6 Lessons I Have Learned in My First 6 Months of Adulting

This post is all about lessons I have learned in my first 6 months of adulting.

Let me take you back in time. It is the Summer of 2024, and I have just graduated from college in May 2024. I was getting ready to start my first “big girl job” and begin my adulting journey. While I did not think I had it all figured out, I thought I knew more than I did, and I quickly found out how little I knew. I started my job in late June of 2024, so I have just crossed my official 6 months of adulting mark, and I want to share with you the 6 lessons I have learned that no one really prepared me for.

First, let’s discuss the definition of “adulting.” Adulting is somewhat of a new and trendy term that some people may not know or understand. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of “adulting” is “the act or practice of attending to the ordinary tasks required of a responsible adult.” So, adulting is just what it sounds like to be and act like an adult.

Adulting is an interesting paradox. Adulting comes with so much freedom but yet so much more responsibility. It is such an exciting and scary thing. You can pretty much do whatever you want, but you also cannot because you have bills now, so you have to go to work.

Adulting is the goal of life if you think about it. You go to school all your life, and for what? To get a job and be a successful adult. You can ask parents what your goal is for their kids: raising good adults and kind people is what most people would probably tell you.

So, here I was, I had done all the things. I had gone to school, got the degree, got the job. I was set up for adulting success, but that definitely did not mean I knew exactly what to do as an adult. I had a lot to learn and still have a lot to learn. Let’s get into what I have learned so far so you do not have to make the same mistakes I did.

1. Budgeting is Key

You quickly find out when you start adulting and start your first full-time job. You are now making and seeing more money than you probably have ever seen, and it can be so easy to think, “I AM RICH.” However, you will probably quickly learn, just like I did, that your expenses add up fast! I had rent, utilities, and credit card payments; the list goes on and on. Not to mention variable spending like shopping, groceries, gas, etc. It all adds up, for sure, and fast!

So, what did I do? I started budgeting. I really had no idea what to do or where to start. I am a Dave Ramsey fan, so I first downloaded his app, Every Dollar, but for some reason, I just did not like the app. It was nothing against the app. It is a good budgeting app if you are looking for a very structured budget. I think my biggest personal pet peeve with the Every Dollar App was the overspending meter.

This bothered me for some reason. I personally spend money on credit cards, but I pay them off every month. However, I meticulously budget and track these expenses because I still view them like I am spending on a debit card. If I do not have the money, then I do not buy it. However, in the Every Dollar app, if I connected my credit cards to this app and even if I assigned it to the budgeted category, it doubled the expenses. (Sidebar: I could have very easily just not known how to work the app, but I tried using it for a couple of weeks, and it kept telling me I was overspending. That just bothered me, so I quit using it.)

I do think Every Dollar can be a good app for some. I think it could be good for people who are getting out of debt, only spend on debit cards, and couples who want to be able to log and track expenses together, but for me at least right now, Every Dollar is not what I use to budget.

I use a good old Excel Spreadsheet with a budgeting template that I bought off of Etsy. I love this because I can plan my month out early, and it is to change. One of my favorite things that I love the particular one I have because it has a variable expenses tracker, and this helps track those expenses very detailed and see how much I have left for the month in each category: eating out, nails, groceries, gas, shopping, etc. This helps keep me very accountable.

Another thing I love about my budgeting template is the actual versus expected columns. So, before the month usually starts, I go in and put how much I expect to be paid and where I want to allocate the money for the month, and then once I actually get paid, there is another column that shows exactly what I ended up spending or paying in that category.

This just allows me to be able to allow life to happen, and I love that. I am on salary at my job; however, I do get a few overtime hours. For most paychecks, I usually get paid more than my salaried amount, but I usually budget my expected expenses with just my salary amount or maybe around what I think my paycheck should be.

After 6 months of budgeting my paychecks, I do feel like I have got a decent handle on managing my expenses. But I still have so much to learn and sort out. But my biggest takeaway is to write everything down because, as they say, “slow leaks sink ships.” So, as much as it hurts or sucks sometimes, you need to write down that $1.99 subscription you have or your morning coffee cause it all adds up over time.

I would love to say that after 6 months of adulting, I have learned all the financial lessons to master my finances and that I never overspent, but that would just be lying. I still struggle with overspending, especially when shopping and eating out, but I am human.

My biggest lesson learned about budgeting in my first 6 months of adulting is just to start. It is not going to be perfect your first month or even your second, and that’s okay. To be honest, I feel like it took me 3 months to really even understand what all my expenses were, let alone how to manage them.

Budgeting is not easy, no matter what level of adulting you are at, so give yourself some grace when you start budgeting. Just trying and tracking your numbers is going to help you so much more than if you are just trying to keep up with it in your head or just crossing your fingers and hoping.

