Rob Kirk comes home after a grueling day teaching 30 rowdy fifth graders in South Florida. He’s been substitute teaching this class for the past month. He sits on the couch, where he sleeps every night, and puts on the latest episode of “House of Cards.”

Kirk is 23 years old, and holds a B.A. in English from the University of Florida. But until he finds a steady job, he will be calling his mom's couch home, like he has done for the past two years.

Kirk's story is common among Millennials, the now 20-somethings who watched their parents’ finances crumble during the recession, making this age group hesitant, or unable, to invest in big purchases like cars and homes, according to a March Pew Research Study. In households headed by young adults under 35, personal debt dropped by 29 percent between 2007 and 2010. Decreased debt may be a product of another trend among Millennials: staying single. Since Millennials are getting married later  than previous generations, the drive to buy a home is less of a priority. 

“Young people now have heard horror stories from their parents...about what can go wrong when you buy a house or car before you truly have the means to do it,” he said.

Despite the rising cost of college, millennials have managed to decrease their debt. About 60 percent of the 20 million Americans attending college take loans to cover college costs, according to American Student Assistance.

But Millennials like Kirk have found it is possible to stay out of debt while pursuing a college education, as long as "you’re willing to work to keep yourself afloat."

 “I worked full-time my last two years of college to make sure I didn’t have to take out any loans...I was able to graduate debt free. I refuse to start messing up my finances now,” said Kirk. 

Kirk's parents have taught him how to avoid debt and maintain financial security. He has no plans on buying a home or getting married until he is more financially stable.

Other Millennials agree that finding a job with a permanent paycheck is more important than finding a spouse, and often can be more difficult.

Maureen Lenker, 24, recently received her master's in history from the University of Oxford after studying cinema as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California. She now works at the USC library.

“I’m holding off on marriage. I have a lot of specific career goals in mind and...I definitely won’t get married before my thirties,” she said.

Lenker’s big dreams of working in the entertainment industry didn’t come to fruition after graduation, leaving her no choice but to return to her old queen-sized bed in her parents' house.

Lenker said that moving back home had its challenges. But she decided she needed to live at home to avoid potentially damaging financial circumstances.

 “I just started earning a steady paycheck after a year abroad, and that’s why I’m still [at home] trying to decide if I have enough money to move out on my own,” said Lenker.

While Kirk and Lenker both opted to live at home, other young adults are renting apartments to save money so they can buy homes later on. This spurred a rise in new apartments buildings, according to Richard Green, a real estate expert and professor of real estate at the University of Southern California.

“The share of all housing being built that are apartments are at the highest level in 40 years...it’s pretty clear we’re going through a pretty big demographic change,” said Green.

Lenker said she believes that buying a home may never be an option for her.

 “I’m going to rent. Since I want to work in a particularly volatile industry, I don’t know if I’ll ever buy a home,” Lenker said.

Green says Millennials are a unique generation because "they have faced economic trauma that more recent generations have not."

Kirk’s father lost his job as a teacher during the recession.

“My dad lost his job the same year I was going off to college. I knew then that I needed to work for my own education and save for the future,” said Kirk, who remembers his middle-class family falling apart after his father was laid off.

 Barbara Bergmann, a retired economics professor at American University, said Millennials’ spending habits are affected not only by their parents, but also by a decline in marriage among young adults--only 26 percent of Millennials are married.

 “The rate of marriage has gone down almost every year, and the average age of marriage keeps going up--so that has had an effect on [millennials’] expenditures,” said Bergmann.

Throughout the 1950s, the median age for women to marry was 20, while the median age for males was 23. But the 2012 Census shows these numbers have risen to 27 for women and 29 for men.

Millenials may be delaying marriage because of increased life expectancies, according to Vern Bengston, professor at Roybal Institute on Aging in the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California.

“We’ve added 30 years of life over the past 100 years. College students are delaying their expectation of when that relationship that will last for a whole lifetime should start occurring,” Bengston said.

According to The Knot Yet Report, sponsored by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, waiting until the age of 30 can increase the amount of money married women make per year. The report shows that college-educated women earn $18,152 more per year if they wait until at least 30 to get married. Green says he agrees the real estate market reflects a majority of single consumers.

“Single people don’t like to own homes and we have an enormous number of young, single people, so real estate developers are producing the housing for these people,” said Green.

If Millennials continue renting, developers will create even more rental housing.

“The important thing is we are building stuff again--the type of housing isn’t important. Housing was really depressed from 2008 to 2011, and we’ve finally started building again... that’s a good thing for the entire economy,” Green said.

Green says the long-term economic effects of Millennials’ decreased debt will be hard to define until members of this generation enter their thirties.

For the time being, Kirk will continue sitting on the couch each night while his mother cooks him his favorite dishes. Lenker said she will continue to spend time with friends while living at home and sleeping under her childhood comforter.