#2: Living Alone
Having an apartment entirely to yourself can look wonderfully ordinary from the outside: one bedroom, one kitchen, and nobody else’s dishes in the sink. Yet in expensive metropolitan areas, that privacy has increasingly become a premium lifestyle choice. Previous generations certainly had roommates and lived with relatives, but a single full-time income could more plausibly support a modest apartment in many places where doing so today requires a much larger share of earnings. Rising rents have encouraged younger adults to split housing costs with roommates, partners, or family members well beyond the age at which living independently was once culturally expected. That makes solitude itself surprisingly valuable. Living alone means choosing the temperature, decorating without compromise, inviting people over without consultation, and knowing that every square foot belongs exclusively to you. None of those privileges appears on a luxury advertisement, yet together they represent something increasingly expensive: complete control over personal space.
