Shortly after I graduated college, a friend and I attended a concert. Rod Stewart. The show was phenomenal. The pot smoke was so pervasive that we had enough of a contact high to desperately seek donuts on the way home. And we were pretty sure a couple nearby had sex under their blanket on the lawn of the concert pavilion. But I digress. That is not the point of this story.

After I ordered the tickets, my friend wrote a check for the cost of her ticket. I don’t remember what she wrote on the memo line, but on the signature line, she wrote “Concert.” When I told her she had to sign the check and would have to void that one and write another one, she had no idea what I meant. It was her first checking account. She hadn’t taken a consumer education class in high school. No one had ever shown her how to write a check.

Life skills.

I’m sure we’ve all seen memes and videos and posts wishing that school had taught us skills we would need later in life – taxes, interest rates, mortgages, investing. Not many people need to know the Pythagorean theorem or that the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. And I don’t know anyone besides English teachers who need to know how to diagram a sentence.

As an adult, I can rationalize that we need to learn the basics in a lot of different subjects. Most people don’t know in grade school what field of study they’ll pursue. Some people don’t even know by the time they finish high school. There are people who DO need to know that the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. I am not one of them, and yet this random fact sticks in my brain.

But some of the life skills I needed when I was 16, I don’t need anymore.

Corinne took a consumer education class last summer. She learned to write a check, how to put it in a check register, but she didn’t learn how to balance a checkbook. I taught her the basics, but I also told her that I don’t think it’s a skill she needs to focus on. How to make and follow a budget…absolutely! But once you know money in and money out, check your bank account every day. Make sure there’s nothing wonky. Make sure you know what’s cleared and what hasn’t, but it changes every day and you can check it every day.

When you had to mail checks to the electric company and the gas company and you wrote a check for groceries, it was harder to keep track of what was outstanding. But I hardly even write checks anymore. I pay all my bills through my bank’s bill pay. I use my debit card at the store and online, and it shows pending in my account immediately. I can deposit checks using my phone, and the money is available the next (and sometimes the same) day. If you have more money than you know what to do with (we don’t), hire an accountant. For most people, though, balancing a checkbook is no longer a required life skill.

There’s something to be said for learning to be an adult though. We should all know how to do laundry, wash dishes, go to the grocery store and stay within a budget. We opened a high school checking account for Corinne a couple of years ago. She deposits her birthday money, Christmas money, and I transfer money to her account each time I get paid.

Up until now, she’s used it to buy McDonald’s if she’s out with her friends, things she wants on Amazon. But she just recently got her driver’s license. I told her that I would top off the gas tank of her car (the fact she has her own car is a much longer story) but that it was her responsibility after that. When I topped off the tank, I texted her and said, “For reference, it cost $39 to top off your tank. So budget accordingly.” She said she’ll limit her driving (which she doesn’t do a whole lot of anyway), but I suspect her Amazon shopping will go down a bit as well.

One of Corinne’s friends used to go grocery shopping with me every couple of weeks. She said she liked going because she felt like she was learning how to be an adult. One day when I got a $5 off coupon at a store, she asked me if saving money was what adults get excited about. Heck yeah! I liked teaching her how to find the deals and save money. I signed up for State Farm’s Drive Safe & Safe precisely because I could save money (currently saving $70 a month).

Being an adult is hard — capital H, capital A, capital R, capital D…HARD. But being an adult 10 years from now will look so much different than it does now.

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐½
4.5 Stars for Adulting by Liz Talley

337 pages
Publisher: Montlake
Publication Date: April 1, 2021
This title was an Amazon First Reads selection.

Publisher’s Description

After another all-night bender, one more failed stint at rehab, and a parole violation, self-destructive actress Chase London has to deal with her demons. She’s been written off as a Hollywood casualty by almost everyone, including her own mother. But handsome superstar Spencer Rome has her back. So does an uncompromising stranger determined to start Chase at square one and help her pull her future into focus. If Chase is willing.

