To my younger self- take this with a grain of salt
Essentials to Surviving Adulthood
I feel like it’s so important to be engaged in your kid’s life and let them explore what they like. It’s also really important to guide them about social issues that they might have about themselves and others and help them understand what it’s like to be an adult. Up to the point they turn into an adult, they might not have the answer to what career they want yet, so at least prepare them and educate them on some things so they understand the world better first before they dive into the chaotic world of adulthood. Schools most likely don’t teach everything you need to know about basic life skills as an adult. Much of it takes some of your own research. A lot of things can be googled nowadays.
A typical teenager would go to high school with maybe only a vague idea of what they want to do in life. This manual is meant to save you guys a lot of the headaches that you will most likely face when you come out of high school. After all, once you finish high school and turn 18, you’re considered an adult.
This is written because I wish I’d known better when I was younger. Where to start…
The Financial Aspect:
As an adult, the end goal is to become successful with being independent- financially and such. The typical adult has an end goal of the following:
A home to raise a family
The typical, “complete” adult also needs the following essentials:
A phone
Money
A car
These are on top of the most essential things that need to be sustained in order to do a lot of things.
Basic physical goals and essentials:
A house
A car
A phone
The House
Unless you come from a rich family, you inherited a house already, your family set you up already, a typical adult coming out of high school would not be able to afford a house. I can almost guarantee that almost no typical teenager straight out of high school can because homes will cost anywhere from as low as $40k to a couple million dollars. The problem is that the average adult out of high school can’t afford this.
There are several types of “homes,” and I will list first from good investments to bad investments and why(good investments almost always cost the most money):
Basic understanding: A lot of types of properties can be bought with down payments, which are a portion of the property value. When buying properties, you will want to be familiar with:
Principal & interest: This is price to finish paying for the property and interest for borrowing from the bank.
Mortgage insurance: This is probably only needed when making less than typically expected down payment of 20%.
Property tax: Tax.
Home insurance: Banks can make this a necessity to protect the home, but it’s not always required for some homes.
HOA fees: Stands for home owners association fees, which are typical for townhomes, apartments, condos, and manufactured or mobile homes.
Utilities: electrical & water & gas
Houses: costs the most money. In states with expensive cost of living such as California, the lowest cost of decent homes cost about $470k and more. So a home costs that much, but, like a lot of families, you don’t have that much. So that’s why down payments are possible. Think about it. That’s $94k. You pay a portion of the house to buy the house, but the rest of it is paid by a bank, so they charge interest for borrowing their money. The higher down payments will result in less interest. It will also decrease the monthly payments due.
Even if you can put down payment(which should be about 20% of the home value), the monthly cost can be costly. Most people can afford this because they have a spouse that can support the home. The monthly payment to pay off the full price of the house includes more than just the home price and interest. It includes property tax,
Cost: ~$470k+ in expensive states or minimum about $130k in lower cost of living states.
Principal & interest: around $1.5k+ in expensive states or about $500+ in lower cost of living states.
Mortgage insurance: if down payment less than 20%
Property tax: These are always fairly low, about a couple hundred a year or cheap homes but are a couple hundred a month for more expensive homes.
Home insurance: Up to the lender if it’s required.
HOA fees: not applicable since buying the home comes with the land.
Utilities: average is a few hundred dollars for total cost of all utilities
Town homes: Cheaper than homes. These are like condos, but they come with a garage and a small yard. You’re still connected to other homes.
Condos: Cheaper than townhomes. These aren’t as satisfying as homes or townhomes because they don’t include land to do gardening and such. They’re very much like apartments, but are different in that you can buy them instead of renting them. Buying properties is always the better investment instead of renting because you stop paying after you’re done and can sell your place, which you can’t do with an apartment.
Manufactured homes: These are always cheaper than homes, and can be cheaper than townhomes and condos, but the con is that you still have to pay for the land since most mobile homes don’t come with land.
Apartments: rented.
The Car
Basic understanding: Maintaining and driving cars will cost a couple hundred a year including car insurance. Buying a car will cost a couple thousand dollars. On top of how costly it can be, driving has risks auto accidents regardless of how well you may be driving.
Eventually, probably as soon as you’re an adult, you’re going to need a car. At least be licensed in case of emergency situations to take yourself or anyone to hospital or urgent or something like that. You’re going to need a car too to go out with friends, leisure pretty much. Most importantly, you need to drive to work. You’ll need driver’s insurance, which will cost a couple hundred a month, or more than a thousand a year. There a lot of discounts that auto insurances offer and try to get the best quotes if you can.
