Moving Out Of Your Parents House – Guide For Graduates

Moving out of your parent’s house as a graduate is, for most of us, the main goal we are working towards. When originally writing this post, I was in the same situation. But now (July 2020), I’ve successfully moved out. I’ll be updating previous strategies and sharing what worked for me.

The following is a detailed step by step guide to help you move out of your parent’s house. Fair warning, it’s quite a long post.

I’ll be explaining the process in text here, but will provide a link to a spreadsheet to help calculate the figures from Step 2 onwards.

Having A Plan

So, as I said, having a moving out plan will help with achieving your moving out goal. The essence of this plan is figuring out how much money you earn and how much you can save each month. Aside from that, we need a financial goal or figure that will mark the completion of the goal.

Why is having a figure important? Well, first it’s useful for measuring progress – one of the 5 core elements in goal-setting. It provides a clear target to aim for.

For me, this was £6000. That’s enough money to live comfortably for 6 months. All expenses covered. I wouldn’t have to worry about rent, food, expenses, or anything else during this time. We’ll talk about that now.

The 6-Month Plan

£6000 for 6 months. Why 6 months? 6 months is what most tenancy agreements allow when paying upfront. This is particularly important if you don’t have consistent income.

My plan was to save money, find a single-person flat, and go monk mode for 6 months. Use that time to seriously work on this business. By moving out, I would force myself into a position of accountability. If by the end of the 6 months I didn’t have enough income to cover living, I’d have to get a job.

The other option for this plan was to reach a monthly income figure. To have enough monthly income to cover all expenses, primarily rent.

Why did I choose the first? As an aspiring digital nomad, the majority of my income needs to be from internet sources. How could I travel the world while working, if I had a job that required my physical presence? I couldn’t.

It would take far too long to grow the business to a point of regular stable income. Too much time to spend living with family. I thrive on independence; for best results, I needed to move out.

That leads us back to the 6-month plan. The 6 months of worry-free living would be used to put my head down and hustle. I could focus my attention and energy on growing my business and personal brand.

Like I said before, if I didn’t have enough income at the end of these 6 months, I’d have to get a job. I couldn’t move back in with my parents. I couldn’t live off savings any longer. I would need income to continue living, which would motivate me.

Your Plan

Without a plan, you won’t be able to successfully move out of your parent’s house. Step 1 is to make a plan.

First, consider what you want to do after moving out. Do you want to pursue a certain career path? Set up a business? Go travelling? The outcome will affect the plan.

Now think about what that would need. I can’t provide as much guidance here as I would like, as I don’t know your exact situation.

If you want to pursue a career in a well-paying area, maybe move to a big city like London and apply to jobs. Save up enough money to live for a few months, spend a lot of time networking and applying to jobs. Set up meetings and opportunities for your ideal career. Work on your skills, look at internships and get part-time work.

If you want to start a business, consider adapting my 6-month plan to your own life. If you want to go travelling, think about where and for how long. Do you want to become a digital nomad, or work 3/4 of a year to save for 1/4 of worry-free travelling?

The most important thing here is money. You need to figure out how much it will cost to carry out your plan. Big cities are expensive; you’d likely need a lot of savings or a job waiting for you. Travel can be cheap or expensive, depending on where you go and for how long.

From there, your path will become clear as you progress. Take the first step and the rest will begin to fall in place. Trust yourself, take the risk, and make the first step towards your plan.

Set Your Moving Out Figure (MOF)

Like with my £6k figure, you’ll need your own financial target to make the completion of your goal. You can either follow the same 6-month strategy that I planned on following, or tailor it to your own plan. I recommended getting out some paper and writing these figures down. A lot of maths follows.

Step 2. Research how much it would roughly cost you to live in your chosen area for 1 month. Include rent, bills, food, transport, etc.

Big cities will be more expensive, travelling less so. Now add some money on top of that for flexibility. Round it up to the nearest hundred for good measure.

Step 3. How long do you need to achieve the outcome of your plan? I thought 6 months would be enough time to set up my business. You may only need 3 months if you’re travelling. For most, this will be around 6 months – remember that’s the time on most tenancy agreements.

Step 4. Figure out your Moving Out Figure (MOF). For example:

Step 2: Expected expenses (£600 rent + £400 other expenses = £1000 total) x Step 3: Time required in months (6 months) = Moving Out Figure (£6000)

So far, this is assuming you’re following my plan of living off savings for a time. You might be able to get a stable job and regular income which you can use to move out. That’s great. I can’t provide as much insight into this option, as it’s not what I did, but here’s a little help.

Consider if you want to keep this current job or change paths when moving out.

If the former, you should be able to figure out the rest on your own. Figure out how much it will cost you to live each month, then see if your current income will cover this. If so, awesome, you’re set.

For the latter, continue to follow these steps. The formula from Step 4 will still apply. Your MOF figure will be very similar, except you’ll be able to achieve it faster with regular income.

