What's the Ideal Age to be Engaged?

Certainly if you marry later you'll go into it with more wisdom. One trade-off is in the generation gap. My parents had me at 33. We had our daughters at about the same age. I'm going to be a bit morbid here. The down side is that the kids may not get to know their grandparents and may even spend a good part of their life with parents gone. My last grandparent died when I was about 14 and my brother was 6. My father died before my first child was born. That may not be average, but it's also not rare. Other families have kids young and there are 5 generations alive at once. Think about how old you want to be when your youngest kids are grown. Other than that, I don't think there is a right age.

The later you wait the better off you'll be. People change a LOT in their 20s nowadays and if I had to recommend an age to even start thinking about getting married, I'd say 30 would be it. Personally though, I think marriage is an antiquated custom and its time has come and gone. It may be right for some, but if divorce rates are an indication it's obviously not right for about half of Americans. The fact that people still keep doing it just says there are a lot of hopeless romantics out there IMO, or people settle and later regret it (evidenced by the high divorce rates). How's that saying go about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome? That's my take on marriage.

My advice if you think you've found "the one" is to move in together for a few years and see if you can even tolerate being in each others space all the time. After the first year or two is when a lot of younger couples call it quits because they just can't deal with the other person that much of the day.

The second reason to wait and live together a few years is you're probably still renting anyway, so the fiscal benefits of marriage haven't manifested yet (namely the tax write-off of a home mortgage).

It all depends on the people involved, what they're willing to give up and do for the other person. My mom was 20 and my dad was 18 when they got married and had me. They are still together and love each other very much. But many other couples get married young or old and get divorced. It's not the age, but it really is the people.

I would say over 18

That comment was totally opinionated. If 24 works for that person, then go with it! I was engaged at 24 and married at 25.

It all depends on the person. If you have your life figured out, have a steady job, and are happy with who you are as a person then why not. If the relationship is healthy and both people are in love and want to commit to marriage then for goodness sake who cares how old you are. I don't think any age is too young. Well under 20 probably is. Too many people these days base things on age or how long you've been together and such. I'm not saying marry someone you've known for a month. Yeah there are a lot of divorces these days but its because people are selfish and stupid. Marriage is supposed to be a lifetime commitment. People now go into it thinking, "If things don't work, I can get a divorce. " Yeah you can, but that type of attitude is probably not a healthy one to take into a marriage. Point is, age is not the issue. It's attitude.

Being engaged young doesn't mean your getting married right away. My mom&dad were engaged at 19, and were married at 24 - and they're still together and happy today. So if your in love, your in love & you can't tell your heart to stop

24 is not too young to be engaged at all. As a general rule, I'd say that to get engaged before the age of 21 may be a bad idea. I've known no one who got engaged at 20 or younger that really knew what they were doing. However, once you hit 21, most engagements of people I know have seemed to work (at least for a while. Longer than the under-21s, which often don't seem to work even from the start from what I've seen).

It's kind of an arbitrary line, and there can of course be exceptions. I'd say there is no ideal age to be engaged, just when you have had enough experience with your partner that you know the two of you can handle anything together. You shouldn't get engaged before your first big fight, you shouldn't get engaged if you've never had any relationship troubles to work though, you probably shouldn't get engaged unless you've been together at least a year or two, etc. But I'd say the "ideal age" would vary from person to person and from couple to couple.

No I don't think 24 is too young to get engaged