2. Time Management is Everything

This will not come as a surprise, but there is not enough time to do everything you want or need to do in your life. Therefore, one of the hardest things about adulting for me is managing my time and getting everything that I need and want to do done. I quickly, quickly learned this. So, think about it: you spend 8 hours at work and 8 hours sleeping, so that leaves about 8 hours outside of work to do all the things you need and want to do. There is so much to do in adulting: cleaning, cooking, being social, self-care, just relaxing, etc. By far, my biggest hardship in adulthood is so hard is just trying to manage all these things.

I will also be honest: time management is not necessarily my best quality. I am a pretty Type A Perfectionist person, and I sometimes get fixated on something. So, a lot of times, I plan to do all these things, but I end up getting so wrapped up in something and usually end up losing track of my time and never finishing my list.

Another thing I have learned about my time management skills is that things always take longer than I anticipate them to. I am usually like oh yeah, I clean my whole apartment in an hour. Newsflash: I cannot unless there is very little cleaning to do.

One way I have learned to help manage my time in my first 6 months of adulting is a version of the Pomodoro Technique. One of my biggest struggles and stressors of adulting has been keeping and maintaining a clean, organized space. I have learned is I am less stressed when my apartment is clean, but I struggle to keep it that way.

So, one thing I have started doing is something I like to call the “Closing Shift.” This is basically how I set a timer. Sometimes, the duration varies depending on what I need to do, but usually, it is 15 to 30 minutes. I have usually been doing this as soon as I get home from work. Like, I literally sit my bag down set a timer, and start tidying up my apartment, and when the timer is finished, I quit and move on to the next thing I need to do.

This has worked for me pretty well, but I think going into my next 6 months of adulting, I am going to make some adjustments to hopefully make this work better for me. I am still going to do what I call the Closing Shift, but I may shift when I am doing this. Usually, when I would do this, it was me cleaning my mess from the day before when I did not have time to clean, so in order to maybe cook dinner or sit on my couch, I had to clean.

However, I think going forward. I am going to make the mindset shift that I cannot go to bed with a dirty kitchen, and this is where the majority of messes are not going to lie. So, I think doing this will help prevent me from having to clean to cook and then clean again after I cook. While I can still clean a bit when I get home from work, like putting away clothes or starting a load of laundry, hopefully, this will only take me 15 minutes a day instead of the 30 to 45 minutes most of my timers would have to be for me to get my place in order.

Another lesson I have learned about time management in my first 6 months of adulting is the importance of time blocking. Again, this is not something I am the absolute best at. Time blocking is extremely beneficial when used correctly, but one of my biggest issues with time blocking is that I feel like time blocking is a waste of time or takes too much time that I could have already accomplished something. However, I have learned that in certain areas of my life time blocking can be super beneficial for handling all the various aspects of adulting.

I really like to use time blocking in my morning and night routines. Using time blocking allows me to set certain time limits for myself to do things that I need/want to do in my mornings and nights. Also, one of the benefits of initially using time blocking is being able to backtrack when I need to get up and when I need to go to bed. For example, maybe I want to go to bed at 9 PM, I need 15 minutes for my closing shift, 15 minutes for my skincare, and I want to read for 30 minutes before bed, so that means I need to start my night routine at 8 PM.

As I have mentioned, I have not mastered time management after 6 months of adulting. I tend to put way too much on my plate, and I am never able to achieve it all. Unfortunately, that is just life, but I can put systems in place to try to optimize my time and achieve the most I can with the time I have.

So, that is my biggest takeaway for you to help manage your time in adulting. Set routines up for yourself, create to-do lists, set timers, and, more importantly, give yourself grace. Things are going to come up in life, and your plan is going to get derailed, and that is okay. Just pick yourself back up and do what you can with the time you have.

3. Cooking Takes Effort, but It is Worth It

I wish I could say I was blessed with Martha Stewart’s cooking skills, but I was not. Cooking is something that I have to put effort into to be good at. It is also something that I do not naturally enjoy. I do not love doing dishes, and I am not the best at chopping vegetables and stuff. All of this is to say I do not like it, but I do it because it saves money and is healthier than eating out.

So, what have I learned about cooking in my first 6 months of adulting other than I do not like it lol? Well, I have learned that I can make it a bit easier and save time with a few simple things.

The biggest thing that helps me is meal prepping, and probably not the type of meal prepping you are thinking. I do not meal prep for every single meal for my entire week just because I have figured that sometimes my week changes. So, what I try to do is make breakfast meals and lunch meals. Sometimes I make enough for the whole week, and sometimes I do not. It depends on the week for me and what I have going on.

My plan for dinners was, at least for the most part, that I would have maybe one night throughout the week where I would cook, and then eat leftovers for a couple of days, then repeat the process when I ran out.

