I know it against the spirit of the post but I have to go on a rant here.
“adulting”
I hate that word, its so stupid. It implies self infantilization, when in reality its use is just indicative of one’s attitude towards work or getting anything done. And wanting everyone else around them to take care of things.
Every roommate I’ve had who used that fucking word did not do fucking shit around the house. They were always the victim when some disagreement happened. They sometimes got mad when I asked for their portion of rent. Just absolutely manipulative narcissistic perpetual victims that expected me or other’s to do everything for them.
As soon as I save up and move I will be so happy to finally live alone for the first time in my life. Rent will be more expensive and I’ll save way less but at least there will be fewer human variables like that to deal with.
“adulting”
I hate that word, its so stupid. It implies self infantilization, when in reality its use is just indicative of one’s attitude towards work or getting anything done.
I don’t mind the word. Its more specific. People can still get things done, but they may be things that give them a dopamine hit like completing a personal project or finishing off the final boss in game. It doesn’t get things done that deal with adult responsibilities. Further many of us suffer from mild mental health challenges such as ADHD and various locations on the spectrum so there are very real challenges beyond just “one’s attitude towards work”.
Its okay to use the word “adulting” to recognize efforts that need to be undertaken to take care of your adult responsibilities. This doesn’t mean that someone can be allowed to simply delegate their own adult responsibilities on others using this word.
As soon as I save up and move I will be so happy to finally live alone for the first time in my life. Rent will be more expensive and I’ll save way less but at least there will be fewer human variables like that to deal with.
Having your own living space is wonderful! Its also a good test to know if you have all the life skills you need. I am hopeful you can get this soon.
I don’t mind the word. Its more specific. People can still get things done, but they may be things that give them a dopamine hit like completing a personal project or finishing off the final boss in game. It doesn’t get things done that deal with adult responsibilities. Further many of us suffer from mild mental health challenges such as ADHD and various locations on the spectrum so there are very real challenges beyond just “one’s attitude towards work”.
I have Autism, and I’ve lived with people with ADHD. Its been a mixed bag in terms of roommates for me between NT’s and ADHD, but I’ve literally had 3 different roommates who used the world “Adulting” and every time they’ve ended up just letting something go, waiting for other people to clean up after them literally or figuratively until they hit a breaking point.
The three roommates I’ve had who all used this god damned word:
One college roommate who was fond of the word constantly just let things fall apart. My anxiety over things domino-ing into my life consistently had me trying to hold things together that really wasn’t my responsibility but his. And he took advantage of that. Maybe not always consciously, but even if he wasn’t doing it on purpose he certainly did not seem to feel any remorse for stressing me the fuck out and guilt tripping me when he constantly asked for my help for basically everything.
Filling out financial, government, and school forms, cleaning his own goddamned room so it did not produce a horrid stench in the rest of the house, calling to have his car towed so it could be fixed because he neglected it’s basic care and then expecting me to drive him to work. He did have ADHD but I’ve met other people with ADHD and when they fucked up they tried to make up for it. He did not give a fuck. Everytime I asked for rent was a dice roll as to whether he’d whine a little and then pay or yell at me and tell me I was a greedy asshole and that I had plenty of money and he was poor so I should dip into my savings to help him out.
One was a drug user and alcoholic and at some point stopped paying rent entirely and may have been secretly trying to sell drugs online using our fucking address. When another roommate agreed to pay for a bus ticket back to their home state to their Aunt’s place he threw a hissy fit. We both had to help him pack. He said I was “selfish” for kicking him out and that I wasn’t willing to help him more.
Another that used that word, moved in and then insisted that I had the best room and that I was “privileged” for not letting them have the room because she was “going through a rough time and needed their privacy and space”. My room was in a far corner away from other rooms and was indeed the largest and honestly I was ambivalent about the room itself, but I had already been living in the room and had no time to just stop what I was doing and move it all for them like she seemed to think was my duty. I told them I was planning on moving out soon and they could have it when I left, that’s when they called in in the middle of my work shift and started trying to actively lecture me about my privilege for not doing it immediately and I hung up on them. They also threw a hissy fit and started telling the other roommates random lies about me trying to get them on her side. The remaining 4 months I lived there she paid her rent portion late every month.