Life coach Olivia Han is devoted to “adulting” boot camp therapy. It’s not just her professional specialty, though—it’s also one way to avoid focusing on building a life of her own. To escape the pressures of Tinseltown, the two women head to Olivia’s cabin in the wilds of Northern California. There they discover a place in need of TLC. As they work together to rehab the once-charming cabin, they create a refuge where Chase can come to terms with her unsettled past, and where Olivia has an unexpected reckoning with her own troubling history.

For two women doing damage control, this is a time for second chances—in life, in finding love, in forgiving family, and in an emerging friendship that might be exactly what each of them needs to heal.

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Main Characters:

• Chase London – a 20-something “has-been” actress, addict, alcoholic, had been a sought-after child star at 11, but currently on her fourth stint in rehab
• Olivia Han – late 30s, therapist turned life coach to young celebrities, currently working on another book, inherited (with her sister) a cabin and land from her grandparents in Cotter’s Creek about eight hours north of Malibu
• Conrad Santos – movie producer/director who wants Chase for a part in his newest film, met Olivia in high school and hires her to turn Chase around after her latest stint in rehab, he needs to be able to get Chase insured for the new movie
• Spencer Rome – former child actor turned movie superhero The Hammer, Chase’s only real friend
• Neve Hancock – Olivia’s older sister, divorced, not really sure of what she wants to do with her life
• Zeke Kittridge – works as a guide in Cotter’s Creek, lives up the road from Olivia and Neve’s cabin, spent summers hanging out with their younger sister Marley, worked as a lawyer in NY for a while and decided he preferred the slower pace of home

     

Trigger warning: drug/alcohol abuse, suicide, child rape/sexual assault—all discussed as part of therapy, not in graphic detail

Chase London never had to do anything for herself, has no boundaries or limits, and no sense of responsibility. Having fallen into the trappings of alcohol and drug addiction at a young age, and with her mother/manager just sending her to rehab each time, Chase fell quickly from Hollywood A-lister to Hollywood has-been. Until Conrad Santos, respected Hollywood producer, thinks she’s perfect for a role in his newest film.

Conrad reaches out to Olivia Han, an old friend who stopped returning his calls after the death of her younger sister Marley. Conrad needs to be able to get Chase insured for his film and convinces Olivia that she’s the only one who can do it. He takes advantage of their friendship a bit, and Olivia is easily swayed into believing that helping Chase might assuage some of the guilt she feels over her sister’s own drug overdose.

While Olivia checks Chase out of rehab, Chase takes advantage of Olivia’s distraction and runs off. Once Olivia tracks her down, she plans to take Chase straight back to rehab when Chase drops the bomb that her father let one of his friends have sex with her when she was 13.

After two weeks at Chase’s Malibu home finishing her sobriety treatment, Olivia plans to take Chase to the cabin she just inherited in Cotter’s Creek, eight hours north. It’s where she spent her summers as a kid and where she had told Conrad she knew herself best. The plan is to tear down Chase’s walls, help her realize she is capable, and teach her how to take care of herself.

Olivia’s “treatment plan” for Chase is unorthodox. In the real world, it would likely cross the boundary between doctor and patient, but Olivia’s role is life coach. Once they arrive at the cabin, which is more rundown than Olivia realized, she throws Chase into the deep end—teaching her how to grocery shop, do laundry, run a dishwasher. In the midst of all this, Olivia, Chase, and eventually Neve and Zeke begin renovating the cabin. Chase learns to be an everyday person, outside of Hollywood.

Chase works through a lot of trauma during this process, and Olivia faces her own demons. I appreciated the process, and I really liked Chase’s ultimate transformation.

The reasons I knocked this down half a star: Chase changed A LOT in just a few weeks at the cabin. After about 10 years of Hollywood excess, I feel like it would have taken more time. We saw the work that Chase was doing—the things she was learning, the journaling. We didn’t experience her working through everything emotionally. A lot of that focus was on Olivia’s life. It felt a little preachy at times, more narration than conversation. And there were times when Olivia would think back to her past, and there was no indication that it was happening. All of a sudden, she would be narrating something from high school or college, and then just as suddenly, she was back in the moment. It was a distraction.

All in all, even though it was a bit predictable in parts, it was worth the journey to get to the end.

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