To envy 'proper grown ups'?

[RedZebra]

Lately I've been thinking about how I wish I was more of a 'proper grown up' and feeling a bit of towards people who are. Here's my list of what IMHO makes a proper grown up:

People who seem to have their shit together:

• Have good financial plans / approach e.g. stuff like
  • mortgage paid off early in life
  • pensions
  • ISAs
  • second homes
  • homes they rent out
• Seem confident and decisive
• Have some kind of polish / upstanding citizen feel about them (hard to put finger on this)
• Not big drinkers or pot smokers
• Have interests and hobbies e.g. triathlon, cycling
• Have regular holidays planned well in advance
• Have regular idyllic seeming big family meals and get togethers at Easter and Christmas and family birthdays
• Have families that are proper-seeming and not nuts or chaotic
• Have good professions and are well respected
• Have well behaved children with interesting hobbies who get top grades

AIBU to envy these types of people?

How do people who tick most of the above do it? How do they 'know' to do and be all the right things as adults? Do you think it's a kind of family training or do you think you can acquire this approach?

I have a friend who is just like you describe in loads of ways, but having known her for something like eleven years, I know that a lot of it is attitude. She's always had this calm, unflappable, incisive quality, which makes her life seem charmed, but in fact, when things don't go her way (and even when they weren't, she still seemed idyllic to me) she just sort of made lemonade.

I really admire her and want to be like her. Her mother is exactly the same.

However I do agree some people seem to be far more grown-up grown-ups than others, but in my experience this is caused by a weight of more 'life' happening to them in a way you wouldn't wish for.

Sadly, this is very true.

I'm a grown up because i have cloth napkins and wine glasses that match. Nothing from that list though

My husband is sceptical of people who view life as a tick box exercise.

Just remember there are people who seemingly have it all and are ashamed as they go cap in hand to their doctor to say how empty and sad they feel.

Depression is depression.

I don't feel like a grown up (mid 30s) BUT I'm more 'together' than I was 10 years ago - I try not to compare to other people, just to my past self, it helps keep me sane!

If I compare to others my age in the UK then I'm years behind in terms of being a 'grown up' and I'll never catch up so I have learnt to be content with what I have. I had an extremely abusive/violent/neglectful childhood (aged 6 - 16) and suffered years of PTSD, bipolar disorder and now there's talk of D.I.D. So no, I'm not on par with my peers but considering what I've been through I'm doing pretty great.

Also I think a lot about how my life, whilst hardly enviable to people in the UK, would be a dream for millions of other people around the world who don't have a roof over their head, who don't have access to something as simple as clean water, who don't have any kind of health/social care, who have no access to free education ... ! I may not have a lot but that little I do have is still what many other people dream of so how can I be ungrateful?

I think you are really just describing a certain demographic: middle aged and around 35-50 years old. This isn't all the grown ups!

I agree with you in some ways, this list is indicative of people who are actually grown up in the eyes of most - they are handling their lives sensibly. Fwiw I expect I largely come across this way with the exception of a few points. This has everything to do with meeting DH who is mind-blowing sensible about money, financial planning and has made us a plan to pay off our mortgage by the time we are mid 40s. He is relentless in making sure we are both paying into pensions and he keeps stocks and shares ISAs for our two DC. When we met, he had a deposit saved which we used together to buy a house.

He has taught me the sense in planning ahead for a holiday because it's cheaper and there is more choice available, so we can afford one jaunt abroad per year.

I am VERY lucky in this sense, because personally I wouldn't have ever been this sensible about anything. I was used to spending what I had and being unafraid of debt. I will come across to most as what you describe, but it's circumstantial- I met a proper grown up so I became one!!

I'm a grown up but a very poor one. I would just be happy to have some savings but that isn't going to happen soon. The only reason I feel like a grown up is because I have to worry about bills and feeding my children.

OP, the people you mention sound like awful bores. Is that really what you look up to?