Oh, and when she found out my room got terrible AC and heating because of bad ventilation she stopped wanting the room. Their privacy and space suddenly stopped mattering.
They all lamented having to do “adulting”. Maybe its a coincidence but man I’m not getting fooled a forth fucking time.
Now, when I was younger, when I fell into my obsessive autistic spirals I too became irresponsible about everything I wasn’t obsessed with. The difference was I actively prevented others from taking on my mess because I have a sense of shame and responsibility. I’m talking about people who essentially just repeatedly let me take care of their problems once they discovered I would. And usually the reason I’d help them was because I needed them to not fall into a rut because I lived with them and split rent with them.
Its okay to use the word “adulting” to recognize efforts that need to be undertaken to take care of your adult responsibilities. This doesn’t mean that someone can be allowed to simply delegate their own adult responsibilities on others using this word.
Its “OK” to use the word, but red flags are raised for me when I hear it because of my experiences. And often the “delegation” comes in the form of shaming others for daring to have their shit together and not helping them in their sorry state. Its rarely direct, it is usually subtle and insidious.
Having your own living space is wonderful! Its also a good test to know if you have all the life skills you need. I am hopeful you can get this soon.
I am looking forward to it. I’m pretty old for it to be my first time. To be honest though I do worry that I’ll become even more lonely. Roommates aren’t all bad, it is nice to have someone to socialize with after work right at home. And unfortunately I wont be bringing my pets with me due to various complications, they’re going to live with my mom nearby.
I do worry I might miss socializing with people living right at home, though I intend to just leave my apartment frequently and invite people over. We’ll see, maybe I end up hating it and try and roll the dice with roommates again.
I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that. Many of those things you’re describing in your roommates are signs of entitlement or immaturity. Decades ago, I did a lot of the things you are citing. In time I grew up. Those people existed long before the term “adulting” existed. Perhaps the term does end up being some kind of shibboleth for your age group, but I use the term myself, am much older than you, and never use it as excuse to shirk my adult responsibilities to myself or to other.
If you aren’t yet ready to live on your own because of finances, would it be possible to seek out older roommates? Perhaps a married couple? There’s no guarantee you’ll find sane responsible people no matter what demographic you’re shopping in, but older and more established folks give you a better shot of having matured and have their shit together.
I’ll be able to afford it. I’ll just be saving less money once I move because its higher rent. I just have been wanting a solid buffer in my bank account first before making the move as a result so I’ve been needing to save up that buffer. I’m about halfway there. Need another 2-3 months of saving first I think.
But yeah I agree that old people can make fantastic roommates but they’re more rare in urban areas as roommate options in my experience.
Rant away, you are speaking for many of us who just fucking try.
I’m convinced the ruling class figured out how to reverse the wins the middle class made between 1945 - 1980. We’re back to being indentured servants but with the illusion of free will because we can somewhat choose our masters and sometimes work our way up to better conditions provided we help keep the lower class in line.
Of course, this is different from person to person, but for me, a lot of anxiety comes from me putting it off. I found that taking care of the shit as soon as possible gives me the time to truly chill until the next wave of shit comes.
The never ending chill boulder up the hill.
Haha, exactly. Wasn’t Sysiphus’s story about finding joy in a never-ending, repetitive process? I’m wondering if I’ll ever reach that level of enlightenment.
The original story was intended as a depiction of a punishment. The spin of imagining him happy was Albert Camus’s contribution. Although it wasn’t quite about finding joy in a never-ending repetitive process per se, but more about finding joy in the absence of meaning. The boulder process represents the individual’s repeated, doomed efforts to find meaning, and the rolling back down is the realization that despite their efforts, there was still no meaning to be had. Yet, the human cannot resist trying again, which is clearly absurd - hence why this is called “The Absurd”. The main idea is that the struggle itself towards meaning, although absurd, is enough to make someone happy, even if meaning does not exist. I would not want to conflate that sentiment with acceptance of repetitive, dull processes in real life. Nietzsche would have a lot to say about that, and not coincidentally, Nietzsche and Camus have a lot of overlapping thinking. If you like this stuff, I’d recommend reading Camus’s The Stranger, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus.
