00:00I'm Lucy Fink and this week is five days of adulting.
00:03I'm growing up real fast.
00:11Hey guys, I moved.
00:13I'm turning 24. I just moved in with my boyfriend of seven years.
00:18I've technically been living away from home since I went away to college
00:21and I've been financially on my own since I graduated and started my first job.
00:26But even still, something about this most recent move,
00:28moving away from my twin sister and away from my friend,
00:31and moving in with a boy, I live with a boy,
00:34makes the fact that I'm becoming an adult so much more real.
00:37I still feel like a kid on the inside,
00:39and truthfully I still act like one most of the time,
00:41but I do need to make sure that I'm being totally responsible
00:44and make sure my life is under control the way an adult should be.
00:47Step one, a huge part of being an adult for me,
00:49it's very underrated, but it's having kitchen staples.
00:53As a college student, I was so used to living with basically nothing in my fridge,
00:56nothing in my cabinet, I didn't even have a table.
00:59So today I did a massive shop and I got all of the cooking staples
01:02that I could ever want and need.
01:04I'm that girl who calls my dad every day and says,
01:06Dad, does garlic go in the fridge?
01:09Should chicken be refrigerated or frozen?
01:11And if I freeze it, can I freeze it in the package?
01:14So I studied a chart online that teaches you how to store every type of grocery item.
01:20And then I spent the rest of the day totally DIYing my kitchen.
01:23Sure, it might take more time, but in the end it gives your home a nice personal touch
01:27and gives everything a whole lot more meaning.
01:29Step one to becoming an adult, make your kitchen look like a Pinterest board.
01:33Check.
01:38Step two to becoming an adult, building your career
01:41and being able to market yourself professionally.
01:43Although I'm so lucky and I currently have a job that I love at Refinery29,
01:47I need to make sure that my creative resume, my portfolio and my LinkedIn are up to date.
01:51Every single internship, part-time job, extracurricular activity or personal project
01:56can probably help you blaze your professional trail.
01:59For me, my career is built entirely on video production
02:02and making sure that I'm pushing my work out to the world.
02:05Whenever recent college grads who are looking to go into the same field as me
02:08ask me for my creative advice, I always tell them,
02:11Keep making content and pushing it out there.
02:13If you don't have a website, put it on your own personal social media,
02:17and brand yourself for what you want to be seen as.
02:20Even long before I had a website, I used my personal Instagram channel
02:24as a place where I could put out my stop-motion video work
02:26and now that's become the biggest creative portfolio of all for me.
02:29Keeping your resume and your LinkedIn up to date is important for anyone in any career path.
02:34So today I spent three hours updating all of this.
02:37I think it is so vital that I do this once a month
02:40and just set aside an hour, nice and easy, keep a nice flow going, be a real adult.
02:50The most dreaded part of becoming an adult.
02:53Dun dun dun! Budgeting.
02:55I already spent five days on a $50 spending budget, I did five days of saving money,
03:00but even still, I need to come up with a workable, usable format
03:03for how I'm going to budget my money moving forward.
03:05As it is now, I try to budget, but everything goes right out the window
03:09the moment a friend invites me to get drinks or go out for dinner.
03:12Last month I spent about $125 on drinks
03:15and I only have one or two glasses of wine once or twice a week.
03:19Some wines by the glass in New York City can cost $15 or more.
03:23Balancing rent and savings and food and time with your friends can be really hard,
03:27but on Mint.com I found something called the 50-20-30 rule.
03:31Based on your monthly income, 50% should go towards your essentials
03:35like groceries, transportation, rent, utilities.
03:3820% goes straight to financial priorities, things like student loans and savings.
03:43And then 30% can be set aside for your lifestyle.
03:46Gym membership, fun with friends, nights out for dinner, wine, buy the glass.
03:51I'm hoping after a couple of months of hands-on tracking,
03:53I'll fall into the pattern of the 50-20-30 rule,
03:56and this will all become second nature to me.
04:02Now that I have food in the apartment, I need to learn how to cook like an adult.
04:07Meal prep and batch cooking are so important.
04:10Plus, I know there are some fun creative ways to do this,
04:12so I followed Refinery29's smoothie hacks.
04:15I labeled them for all five days of the week.
04:17What a way to ensure that you have a smoothie every day!
04:20That was one of my 2016 resolutions, and now I'm doing it.
04:24And then I took Zoe Bain's advice.
04:25She's Refinery29's food editor.
04:27And I whipped up batch meals that have four servings that are freezer-friendly.
04:32Click the link in the description box below for the full recipe.
04:36Hashtag meal prep.
04:43It's Friday, and I realized that even though this week I covered my kitchen,
04:46my career, my cash, and my cooking,
04:48I still haven't even skimmed the surface when it comes to being an adult.
04:52I'ma be a kid forever.
04:53There are day-to-day tasks that I need to make sure I get into the habit of regularly doing.
04:59But that being said, I want to make sure that these don't feel like mundane chores that I'm doing day
05:04after day.
05:04So to make it fun, I took a pretty agenda and some brightly colored pens and some stickers,
05:09and I wrote down things like do your laundry and clean your apartment, pay your rent.
05:15Please, I beg of you, comment below.
05:18Let me know if you have any more advice for how I can adult a little bit better.
05:22And as always, let me know what you think I should try next time on Try Living With Lucy.
05:25See you then.
05:27Hey YouTube, it's Lucy, the adult.
05:30Click here if you want to see me try five days of journaling.
05:33I wrote it all down.
05:35Here to subscribe to Refinery29 on the YouTube platform.
05:39And last but not least, right here where you see that little eye if you want to see more on
05:44this very playlist.
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