For me, growing up is a process not an end goal, we are growing up until we die, and it means getting more and more experienced so that we can be more effective at doing what we really want deep down and what is best for those around us. Part of which is learning not to turn away from those things and distract ourselves with nonsense like accumulating unnecessary wealth or caring whether we look "polished".

I know people who lived off the smell of an oily rag because they were obsessed with paying off their mortgage early.

Twenty five years later they are living in their second home having sold the first home plus the land they bought as an investment. So they can pour money into the money pit of a second home and end up with practically nothing as they wouldn't even break even if they sold their second home (only home they have).

Just when they should be thinking of retiring they are working more hours than ever.

What was it all for ?

I'm too lazy for most of your list OP. It sounds very, very boring and predictable. I have paid my mortgage off and I don't drink or smoke - but that just means I have more time and money for fun. I can't imagine ever having an ISA or being well-respected.

Im 38 with a second dh and a ds4 and i dont feel like a proper grown up at all! I think I'll always feel around 25 and that I'm just winging all this

Even if I could afford it I wouldn't want a second home, too much responsibility, you have to go on holiday to the same place all the time and I'd rather be looked after in a hotel. It's not very ethical either, when so many people are struggling to get somewhere to live at all.

As for the large family gatherings, that's nothing to do with being mature and "together", either you have a big family or you don't.

I do have quite a few things on the OP's list but that's to do with having a well paid job, having been careful financially and never having overextended myself, so when I got a small inheritance I was able to pay off my by then quite small mortgage. I guess the being careful bit is down to me, but the rest isn't.

DH & I fail all the financial things on your list...
However I rarely drink & we don't do drugs, we're confident (shouldn't give a rat's ass what other people think).
I am working on the polished bit. DH isn't bothered!

My husband is sceptical of people who view life as a tick box exercise.

And you’re not? Why post his opinion and not yours?

YABU. NO-ONE is like this in real life, with all the attributes you have listed. Some people on the parallel universe of mumsnet claim to be all of that, (that you have listed,) but most are not. They just want people to think they are......

There are plenty of people 'out there' like that, sure many of the things listed are the hallmarks of middle class professionals but they do exist.

OP I have not rtft but I will say this. My parents look like this on paper and on social media. They have their mortgage paid and lots of money, a holiday home, savings, holidays, the lot If you read their FB profiles you would think that we were a big happy family enjoying lots of social events but the reality is very different.

I have been NC with them for years due to their emotional and physical abuse of me and my children. My father is a bully that everyone panders to and he treats my mother like dirt. My mother threw me under the bus and abused me too not to be bullied herself. My brother is a manchild who has had his debts paid off by my parents many times. Their relationship with my brother's children is unhealthy. They have basically been brought up by my abusive parents because they took over my dn's lives from birth and my brother and SIL could not be bothered to raise their own kids. As a result, my poor dn's are completely controlled by my awful father and brother and SIL got no say in their upbringing. They are grown up now so too late that will never change.

On paper I am a little more chaotic, I have very little money, but no debts. I own a small home but I have to scrimp and save to do major decorating jobs. We go on holiday every other year or have weekends away. I provide a nice life for my kids and we manage to have lots of fun and they are safe and happy, but I am nowhere near as affluent as the family I left behind. I do not post on facebook much unless to keep in touch with a few friends from school and uni former colleagues etc and let them know how me and my family are doing. I do not have a huge facebook persona with hundreds of "friends" I have never met, where I post every detail of my life and show off everything I have.

I honestly don't know if this makes me "happier" than my family, since I have to deal with the pain that they left me with, but I do think I have more integrity and my conscience is clear regarding choices I've made and the way I treat people.

Sorry to be a downer, I know this is supposed to be lighthearted but just wanted to put that out there.

How we perceive people as being properly adult, or successful or happy is probably quite subjective.

I’d s say that most of my friends and their partners (aged 45-60) have the bulk of the things on that list but many aren’t happy. Several have partners with secret gambling and drinking problems. Quite a few are unhappily married (usually the ones who seem, on the face of it, to have idyllic Family holidays ).