I love that you spent the time to explain and even recommend reads. Thank you so much. I’m not the most active reader in the world but I am curious about the topic so I think I’ll start with Camus’s Stranger.
That’s definitely the best one to start with! You’re welcome and I hope you enjoy it. There’s some metaphors and moments from it that still stuck with me.
I have to say, there is an established solution to this problem: having a functional and comminicative extended family/social network. Car trouble? Your uncle and cousin can help you fix it tomorrow. Paying rent/mortgage? Not when you live in the big family home with 3 other generations of people that’s been paid off for the last 50 years. Cooking dinner? Grandma and aunt Bethel do it every night with help from the kids. Doing your taxes? Family friend Joe is an accountant and is glad to answer a few simple questions for you.
Unfortunately, most peoples’ families are annoying as fuck.
Unfortunately, most peoples’ families are annoying as fuck.
People are generally annoying. The trick is to remember that you are also people, and to handle the eccentricities of others with grace.
I come from a culture where multigenerational homes are a thing and me and my partner have done the unthinkable to break free from it. We have been shunned and ostricized for not following on the traditional way and as painful as it can be I will not subject my child to the burden of it. I know that te dream of having a solo home is that for many, just a dream, but multigenerational homes are a different kind of hell.
Mormons, eh?
Part of being an adult is knowing what you can ignore for a while and what you can’t. So I don’t really see a problem there.
It’s like juggling balls. Some are rubber and you can drop and pick up when they bounce up. Some are crystal and if you drop them they will shatter. You gotta learn which ones are which.
Dropping them sounds like a surefire way for figuring out which is which.
Yeah but some of those crystals are temporally slowed down by time and only shatter after a prolonged period.
Like not brushing your teeth or ignoring that oil change.
You can pick it back up but the damage is done.
And sometimes the crystal balls really weren’t as important as you thought. Sometimes you can get by with fewer balls.
Sometimes you can get by with fewer balls.
Explaining this to my dog
Nobody on their death bed ever wishes they’d spent more time working.
That Titan Sub guy probably had a millisecond of “Oops, probably should have revisited hull integrity one more time” regret.
i don’t think they did since they’d probably pay more attention to it in the first place if they even did so much research as playing Subnautica for a couple hours
Especially when you own a house. It never ends.
At least you are empowered to make long term steps to make it better.
Source:missed out on buying a house 2 years ago, still devastated.
I dunno. A lot of times my house (first one) feels like a gigantic golden shackle. I can’t easily move, I can’t easily leave the country, I can’t easily get jobs elsewhere, I have much more expensive obligations. The fact that I have a loan and not a lease means I can be massively in debt. There are random unexpected costs which makes it hard to budget, some of which are huge. It gives you more space, which you inevitably fill with useless garbage that just ties you down even more.
Home ownership is kinda overrated. I have wished for years now that I was back in an apartment. Am debating selling this, but it sucks that it would be such a financial loss (another thing you don’t have to worry about with apartments. If my home value goes down by 100k, im basically trapped there for life).
I think having a house is worth it if you are really sure you want to “lock in” the current settings of your life for the next 5 years, minimum. You gain a lot of freedoms with what you do with the property, but you lose a lot of freedoms everywhere else.
You make some good points, but I got all my nomadism out of my system and I’m finally in a place where I want to settle down, and also, I need to settle down because of the kid and everything. I’m also tired of having lived in like 20 houses in multiple continents.
I’ve had the opposite experience lol. Don’t have to call the landlord several times to repair the same broken dishwasher that’s been repaired 4 times before. I can just grab a free one from classifieds and install myself.
As long as the roof, foundation, and plumbing are good I’m not required to do shit.
As long as the roof, foundation, and plumbing are good
The bane of my existence. Water was not meant to move through a wooden house. God has punished me repeatedly for my hubris.
