Learning how to pay for your own shit. You’ve spent enough time sponging off your parents. It’s time to start living in the real world.
One of my biggest “I wish’s” is “I wish my parents had forced me to take a job when I was younger.” I never had to work for anything growing up. If I wanted an Xbox, I could just wish for money for Christmas or my birthday and boom, there it was.
It’s not that I was horrible with money – I knew it was limited in supply. But I had no idea just how limited.
One time I remember trying to get a paper route. It would have meant delivering papers for 8 hours a day, twice a week – for 200 bucks a month. That’s a little over $3/hour for hard, manual labor.
In the end, my parents told me not to take it. I wish I had. Because after that, I would’ve learned an incredible valuable lesson: It’s fucking hard to make 200 bucks. And I never want to do it this way again.
Education takes longer and longer as history progresses (especially in Germany). Doctors don’t start working until they’re 30 years old sometimes. Teachers too.
The amount of time we allow people to spend in a bubble, protected from the responsibility of having to earn money to pay for stuff, is insane.
Most college students live off loans, scholarships and parents’ money. How about working? The degrees here in Germany are “full-time programs,” and most colleges actually discourage students from working on the side. That’s BS.
Not only because most degrees don’t really take a full-time commitment in terms of hours, but also because that’s not how life works.
It’s the same reason the banks fell on their face in 2008 and that many startups will go bust in the next 5 years: when you’re playing with someone else’s money, it’s not the real game.
I started working when I was 23. I didn’t have to. But I couldn’t take it any longer. I’m an adult and as such, I should be the only one financing my life.
That’s the most important thing I’ve learned in my 20s.