As a group of people in our early twenties my friends and I often find ourselves talking about how bad we are at being adults. Truth is, we all find it hard but I reckon we’re all doing a pretty good job of it so far! I thought I’d share a few tips and tricks I’ve learnt about how to deal with being an adult and doing it in a way that keeps you alive and not in trouble. I’m not an expert, but I have managed to keep myself and two cats (and a boyfriend) alive for about four years now so I’ve figured out a couple of things!
Research everything you do before you do it.
I know it seems a bit overboard but I don’t mean going to the library and spending three hours looking up exactly how insurance works, just have a look into whatever you’re going for and make sure you understand it. So many people are getting credit cards and loans and buy now pay laters and I know for sure that when I first got a buy now pay later agreement I had no idea about all the things that go with it or how long it would end up taking me to pay it off. If you’re looking into getting a short term loan go onto sites that have things like a consumer credit index, if you want a credit card make sure to read all the small print and maybe ask someone more adult to explain anything you don’t understand. You might feel a bit stupid having to ask for help or use websites but you’ll feel a lot more stupid if you end up with debt you can’t pay off or an agreement you didn’t want!
Read your instruction manuals!
Sure, you don’t need to read it for the game you got for christmas but if you have a new appliance, read the manual! You might think you know how to work an oven until its 2am and you just wanted a pizza which you’re now scraping into the bin because you accidentally grilled a frozen pizza rather than cooking it. Its especially important for things like freezers and washing machines where things can go seriously wrong really quickly from the smallest of mistakes. Its boring and tedious but so is mopping your kitchen after the washer leaks everywhere because you didn’t realise you needed to put the door seal on yourself. If you’ve lost or just never had the instruction manual, there are sites like this one that has a lot of instruction manuals for free.
Just do it now.
The dishes, replying to a form, making an important phone call, what ever it is you’ll be able to thank yourself later for just getting it sorted now. If you don’t it’ll just end up worse, there are so many things that can happen when you’re living in your own place and paying your own bills and I can tell you from personal experience its not fun to end up paying for two TV licenses because you didn’t fill out the form they sent you. Don’t forget, don’t put it off, just get it sorted.
Do something fun.
Its easy to get caught up in all the ‘grown up’ things that have to be done on a daily basis, bills and deadlines and tidying, every now and again you need to just do whatever you used to do for fun. No matter how silly or childish you think it is, it’ll feed your adult soul to just do something that makes you laugh even when you’re just thinking about it in bed later. Do let life be boring. If you’re in the same adult phase as me, do something free! Go for a walk with someone who makes you laugh until your belly hurts or go to a museum with someone who will point things out you would never have noticed and tries to do impressions of how all the dinosaurs walked. Don’t know what to do? Have a look for something fun on trip advisor! Just have a great time, thats what adulthood is for.
-Dana
Carry on Beautiful! 
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