Create Your Timeline

Step 5 is to plan your timeline. Now that you have a MOF, which is your end goal, you can begin figuring out how long it will roughly take.

What is your current financial balance? How much money do you have saved that can exist purely for the sake of saving to move out? Let’s call this our Starting Figure (SF). For the sake of example, our SF will be £0. Whatever your MOF is, subtract from it your SF to update your MOF:

MOF (£6000) – SF (£0) = Updated MOF (£6000)

From here on, when I refer to your MOF, use this updated number.

Now think about what your current sources of income are. How much free income do you have every month? Take off expenses such as your phone or food bill.

Let’s use Universal Credit as a base. In the UK, this is around £250/month. You might also have a side-hustle that brings in £100/month. But, your expenses cost you £50 each month.
In total, this is £300 that can go towards your MOF. This is your Regular Income (RI).

With a £6000 MOF, it would take 20 months of doing what you’re currently doing. Saving £300 a month and not spending. Yikes. But, this is a base. It should provide some motivation to increase your current earnings.

You work this out by taking your MOF and dividing by your RI:

MOF (£6000) / RI (£300) = Base Duration [BD] in months (20)

Step 6. Set a deadline or Target End Date (TED) – this is important. At what month and date do you want to reach your MOF? Be specific. Without a deadline, Parkinson’s Law can’t come into play. Work expands or contracts to fill the time available for its completion. Further, without a fixed deadline, you’ll take the slowest possible route to achieve your MOF. Not good.

Now we have to figure out the time between the current date and your deadline. Use this tool for help. Get this figure in months. This is your Deadline Duration (DD). For this example, the current date is February 1st, and our deadline is May 1st. The difference is 90 days or 3 months. Our DD is 3 months.

It’s likely your DD won’t be a round number. Don’t worry about that too much for now, but do round it to one decimal place if needed.

Take your MOF and divide by your DD to get your Monthly Required Figure (MRF):

MOF (£6000) / DD (3 months) = MRF (£2000 per month)

To achieve your MOF by your deadline, you need to have income equal to your MRF each month. Now all we have to do is get there.

Step 7. Increase your income if required. If your Regular Income (RI) is less than your MRF, you’ll need to make up the difference to move out by your deadline. This will help you find your Monthly Target Figure (MTF).

You can work this out using this formula:

MRF (£2000 per month) – RI (£300 per month) = MTF (£1700 per month)

Your goal is now to reach that MTF. What sources of income can you bring into your life? Let’s say you can get a few weekly shifts as a shelf stacker, for another £300 a month. That would increase your RI to £600 per month.

If not increasing income, your Base Duration (BD) would now be 10 months.

MOF (£6000) / RI (£600) = BD in months (10)

Your MTF would now be:

MRF (£2000 per month) – RI (£600 per month) = MTF (£1400 per month)

There’s still a way to go. £6000 in 3 months is a rather ambitious target, but your deadline (TED) and MOF might be different. Use the provided formulas and figure this out.

Consider if achieving your MTF is realistic. In our example, getting another £1400 a month is a significant target. Likely unrealistic. If this is the case, push your TED back and follow steps 5 through 7 again with a longer deadline.

Now you have two main options. Wait it out and meet your MOF in BD months, or strive to reach your MTF. Increase your monthly income as much as you can. The more you increase your monthly income, the faster you’ll reach your MOF.

Look for any and all sources of income that you can get. Even if temporary or one-off work, everything helps. Don’t worry about the quality of work or skill required. Your only focus is on moving out.

Having many of these figures is useful for your plan. They will help to see how much progress you are making towards your MOF. Further, set targets of £1000, £2000, etc up to your MOF. It will help you realise how much effort is required to reach your MOF.

Phew! Maths over. You can access a spreadsheet calculator for this process here.

Another Approach

After going through all of that, I’m going to tell you there’s a simpler approach. It worked for me. Find some friends and move in together.

Doing this will be much cheaper and will allow you to move out faster. I’ll talk more in a future post about who to surround yourself with since this post is long already.

You will still need some savings to do this. Follow the process from before. The difference here is that your MOF will likely be lower since the cost of rent will be lower.

Find some friends who you’d like to live with, look for shared housing, and do the relevant preparation. Yeah… much easier.

Wrapping Up

Once you have a much clearer idea of how to achieve your MOF, it comes down to just getting there. Keep working towards it, bring in as much money as you can / want, and enjoy the process.

Once you have a much clearer idea of how to achieve your MOF, it comes down to just getting there. Keep working towards it, bring in as much money as you can / want, and enjoy the process.

Yes, independence will be amazing, but you’ll enjoy it more once you’ve worked to get there. I believe in you. It will take time, so have patience and make the most of it.

I like thinking of living with your parents after uni as the ‘bubble after the bubble’. Uni was a bubble, not quite in the real world, and living with your parents is a little closer, but still not quite there. Hence, the bubble after the bubble.

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