5 Life Hacks You Need To Know If You're Trying To "Adult"

Here we are. Caught somewhere in between climbing the ladder to success and having no idea what we're doing. For some of us, "adulting" is coming as quite a challenge. Can I party until 3 a.m. and show up for my 8 a.m. meeting? What are taxes? What is a savings account? So many questions and not enough answers. So here are 5 serious and not-so-serious life hacks somebody should have told us about adulting.

1. Taxes Are Scary

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Taxes were (and kind of still are...) the scariest thing for me when I started to "adult". I started having to do my taxes when I was 17, but luckily my uncle was an accountant and pretty much took care of everything for me. It wasn't until last year that he retired and I was on my own that I learned about TurboTax online. Seriously, their user-friendly interface and easy-to-understand language make it the easiest thing to do your taxes with. They ask you a series of questions and help you locate important information the IRS needs and when you're done, you can file online with the click of a button.

2. Keep a Your Checking Account Away Different From Your Savings Account

First of all, adulting rule #1 is that you should have a bank account and a savings account. We may all know that but did you know you should keep your bank checking account separate from your savings account. I know it's not "convenient", but hear me out. I recently did this, completely by mistake. I have an old student account with Suntrust that is amazing and doesn't charge me a service fee. When I lived in Europe, I opened a second account with Capital One 360 for the low foreign transaction fees. Since I barely used it when I got back to the States, I started transferring money little by little from my Suntrust account to my Capital One 360 account and forgetting about it. Before I knew it, I had a ton of money saved up in an account I basically forgot about.

3. How Come No One Teaches You To Write Your Resume?

For the amount of essays and papers I wrote in the years leading up to my entrance into adulthood, I could have probably used a class or two on resume writing because I struggled when I had to make my first one. I recently discovered an amazing resume template posted by TIMES magazine in their article "What Your Resume Should Look Like in 2016" and that to thank for several dream job offers. Here are my quick resume tips: If you can make it one page, do it, use Arial or Times New Roman (size 10-12) as a font to make sure your format stays constant on anyone's computer, ignore the objective part and go with a cool, professional summary, and save it in .doc or .pdf format.

4. Better Yet...Why Does No One Teach You How To Find a Job?

Even as a person who was extremely resourceful in learning how to find a job, I always found it ironic that everyone expects you to get a job as an adult, but no one really ever teaches you how. Luckily, we live in the tech age and have hundreds of job hunt tools out there right at your fingertips. Start with building your resume (Read TIME Magazine's What Your Resume Should Look Like in 2016 for a great template) and build your LinkedIn Page to match it; job recruiters will almost always look at your profile and you want them to have a good impression. Then post your resume on as many job sites as you can. Monster.com, Indeed.com, LinkedIn Jobs, etc. are good places to start. The more you put your resume out there, the more chances you have of landing your perfect role.

5. Tires Need Lovin' Too

I remember when I first got a car, my dad would often look at me and say, "I saw your car. Your tires are pretty low, next time you're at the gas station put some air in them." Now, I had SEEN the air pumps at gas stations, but I had no idea how to use them. So I would brush him off like any teenager would and eventually he would do it himself. But then I got older and wiser (lol) and figured out that it's actually not that hard. Life Hack 1: the amount of pressure required by your car is listed on the side of your door. Most gas stations have a pressure gauge to let you know when you've hit your mark and voila! Your tires are inflated.

6. When All Else Fails, Wine About It...

If you're like me, you freak out about things and look for an adult to help you...only to freak out more when you realize you ARE an adult and you need an adulty-er adult to help you out. Sometimes you just want a nice glass of wine to ease your adulting woes. So here's a little hack for when the only thing keeping your from sanity is a pesky bottle opener. Grab your shoe, put the bottom of the bottle on the inside heel, and tap it against a wall or tree. The cork just pops right up!