This is Adulthood

I'm 27 years young and judging from how often people ask me what college I attend, I look even younger than that. I'm not at a point where I'm freaking out about getting older or anything and Jonathan and I have both been through of fair share of adult experiences, but it has been funny lately how now that we are married, Jonathan and I are experiencing so many new "welcome to adulthood" moments...moments where it really hits us that we are big kids now.

Family Planning. We've had lots of conversations about starting a family and speculated how long we'd want to wait and whatnot, but now that we are officially married, these conversations have become much more specific and while I want to keep our specific plans to ourselves, it's so surreal to be having these conversations with my husband. 

Life insurance. Earlier this week, we we met with one of Jonathan's clients, a financial adviser to discuss life insurance options. Neither one of us have had any life insurance in place and we want to change that as soon as possible. We spent the evening discusses our goals for retirement, our finances and different options for investing and planned to meet again next week to go over his recommendations. As we chatted about the meeting on our way home, I couldn't help but smile to myself because there we were in the car on a Tuesday evening having a discussion about life insurance....woah. This is adulthood. 

Hosting meals. Jonathan and I have hosted a handful of parties, bonfires, barbecues and whatnot since we met, but since the wedding we've loved hosting friends and family for meals at our house. You already heard all about the awesome brunch we hosted last weekend, but we've even also been the hosts with the most for dinner. This is kind of a big deal for me because I wasn't much of a cook before Jonathan and I started dating. It's crazy to think that a year ago I was nervous about cooking just about anything and now I'm putting together entire meals for others. There's something about inviting your in-laws over for dinner, planning the meal and cooking the whole thing yourselves that makes you realize you're adults now.

Canceling cable. I'm so glad we made the decision to combine our finances a few months before our wedding. At the time, I was selling my house and it felt like we were making it rain spending so much on our wedding that it made sense for us to go ahead and make the move then. I can't imagine having to do all that now that we are settling into married life and trying to get other things in order. With that being said, we are still working on adjusting our monthly budget and searching for ways to save money and cut costs. Earlier this week, we made the decision to cancel cable. We're keeping our Internet, obviously, but getting rid of cable and DVR and all that nonsense is going to save us a ton of money and saving money is FUN. With Netflix, Hulu and AppleTV, I honestly don't think we'll miss cable a bit. But making decisions like this is so grown up, huh?

Meal planning. My grocery store visits as a single girl were much, much different than they are today. As a lady who didn't do much cooking, my trips to Publix consisted of me toeing the line between healthy food but also food that didn't take much preparation. This resulted in me eating a lot of fruits, oatmeal, Special K protein bars and bagged salad. Now that I'm the lady of our house and quite the chef (if I do say so myself), my grocery shopping a bit more strategic. I am absolutely not a fan of going to the grocery store multiple times a week. I like to go into our week knowing what I'm going to cook each night and make one big trip to Publix to shop for the week. These days, Sunday mornings I typically sit down and plan our meals and try to get the grocery shopping done that afternoon. This feels so responsible and adult-like...and even mom-ish of me...haha. 

Sure, sure, sure, being an adult is certainly not what we thought it would be when we were in middle school, but I'm still a fan. Making difficult decisions about life insurance is certainly not one of the things I looked forward to when I was young and I can't help but laugh when I realize Jonathan and I are having a 10 minute conversation about how great our new Tupperware is, but I really do love where we are at in life. We are getting older, but I know there is always something to look forward to and things we still haven't experienced. Adulthood isn't always easy and isn't always fun, but I'm going in this with a pretty damn good partner, so it's all good to me. 

What kind of "This is Adulthood" moments have you experienced? Do you find yourself laughing at how grown up you are all of a sudden?