A young person’s life is full of milestones, but the two most significant are leaving home to study at university, and then leaving university to get their first ‘adult job’in the ‘adult world.’Transitioning from student to young adult, though, without the safety net of university can be equally terrifying and exciting. There are, however, ways to make this transition as easy and comfortable as possible.
Understand Tax, Loans and Finances
As a newly-formed young adult, you no longer have excuses of naivety to hide behind if you mismanage your finances. It’s your responsibility now to stay out of the red, avoiding short term loans and over-spending, and ensuring that you’re meeting rent, paying for bills and paying your tax and national insurance contributions on time and to the correct figure.
Set up an excel spreadsheet to help you budget and be sensible and patient with your finances. By doing so, it’ll help you when you experience additional financial burdens in the future.
Buy Grown-Up Stuff
Again, you might have always felt you were young enough to get away with not owning a few items that every serious adult ought to own and benefit from owning. It’s time you made that investment in your post-university life. Those items might include:
- A landline telephone for ‘business’calls
- A printer with high-quality HP toner for important documents
- A washer-dryer machine for your dirty laundry
- A car or other vehicle to help you shop, commute andtravel
- A filing system to store your array of documents
Investing in these items will help you keep track of life, appear professional, and anticipate the bumps in the adulthood road ahead.
Hold Down Jobs
While as a student you might have taken part-time or casual work in order toget by, as a fully-fledged adult you’re going to need to hold down a full-time, career-building job. Your first step here is to get a job, preferably before you even graduate so that you’re prepared for the transition into work as soon as your final term ends.
When applying for jobs, bear in mind:
- Your skill sets and what experience you’ll be bringing to the job
- The job specifications and what you can do to prepare for the role
- The location of the joband whether you’ll need to relocate, finding a new home
- What the wage is, and whether you’ll be able to learn and grow within your first role
Holding down your first full-time job is a significant step in the life of a young adult, transforming them into a young professional with a wage to support a more exciting and varied lifestyle. You should be excited about this step and you should be ambitious in your application in order to secure a stimulating, exciting job as your first step on the career ladder.
The information provided above should be of use to those students soon to graduate who are keen to make the transition to young adulthood as seamless and stress-free as possible.