I have some of those things, but not well enough off to have all of them. You are talking about a certain kind of well off person.

Yy they do Pan. I know several. Where I live we consider ourselves quite poor for not owning a rental property or a second home, and for sending our children to state school through necessity (not choice).

And all these people who ‘have it all’ really do have charmed lives and are incredibly lucky. Some have worked hard but most have acquired through family money at some point (eg the leg up needed to invest in property just before prices went boom). I have no qualms with them, on the most part they are lovely people who live well. Their problems are small but real nonetheless. As we move into middle age it’s clear than none of them are more protected from tragedy, loss or depression than those who have very little.

I’m most of those things you mentioned.
But... we’ve had a lot of financial support from parents. We’re both very lucky.
On the other hand it’s not always butterflies and rainbows. I’ve suffered terrible depression and anxiety which no one would really know about as I’m very good at putting on a front. I grew up in a single parent household in poverty with a narcissistic emotionally abusive father. So it’s not all been plain sailing.
Try not to envy others and just enjoy the life you have. You don’t know what they’ve been through or what’s going on behind closed doors.

Honestly, there are many people in the world who like to portray themselves as being the perfect human until one day something catastrophic happens and it all comes tumbling down around them. Perfection doesn’t exist and those ‘idyllic’ family meals are probably fraught with passive aggression and misery .

OP, YABU.

Many of the things on your list are simply down to age and wealth.

Most people currently under 30 struggle to buy their first home, let alone have the mortgage paid off or buy a second one. And most won't have decent pensions either.

The things you mention have nothing to do with being a "proper adult" or "having their shit together" - they're about coming from a rich family or having been born at a time when it was still possible for an ordinary but reasonably affluent person to amass that kind of wealth through their own efforts.

I have paid off my student loan and it makes me feel like I'm "adulting", but I also know that if I'd started university a year later (or, god forbid, 7 years later), I wouldn't have paid it off yet, through no fault of my own.

This has made me smile, I have always felt I was never a proper grown up and for me it has come with age (40s) but in truth I’m clinging on to youth and having all that list would make me feel old...

I know quite a few people through circumstance that would tick a lot of those boxes and they are all well off, and at least one half of the couple having a high earning professional job. They are mostly older too, more in 50s.

I could tick a few things off your list, but a few I wouldn’t want, second homes, properties to rent - too much responsibility. Sporting activities, not interested in those. But I have a will, a small pension, some savings, nice house, great kids (not A graders, but they are confident and fun) and good family income from two creative slightly quirky careers. The youngest girls at work definitely see me as a proper grown up but they also think I’m a good laugh, confident and appear much younger than I am, and I love that.

I believe that however ‘together’ someone maybe there will always be stuff going on behind the scenes that wouldn’t want to be added to that list!

People who seem to have their shit together:

• Have good financial plans / approach e.g. stuff like
• mortgage paid off early in life , /Yes
• pensions/ Yes
• ISAs/ Yes
• second homes/ Yes
• homes they rent out/ Been there done it
• Seem confident and / Yes
• Have some kind of polish / upstanding citizen feel about them (hard to put finger on this) Not sure either
• Not big drinkers or pot /Yes
• Have interests and hobbies e.g. triathlon, cycling/ Yoga
• Have regular holidays planned well in advance / usually book last minute
• Have regular idyllic seeming big family meals and get togethers at Easter and Christmas and family birthdays/ Christmas
• Have families that are proper-seeming and not nuts or chaotic /Yes
• Have good professions and are well respected/Yes
• Have well behaved children with interesting hobbies who get top grades/Yes It may seem some people have it all. Someone up thread said inheritance, we both grew up in council estates, I went to a rough school but knew I was not going to end up like my peers and neither would any children I had. I did have a mother who was above her station and we moved to a nicer area when I was 18 but it didn’t all happen at once. Take one step at a time and change what you can but the fact you know what you would like your life to be is a start. A lot of these people you are envying are up to their eyes in debt.