This is my ideal plan, and I would love to say I do this every week, but that is just not the case. Finding time for this every week is so hard. I usually need at least a couple of hours to complete this (time management lol). It would happen some weeks, but I cannot say it was every week. So, going into my next 6 months of adulting, I am trying to make more time for this because my week is so much easier when I do this.

Clearly, this is not a cooking blog, so I am not going to give you recipe suggestions (hopefully, I will get there in time), but I am going to tell you what I do to try and meal plan.

This is going to sound so dumb, but ChatGPT is a great tool for meal prepping. You can tell ChatGPT what ingredients you have at your house and tell it to make a meal with that, or it can create an entire meal plan from scratch with your ideal macros. Another resource I go to for meal prepping is TikTok, and this is probably my favorite place to go for meal inspiration because they usually show me how to make it all in a video. Pinterest is also great for finding food blogs with some great meal-prepping inspirations.

Some other ways I try to make cooking easier is by buying tools that make it easier. Probably my favorite tool is a Crockpot. I love my crockpot for easy dump-and-go recipes. I love to put it on in the morning before I leave for work because I get to come home to my dinner being done or mostly done.

Another one of my favorite tools is my Ninja Air Fryer, which can do a lot more than just air fry. It can bake things, toast, air fryer, air roast, air boil, and even dehyradte things. I love this because it is super easy to throw veggies into it to air fryer or roast them. It is a lot easier to clean up than using a normal oven, and it is smaller, so it is more appropriate for portion sizes for me, who lives alone.

The last tool that I use that makes cooking just a bit easier for me is a veggie chopper. I LOVE this veggie chopper because it makes chopping veggies so fast and easy. As I already mentioned, I am not very good at chopping vegetables, so this makes my life so much easier. It also keeps me from cutting myself, which I have done from time to time.

All of this is to say that cooking can be hard and time-consuming, but it is worth it for me, even if I do not like it all the time. I want to eat healthy to fuel my body with healthy foods as well as save money. So, the key to cooking when adulting is to figure out what works for you and do that. That will look different for everyone based on skill, time, ability, etc, but you have to find out what that is, and I feel like I have somewhat figured that out in my first 6 months of adulting.

4. Friendships Take Effort

This is an unfortunate reality of adulting: friendships are hard. In college, everyone around is usually open to friends and around your age. That is just not the case when you begin adulting. A lot of people already have their friends, and they are not looking for anymore. Or they are married and settled down. People have a lot more going when they start adulting. So, finding and keeping friends takes a lot more effort.

This is been a really difficult thing for me in my first 6 months of adulting. I moved to a new city where I knew like two people, and instead of looking for friends, I immediately started focusing on going on dates instead of looking for friends. While I do not regret this at all because I met an amazing man out of it. Looking back, it probably should not have been my priority at the time.

However, fast forward 6 months, and I have an amazing boyfriend but not really any friends who did not come from work or church. Again, I do not regret going on a few dates when I first moved to town; I just wish I had put myself out there and gone to some events or something along with going a few dates. Instead, I got a part-time second job that took up a lot of my weekends.

Remember how this post is about not doing what I did in lessons; well, this is a big one. DO NOT FILL YOUR PLATE FULL OF WORK IN YOUR FIRST 6 MONTHS OF ADULTING! MAKE FRIENDS AND HAVE A LIFE! The extra money I made over the first 6 months was nice, but it did not make me friends.

So, take it from me. When you begin adulting, put yourself out there to meet friends, as hard as it may be. Go to events for your college alumni, join the Meetup App and look for events, or join a club. The list really goes on for places where you can go to meet friends, but the key is you HAVE TO GO TO MEET FRIENDS. And that is what I did not do well. I went from work to home 7 days a week and church on Sundays. I did not even go into the grocery store cause I hate grocery shopping. Moral of the story: I did not give myself any opportunities to really meet people.

Showing up is just half the battle with adult friendships. Putting in the effort to make friends and talk is really hard. As I mentioned, everyone is so busy with their own stuff. While you want to be friends, life just can tend to get in the way from time to time.

For example, one of my friends from college moved to the same city as me and we happen to work in the same industry, but we work for different companies, live in different parts of the city, and go to different churches. We are really good friends, but if we did not put in the effort to see each other, we never would. In order to make sure we still talked and saw each other, we set up a standing lunch every month.

This lets us have a predetermined time during our workday when we meet in the middle of our offices and catch up. We do other things than just get lunch once a month, but we know, at the very least, we will have lunch once a month.

This could be related to time management, but you have to be intentional with time and friendships because you will not see your friends in class every day or at parties. Likely, you and your friends will be in different industries; therefore, you would have no coincidental reason to run into them.