Ah the sweet musty smell of cavity mould and rot in the morning, paired with a hint of chimney backflow.
Really hits the spot. Love sleeping with the windows open on cold nights just to stop myself from suffocating.
On the plus side, Ive made lots of friends with the neighbours with similar problems, all who recommend me their “bathroom guy” or “chimney wizard”
I had to dig a small trench on the uphill side because water was flooding in the crawl space. The bedroom subfloor beams had rotted. Dry down there now. More worried about ventilation/radon.
😅
chimney wizard
This is just Santa
Haha! Yeah, dry well solves that problem XD. I’ll get a new one drilled eventually but for now topping off my tank every few weeks is cheap and easy. Just can’t have long showers 😅
If you can get away with it PEX with commission fittings has been a wonderful experience.
Well… That’s poor/broke adulting. When you’re born with a golden spoon in your ass, you’re whole house (read mansion) is run by what is called the help. You pay people to sort your shit out. Your kids are raised by nannies, and for the weekend you go to your seaside house on a semiprivate island in your private jet.
Here’s the great thing about TODO lists: I control what’s on them. So I know what is completely safe to ignore and what’s going to ruin me. In most cases, I have a lot of notice about important things and can plan accordingly.
Honestly, if you can get your finances figured out, most of the important things can be automated.
Honestly, if you can get your finances figured
The difference between “call a plumber, the sink is leaking” and “I’m dedicating my weekend to DIY a pipe repair” is measured in dollars per hour.
My life changed when I move up a tax bracket. Knowing I had the financial flexibility to hire a professional (or afford a maid once a month) when I needed help really changed how stressful day to day chore routine has been.
Sure, but my point is you don’t necessarily need to move up a tax bracket to be financially stable, you need to carefully manage your money to maintain an emergency fund so you’re not screwed if something goes wrong.
Making more money makes this easier, but it’s possible at most income levels.
If you can keep up an efund, you don’t need to rely on predatory lenders or pay late fees, which dramatically improves your ability to keep that efund filled. Having access to cash helps make more reasonable decisions, maybe you’ll still spend the weekend DIYing a fix, but it’ll be a choice.
you don’t necessarily need to move up a tax bracket to be financially stable, you need to carefully manage your money
Sure. But it’s like drinking out of a martini glass. Saying “you can do it without spilling a drop” is true relative to physical balance and personal circumstances. A combination of personal discipline and good fortune means you can get by without any income. But as soon as one or the other slips, you’re in trouble.
Making more money makes this easier, but it’s possible at most income levels.
I’ve lived up and down the income scale, from squeaking by in college to living it up as a well-paid professional. To say it’s “easier” is a serious understatement. When you’re sitting out in 15° weather for a bus that’s an hour late to take you to a job that brings in $10/hr, knowing you can’t afford to go grocery shopping tomorrow if it doesn’t show, the concept of a budget feels very theoretical.
If you can keep up an efund
Then your income exceeds your expenses. That’s as much a benefit of having a higher income, as a consequence of a savvy budget. And a cash savings account comes with its own costs. Short term cash savings means less long term compound investment. It also potentially means deferred capital accumulation. If you can’t go to work without a car and you can’t fix your car without taking on debt, then you can’t afford to carry a positive balance. If you can’t afford a dishwasher, you’re spending time and energy manually scrubbing dishes when you could be sleeping or working overtime.
On the flip side, if you’re running a massive surplus then you can build a passive income through investment. Walk in the door with $1M in your wallet, get a (very conservative under most market conditions) 5% ROI, and you’re looking at the median household income with zero days worked.
It’s a mug’s game to think the economic balancing act is just a question of personal choices. And that’s before we get into the feedback loop of poverty - wherein people are effectively trained to think short term by selection bias, as potential longer-term investors get fucked by short term fluctuations in the economy.
That’s as much a benefit of having a higher income, as a consequence of a savvy budget.
Look at the statistics, plenty of people with higher incomes live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have an efund. Not having money in the bank is more often a behavioral problem than an income problem.
The real issue imo is that nobody seems to get a proper financial education, and resources vary greatly in quality.