It’s in your best interest to keep a clean record and drive safe and make good choices because the consequences of you being at fault for an accident or a ticket will increase your insurance.
Some discount offers can be some you might not even think of:
Safe driver discount: offered when you have a clean record for a certain amount of time
Good student discount: offered for having good grades
A car is a big investment and it will cost money to maintain it and drive it. Especially because of high gas prices now, yearly cost will be anywhere from a few hundred(~$500) to more than a thousand a month if you drive a lot.
Maintaining your car: It’s also in your best interest to keep it in as good condition as possible to reduce the depreciation so you spend less on maintaining it and get the most if you sell it. A car should last past 150k miles if you take good care of it.
Learn how to wash your car correctly like using microfiber cloth so you don’t scratch the car with a coarse towel when you’re washing it. There is a spray that you can use to coat the plastics inside your car and protect it from degradation because of hot weathers. There are also protectant sprays for tires.
You yourself should know a few basic things for emergency situations such as how to replace a car tire(for emergency situations), fix flat tires(with repair kits), and pump air into tires. In addition, you can save money by learning how to replace car fluids and you can also easily repair parts of your car yourself. For example, the air filter and car brake lights and replacing a broken fuse from the fusebox so the USB port can start working again.
In addition, you’re going to want to buy a dash cam.
You also need to bring it for smog check every other year.
If you’re going to buy a car, it will come with other fees besides the car, and it you might experience a lot of pressure from a dealer make you impulsively buy, maybe it’s better to buy from another owner:
Vehicle registration
Sales tax
Take notice about the miles per gallon and safety of the car when deciding which car to buy.
There are protections that come with the vehicle but they are optional, such as portfolio protection and theft protection. But if you’re going to buy from another owner, you’ll need to register that vehicle under your name, which is required yearly.
The Phone
Phone plans are always cheaper when shared in family plans. Invest in smart plugs so you’re not always overcharging your phone and depleting the battery life.
So now you’re an adult, and first priority out of high school is to find a pathway to get a stable job that can provide enough income to live a good life.
There are multiple pathways available to accomplish this:
School after high school, such as:
Vocational schools: these schools are shorter than community college and university, lasting anywhere from a couple of months to two years. These tend to be very short term, but you can make it a career and get a good paying job.
Example: Nail school, Massage therapy school, Certified Nurse Assistant school, paramedic
These programs tend to be hosted by private schools, which probably means you will be paying a lot of money out of pocket.
The starting pay after finishing school will not be likely high though and sometimes these programs require certain prerequisites, which is why it is so essential to be prepared about what you want to do ahead of time- at middle school age at least.
Vocational programs are also available in community colleges, which is almost guaranteed a better option because often community college is very cheap, which is a very good thing especially for low-income families.
If possible, tour the school you’re interested in. Choosing what college you’re going to is a big step in life. I feel like this is the key to truly knowing whether or not you want to go to college.
Any school will do and see what you like and don’t like. Get a feel of whether or not you like the college. Email relevant professors about the subject you’re interested in. For example, ask a biology professor, “what do you enjoy most about this subject? What research have you done? What books do you recommend for potential students?”
Visit the college clubs. For example, if you like robotics, visit the robotics club.
Community College: on top of being cheap, possibly almost free, low income families can receive pell grants that give up to a few thousand dollars ($2k). Some students take this route to transfer to university. Some go for purely academic associate degrees. Others pursue technical associate degrees such as registered nursing. Some go just to learn something without any degrees in mind.
University: More often than not, a lot of students have jobs on top of going to school to support themselves, as this is much more expensive than community college and vocational school. A lot of students in this route end up with some debt because it is so expensive, but a lot of people choose it because it will lead to jobs that pay high. Just know that it costs even more when you’re out of state, unless you have full ride scholarship.
Universities have these levels of educational degrees:
Bachelors - universities are designed to accomplish these degrees in four years. However, some people accomplish it in less or more time. Less time because of taking AP classes in high school. More time because of personal choices or external factors.
Masters: These normally take two years after bachelors degree. College is really hard, so if you’ve made it this far, you are really committed to your subject. With this degree, I believe you can become a professor or professor assistant, which pays very good money.
