25 Stupidly Useful Things I’ve Learned About Life Since Turning 25

1. Opening a credit card in order to build up your credit is a smart thing to do. But you’ll probably get turned down multiple times because you don’t have any credit yet. Welcome to adulthood.

2. Every twenty-something female is always *possibly* pregnant.

3. When you have achieved an empty inbox, do not forget to celebrate the blissful beauty of it all. Because it will last for eleven seconds before you get a spam email offering half-priced tickets to a booze cruise.

4. Ads that pop up on the side of your Facebook function both as a way to sell products and as a way to shame you for the weird Google searches you’ve made recently.

5. Buying a frozen pizza at the grocery store and saving it for later is the only way to have a successful New Year’s Eve.

6. Having a separate savings account for money you have to spend on other people’s weddings seems, at times, more fiscally practical than starting a 401K.

7. If someone says, “Deep down, he/she’s a good person,” it means that person actually sucks.

8. Your relationship will reach a new level of intimacy when you eat a burrito in front of your significant other without thinking twice about how unattractive you look.

9. The person who says they’ll only eat one piece of pizza when you’re putting in the group order is actually the one you have to watch out for. “I’ll just have one little piece.” NO YOU WILL NOT KAREN YOU LIAR.

10. If you’re ever feeling down about your relationship, turn on HGTV for a few minutes and watch unhappy couples passive-aggressively speak to each other while trying to conceal their rage. It’ll make you feel better.

11. You will not feel drunk if you have one drink. But you will feel hungover the next day.

12. Don’t wear unique or recognizable shoes to work. Because then the coworker in the stall next to you will know that you’re the one pooping in there.

13. “One more episode” means four more episodes.

14. If someone says, “That’s hilarious” after you tell them a story, they weren’t listening to anything you said.

15. If your friend texts you that they’re ten minutes away, they just got out of the shower.

16. Marilyn Monroe did not say nearly as many of those quotes as I thought she did.

17. Never start off a sentence with “I recently read somewhere that….” Because regardless of how innocent and excited you are to talk about it, people will think you sound pretentious.

18. Hanger is real, and the only way to fight it is to order a large rotisserie chicken as an appetizer when you go out to dinner with friends.

19. Pasta is the only home-cooked meal that you absolutely cannot f*ck up.

20. If you screw up pasta, give up cooking forever and go home. If you’re already in your home, find a new home.

21. The fact that the man who bought Segway, Inc. died on a Segway is a perfect metaphor for how sick life is.

22. Appreciate the leggings-are-pants trend for as long as you possibly can. Because you’ll never know the good you had right in front of you until it’s gone.

23. If you decide to talk on the phone on public transportation, just know that every single person is listening.

24. Receiving mail with a hand-written address on the front is one of the most exciting things in the world. But it will end up being a “time to make your yearly appointment” reminder from your gynecologist.
 
25. If someone tells you a story and you accidentally zone out, just say “That’s hilarious.”