Short term cash savings means less long term compound investment.
Sure, but the compound investment returns will be dwarfed by short term debt interest payments (credit card, personal loans, etc). Far too many people float credit card debt so they don’t need to touch investments. That’s the problem cash is intended to solve, and you can mitigate that opportunity cost with money market funds and high yield savings asks accounts.
If you can’t go to work without a car and you can’t fix your car without taking on debt, then you can’t afford to carry a positive balance.
Everyone’s circumstances are different, but people frequently have more options available to them than they actually consider.
For example:
- can they fix the car themselves? If you can identify the problem (most car parts stores offer free OBD2 scans), you can perform most repairs with a jack (comes with most cars), socket set ($50 or so at the hardware store), a screwdriver ($20 or so), and YouTube
- is mass transit an option? A bicycle + bus can get almost everywhere, even in my area with terrible transit options. It’ll take an extra hour, but it’s a lot cheaper than panicking and paying $1k+ for a tow and repair shop
- get a ride with a coworker or friend, or even uber until the weekend when you have more time to deal with it
- quit the job and apply for something closer - if you can survive 3+ months without income, maybe the car breaking down is the kick you needed to pull the trigger on a decision you’ve been putting off
Obviously individual circumstances differ. My point is that if you have no cash reserves, your anxiety when literally anything goes wrong can blind you to other options (I know because it has happened to me). If you have the fallback option of just paying out of pocket for a fix, you’ll probably also be able to take a step back and consider other options.
I’ve had a cash reserve since I worked my way through college. Sometimes rebuilding that cash reserve sucked and meant I had to eat really cheaply and not go out with friends. I made just over minimum wage (about $9-10/hr) while attending college full time and renting an apartment (shared a bedroom because I couldn’t afford my own room). I know how hard that it because I did it. I remember push starting my manual transmission car for weeks because I didn’t have the time or money to replace the starter.
I learned to repair my own car, and I’ve been doing my own maintenance since, even though I can now afford to take it to a shop, though I do refuse the more dangerous jobs (e.g. anything with high voltage or in the steering system). I also rode my bike + bus for a few years to save money and improve my fitness (10 mile ride, so not super close, and I was the only one doing it).
I’m not saying everyone should fix their own cars or ride the bus and bike, I’m saying that not having a cash buffer can lead to desperate decisions. Do what you can to create a surplus each month, even if it’s just a few dollars, and save that for a rainy day.
massive surplus
Yes, a higher income or asset balance makes things easier, but not having that doesn’t make it impossible, just harder.
feedback loop of poverty - wherein people are effectively trained to think short term by selection bias
Poverty is a completely different beast with its own set of causes and possible solutions. I’m not saying everyone can just “pick themselves up by their bootstraps,” I’m saying most people can do better and create a cash cushion.
But yes, family and community culture is a huge part of the problem and reduces the chances for people to better educate on managing finances themselves and break that cycle.
https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scanning/
ehm why was the photo flagged as csam by cloudflare??
i’m from Italy, is this an eu thing?
edit: ok if i open the post from lemmy.world the image is there, so maybe is a lemmy.zip thing?
I think its a .zip thing. Unlike you I can see this particular post for some reason, but most images are currently blocked with the same error for me. Even thumbnails of news articles are blocked, not just images uploaded directly to Lemmy.
I’m in my 50s and I’m about to throw in the towel on this thing called life. I’m never going to retire. My entire life seems to be putting out fires from the week before. The world in general just seems to be getting worse.
I no longer see the point like I did when I was a young romantic.
Hang in there, it gets worse
Yeah, like at my age, I should have a girlfriend, settle down, and have kids. But that is not my problem. I can barely take care of myself so what if I add more responsibility i didn’t ask for lol.
You were brainwashed to think that you are supposed to be hyper individualistic - you arent.
You become aware of the futility of existence, how in another 50 years if youre lucky none of this will matter in the slightest because you’ll be dead, just as life becomes the hardest to cope with.
So anyone 25-40 and still pretending to smile - youre a fucking warrior.
I cant find the relevant SMBC.