Doctorates: These are the end line for schooling for very big careers such as doctors and lawyers and pay very high salaries. Not a lot of people make it here.
(13% of US population)
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College isn’t for everyone. Studying takes a lot of time that adults might not have. Maybe you never liked studying in school. And that’s fine. As long as you continue to find a way to take care of yourself. Perhaps we’re busy taking care of someone, want to travel, or have other priorities.
So you figured that college isn’t going to be right for you. Or maybe you just want to go part-time. Now how are you going to make money for yourself? If everything else I’m about to tell you fails, then the only option probably is to get a good entry-level job. Perhaps at this point, you’ve already gained useful skills that can make you a lot of money.
Entrepreneurship, the best startups for business are the ones that require the least money to startup:
Basic understanding: startup businesses more often than not go through a lot of failures and takes a lot of time, dedication and commitment to grow and scale. Higher startup costs may never be made up if your business fails. You will have to do a lot of soul searching to see what works and what doesn’t work.
Start your own business: This can mean so many things and there are so many opportunities.
Listed from least cost in startup to most:
Social media- Streamer/ YouTuber/ Instagram route: Quite difficult to gain enough views to make a living and takes a lot of dedication and time to build a community, which can take years if you don’t have a community base already. However, once you have a community base, you can make money from companies or people that want sponsorship or shoutouts. Additional money can be made with ads. More likely than not, viewers appreciate genuinity and good, valuable content. Social media is also a good platform to market and showcase your skill, opening up more doors for income. For example, you can gain more clients as a piano teacher by showcasing your YouTube channel where you have lots of videos of you performing. Having a large audience has another advantage in that there is something called affiliate marketing, where you can make money for someone buying something from your product link. In addition, your channel is free marketing for you to sell merchandise that you can create yourself. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to start a shirt business, having a large audience in social media really helps with that. Printful is one of the many t-shirt designing websites available for that.
In addition, you can post your skills on websites like Fiverr or Upwork to get hired by people for things such as creative writing, acting, and such. If you want people to support you, you can also have people subscribe to you for exclusive content or have patreons so people can donate to you if they love you.
If you know a lot about cars, you can try your luck working for the postal office as they only require you to take an exam, but they pay a lot of money.
Side hustles: There are many apps where you can make money for services, such as delivery apps and errand apps like TaskRabbit. There’s DoorDash, Ubereats, Instacart, and Grubhub. Most of these apps have free startups. Tax is collected at during tax season, so beware of that. It’s very flexible as you can work as much as you want. This is really good side money but shouldn’t really be to depend on for full-time income.
Teach yourself useful skills such as computer programming, how to the play the piano, and such. If you already have a really employable skill, then great!
Be a voice actor if you’re really good at it.
You can resell things too.
Start a food business if you know how to cook, it can cost a few hundred dollars to register your food business. Check with your county on how to register.
This can include franchising, which means you can open up a store brand such as Chick-Fil A, but this will cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Investing in stocks is always a gamble, but is an option.
Doing taxes: can be easy since you just need to collect work forms from all your employments and possibly send it to an agent to do it all for you. You can also manually input it yourself online.
Credit card: open one as you need to build credit to buy a home. You can get cash back. Interest only applies when you don’t pay right away.
Then there’s the military route, which offers a lot of different kinds of jobs that will be useful in civilian life. Pay will be low at first, but increase as your rank increases. Enlisted get paid less than officers I believe. Just realize that life will be involved with a lot of politics too.
Society, Self- Identity & Emotional Aspects
I guess I just have to say a few things:
Try to do the right things and be a good person. It’s very vague but this should be the baseline for all the things you do in life. And if you need help, don’t be afraid to ask. Maybe you want to understand more about relationships or need advice on what to do in life. On top of that, take care of your health, go to the doctor for basic bloodwork and annual physical test to see how you’re doing. Go to the dentist and get your teeth cleaned. Eat healthy and exercise.
When it comes to friends, keep the ones that are genuine and respect you. Real ones wouldn’t hate you if you’ve done nothing wrong. Sometimes you meet someone else who’s a good person too, but you just don’t get along. Respect goes both ways and it goes a long way.
It’s okay to mess up when you try to be successful with school or business and in life.
Life’s not always going to be perfect, so do your best to change that. Don’t struggle on your own.
If you need some moral guidance in life, that’s where religion comes in. Don’t use it to excuse yourself of your own mistakes though.
Basically Disney shit lol.
