5 Lifestyle Luxuries to Appreciate While You’re Young

By: Joseph Akintaju on March 1, 2013 @ 4:19 pm

Cocktail Lesson at Infusion Bar Ah, to be twenty-something. For many people, those years are referred to as the “good days,” when they felt care-free and wild and like they could do anything they wanted.

The truth is, that feeling is often times very real for young adults – there are certain aspects of their lifestyles that are envied by those of us who have moved on into our 30′s and 40′s and beyond – yet while in the moment, these “kids” just don’t seen to get it. I’m here to give them a bit of a wake-up call. So all you young adults out there need to listen and take my advice – enjoy these major lifestyle benefits while you still can!

A Run-Down Apartment

How about that first apartment you ever lived in – chances are, it was somewhat run-down, and most people don’t have the means to furnish their first apartment with the finer pieces of furniture and home decor that most adults lean toward purchasing for their homes.

But when you’re young, it’s completely acceptable to have a dump of an apartment. If you have friends over, they never seem to be surprised by the pile of laundry growing in the corner of your living room, or the stack of dirty dishes continually on the rise in the kitchen. And you love it just the way it is. Yet as you get older, you start to notice more of these things – cleanliness, organization, decoration of friends’ homes – and feel more inclined to mimic the things that you see.

So as you get older yourself, you start to feel the pressure of purchasing the nicer pieces of furniture and the frilly little decorations and you force yourself to keep your place clean, no matter how much you hate doing it. The bottom line – enjoy your acceptably messy apartment while you still can!

It’s Acceptable to Live Off Your Parents

…For a while, anyway. When you’re fresh out of college, no one will judge you if you have trouble finding a job – everyone has trouble finding a job these days! And it’s especially true for recent college grads – employment is tough to come by at that age.

So it’s perfectly acceptable for you to stay at home, save up some money and think about the career path that you wish to take. In fact, many adults will even consider that the “smart decision.” What does it mean for you when you’re 22 and don’t know what to do with your life? You get to live off Mom and Dad for as long as you need to make up your mind and not worry about earning money for however long that takes!

It’s a pretty sweet deal for you when you’re that age, and there’s not a whole lot of pressure to figure your life out. Take advantage and enjoy it while you’re there!

You Get to Take Chances

Since you haven’t established yourself in any particular career, really, you feel more apt in your 20s to go all out with everything you do – to take chances on things that you’re unsure of because you don’t have anything to lose.

As you get older and increase the number of responsibilities that you have, the less chances you get to take. You look for a more secure lifestyle so that you can eventually support a family or own a house or whatever it is you want to settle down and do. But when you’re young, you don’t have any of that holding you back.

If you want to tour Europe for a summer, you can. If you want to up and quit your job and move someplace tropical and try to start a life there, you can. The possibilities are endless, and you’ll never have chances like this again in your life, so it’s best to take on the adventures while you still can!

Go Out Whenever You Want

In the “real world,” you have obligations like a 9-5 job, a family, an exercise routine or whatever else takes up your time that you’re awake. That means that you have to be careful about how you spend your nights – you’ll likely want to go to bed early, or even just fall asleep early from exhaustion or stress.

But when you’re in your 20s, it’s almost expected that whatever morning obligations you may have, there’s a strong possibility that you will show up hung over. You have groups of friends that love to party and want to go out all the time, and no one judges you for that. In fact, most people really do expect it of you at that age!

Get all the partying out of your system when you’re young, stay out ’til the sun comes up, eat the best greasy food you can get your hands on because in about 10 years, you won’t have the same luxury anymore!

Dating

When you’re young, you’re still trying to figure out who you are yourself, not to mention the kind of person you’re looking for in a life-long partner. You have no idea what you’re looking for, so you get to experiment with dating all kinds of different people until you finally put together the bits and pieces of each person that you really liked or admired and start building your picture-perfect soulmate in your head.

And dating really can be so fun – the butterflies most young women feel in their stomachs as they get dressed up before a date, and the nerves that run through a guy as he pulls up to pick up his date. The initial “getting to know you” conversations, the excitement of meeting someone new – it’s all really so wonderful.

Embrace the dating scene while you can, and don’t be in a hurry to settle down. Figure out exactly what you want in a future spouse by broadening your horizons when you’re in your 20s and dating people you wouldn’t normally expect yourself to date!

Maya Richards is a freelance writer who absolutely loved her 20s. Now some of the most exciting things she gets to do is shop for unique employee gifts for her loyal workers, but she still makes sure to find time to have some real fun once in a while!