Often on Reddit, people would talk about their personal finances: how much money they make, how they spend money, where they spend money, what financial problems they run into. Apparently, a lot of problems Redditors have seem to suggest they are completely alone in the world, or they may have a partner. That's it. No other family. It seems that the elderly parents don't even care what their grown-up kids are doing.

If old Mom and Dad have 3 kids in American suburbia, and those 3 kids get married 3 people and have kids of their own, and every family member lives in the same 4-bedroom 2.5 bathroom house. This would be called multi-generational extended-family living. All the adults of working age work outside the home or work remotely. Mom and Dad may be retired out of the workforce, so they would have plenty of time to care for grandkids and to make lunches for everybody and to go grocery shopping and to do meal-prepping and stuff. The family members have to pitch in and help each other finance a house outright, skipping the whole bank-loan/mortgage stuff. Then the family as a whole would own 2 houses, and the new house will be occupied by one child of Mom and Dad and his/her nuclear family; and the occupier of the new house just has to pay for property taxes and utilities, no mortgage whatsoever. Then all the working-age adults continue to pool money together to pay for another house entirely with cash, no mortgage. And another. That way, Mom and Dad would be empty-nesters again, and the grown-up kids would live with their own nuclear families.

But... here's the problem... WHO THE FUCK DOES THIS???

Are you willing to share the same house with your nuclear family, plus your spouse's siblings and parents and nieces and nephews? Are you willing to wait for the toilet or shower time or brush-teeth time? And if you are a kid, you may take good care of your own toys, but your cousins destroy everything in their path, and their parents (your aunt and uncle) excuse them because they are so young.

If anything, there must be a social hierarchy in place, and people must respect the social hierarchy. People must respect elders; otherwise, such a living arrangement will not work. There must be rules in the house, and people must follow it. The grown-ups cannot hold disagreements in values either. They must hold shared family values, and the shared family values must be very strong, strong enough to hold the family together. Strong family values are inherently collectivist, which can run head-to-head with individualism. If the family chooses to sever ties with a "bad" family member, disowning the bad family member, then the family member will lose access to the family wealth as well, hence becoming poor. And this poor person may think that his/her family has wronged him/her, and that he/she is completely innocent.

Anyway, I think multi-generational extended-family living does work for some families/households; and when it does work, people all living together on the same family compound, it has a lot of benefits. There is a lot of community. Maybe, if most families live multi-generationally with extended relatives, then people will be able to pool their money together and have greater purchasing power. They will be able to buy a house with cash instead of taking out a mortgage. They will be able to afford a college education outright, in cash, but the elders must be able to influence the younger person's decisions, and the younger person must be willing to listen and take that into consideration instead of going for a random degree in Underwater Basket Weaving.