae from Financial Tortoise.
In this video, I'm gonna break down
why multigenerational family may not be for you.'
I started my blog because I realized
the power of financial education.
I wanted to share that to the world.
After having lived with my parents
for eight years, there's a lot of ups and downs,
but I think I wanted to kind of normalize
that this is a way of living.
And at the same time,
there's a lot of financial benefit that comes from this.
- While growing out of the needs and values of our
current era, new trends in multigenerational
and intergenerational living
take their inspiration from living arrangements
that were not only customary
in the United States at the end of the 19th century,
but have been common throughout human history,
across cultures and countries.
And that points to a simple truth. The more people seem
to customize the American dream,
the more the roots of that dream,
what people are really after,
actually seems to remain the same.
- My parents emigrated from South Korea
to the United States to give my sister and I opportunities
that they didn't have. They sacrificed a lot in our youth
to kind of give us the American dream.
- Tae has come to realize through this experience,
that the American dream is subjective.
It varies from person to person.
- Monnica and I, the way we define the American dream
is the freedom and the flexibility
to be able to pursue our version of what dream is.
And for some people like
living with your parents at the age of 40
may not be the dream. But then for us, I think for me,
like this gives me an opportunity to
kind of give back to my parents,
and be able to take care of, you know, my parents
who've given me so much as I was growing up.
So that was almost 10 years ago, and we're still here.