So, make it a priority cause friendships are important, and they unfortunately take effort when you are adulting.

5. Self-Care is not Selfish, but Essential

Unplugging is okay. Actually, it is required to function efficiently as an adult. I have learned I cannot run, run, and run without stopping to rest and recharge myself. Maybe you have picked up on this throughout this post: I have a tendency to fill my plate too full. I do not leave much time for myself to relax or really do anything related to self-care, whether that is a face mask or even just working out.

While that was okay for about the first 4 months, and then I started to feel burned out. I was just running so hard. 2 jobs, trying to launch this blog, maintaining a new relationship, going to my small group and church every week, and just all the other things in life. I was tired, and I was just getting started into this whole adulting thing.

I think I should also note that at this exact time that I am writing this post, I am off of work for two weeks after having shoulder surgery. Yep, that is right, shoulder surgery at the age of 23. I was having pain at my second job pretty constantly, and that led to me getting checked out, and it turns out I had some impingement.

So, here I am, writing this post in my parents’ living room, reflecting on all the lessons I have learned in my first 6 months of adulting. I have failed at all of these things on this list pretty miserably, but none worse than this one, to be honest.

What am I going to do about it? I have taken a big step back from my second job. I have not officially quit, but I am working significantly less hours. Mostly cause I need time to work on this blog as this has a bigger purpose than my part-time retail job, but also because I need more time to prioritize myself.

I have not worked out consistently in my first 6 months of adulting at all. In fact, I am not sure I have worked even once. That has got to change. I have to take care of myself, and working out is a part of that. I also just need more downtime. I need time just to sit on the couch and DO NOTHING. I am not good at that at all. So, I also need to get better at that.

So, how am I planning to do this? Keeping up with my routines is part of it that when I have time to relax, I can actually do that instead of doing the things that I should have already handled in my routine.

To be completely honest, I do not have a perfect plan for this, but I know I have to start because I cannot continue the way I was going because I will eventually burn out for real this time. My advice is to not be me and to take care of yourself from the beginning of adulthood. Do not spend the first 6 months going pedal to metal only to end up running out of gas cause. Unfortunately, that is where I am.

Take it from me, and do not do it! It is not worth it! Take the time you need for yourself!

6. You Don’t Have to Have It All Figured Out

While all of these lessons were important for me to learn, this was probably the hardest pill to swallow. I did not think I had it figured out when I first stepped into adulting, but I thought I had a lot of it figured out. If you cannot tell by this post, I had essentially nothing figured out. To be honest, 6 months later, I have maybe even less figured out than I did before, but I know some areas that I need to work on and a direction I need to improve in.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Fake it till you make it?” Well, one thing I have learned is that everyone who is adulting is essentially doing this. Everyone truly has nothing figured out in life, and they are just figuring it out as they go. So, when I have felt lost in the last 6 months, remembering this has helped me a lot.

Also, remembering that everyone had to start their adulting journey somewhere helped me, and this is just where I am starting mine. I’ve realized it’s okay not to have all the answers right now. Nobody starts their adulting journey as an expert in life—it’s a process of trial, error, and growth.

As I move through my adulting life, hopefully, as I go along, there will be less stuff I have to fake till I make it. I’m learning to embrace the uncertainty, take small steps toward improvement, and trust that I’ll find my way, just like everyone else is trying to do. After all, the beauty of adulting is that it’s an ongoing journey, not a destination.

Conclusion

So, now that we’ve gone through all the mistakes I’ve made in the first 6 months of adulting, I hope this helps you avoid making the same ones I did. But let’s be honest—mistakes are inevitable, and that’s okay. They’re part of the messy, wonderful process of figuring out this thing called life. If you find yourself stumbling along the way, know that you’re not alone. Everyone’s adulting journey is filled with lessons learned the hard way and every misstep is an opportunity to grow.

Your journey won’t look exactly like mine, and it’s not supposed to. The important thing is to give yourself grace, keep learning, and remember that progress matters more than perfection. Whether it’s budgeting, balancing work and life, or just trying to remember to eat a vegetable once in a while, each small step you take brings you closer to where you want to be.

Adulting might feel overwhelming at times, but it’s also a chance to discover who you are and what you’re capable of. So embrace the chaos, celebrate the small wins, and trust that you’re doing better than you think. You’ve got this—one coffee-fueled, trial-and-error-filled day at a time!

Now, I want to hear from you! What’s one lesson you’ve learned since stepping into adulting? Or, if you’re just starting your journey, what’s one area you feel most uncertain about? Let’s share our experiences, swap advice, and remind each other that we’re all figuring it out together. Drop a comment below, and don’t forget to share this post with anyone who might need a little encouragement on their adulting adventure!

Don’t forget to save this Post!