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.
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.
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.
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.
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 just constantly ignore my to do list because otherwise I would never relax.
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
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.
Mormons, eh?
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.
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.
A 20 year old that I worked with asked me what I did over my weekend. My response was basically a list of chores and errands.
She responded, “Nice, you were adulting hard.”
I responded, “Unfortunately, I’m just an adult.”
“I need an adult.”
“You ARE an adult.”
*proceed to get kicked in the nads*
Hobbies are important to mental health.
Especially when you own a house. It never ends.
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.
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.
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.
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’ve had a weird arc. A number of months after I graduated college and started working, it finally sunk in that there wasn’t always something I needed to be studying or working on, as had been the case for like my whole academic career. I had a job that I wasn’t allowed to do outside the plant, so when I went out the gates I was done. Over the years I got promoted to positions of more and more responsibility and, even though I tried hard to keep work and home separate, at some point it was unavoidable and there was always something I needed to be doing, always emails I should be answering.
Then, after 40 years, I retired earlier this year. I had a lot to go through with selling a house and stuff, but it’s just starting to get to the point where I don’t have something I need to be doing, as had happened 40 years ago.
I just dropped from a lead position to non-lead because of this. The only work time is office time+travel for work. Outside of that work does not exist.
That’s a big quality of life change. I wasn’t super enthused about going up the chain for a long time, but then found I really enjoyed the strategic planning and organizational stuff, so went up a couple levels of management. The money was a quality of life change, too, of course.
Eh. I could make more at work but the that stuff doesn’t drive me, actually triggers severe burn out. I have a savings/debt paydown/investment strategy that gets me where I need to go.
It was also a company switch to one with stability, steady raises, better benefits, and more interesting work. So while it’s a significant trade off in salary, quality of life is vastly improved.
It for sure sounds like the right decision for you. And to be sure I was clear, when I eventually went up a leadership ladder, I was more motivated by the job than by the money, it’s just that the money was nice too. I was at the same company for just short of 40 years. I moved around some within the company to keep things interesting, and then realized my experience would be pretty useful for strategic leadership, and that I’d enjoy that kind of thing.
I think that makes sense. Having stability in life is going to be a different world tbh. 20-40yrs is a long time in personal development
I think that’s a pretty normal arc. You work your butt off to get through school, then when you start working, and you have limited responsibilities, you don’t really ever work outside of work. As you become more senior, you will have more to do than can be done in the ~8 hours during the day, M-F and you start feeling like you need to work while you’re at home or whatever.
Then when you retire, every thing falls away.
I probably won’t get to retire, so, I’ll never get there. I’m glad you get to experience that again.
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.
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
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.
You were brainwashed to think that you are supposed to be hyper individualistic - you arent.
Joke’s on them. Ignoring it is the easy part. Guilt doesn’t help. Meds do.
Meanwhile, constant anxiety kills you young. Imagine being so obsessed with being useful that you don’t live long enough to pull it off.
taking meds so my anxiety is controlled enough for me to procrastinate till the last minute
Its sad how well this life-hack works, until it doesn’t. IME, of course.
