Have you ever stopped to wonder how much of a grown up you are? We probably all have (and it’s a question I’m sure most of us have asked ourselves with varying degrees of despair) — and hey, wouldn’t you know it, BuzzFeed has some answers for us in the form of a handy-dandy video!
The site’s video division gathered data from huge variety of sources — we’re talking everything from the National Association of Home Builders to the United States Department of Labor — and put it all together in a video depicting the statistically-likely life of the average American adult. As always, I’m more than willing to offer myself up as a guinea pig (I consider it one of the great joys of my job). I’m 29, so according to these stats, I should:
- Not own a house yet;
- Have gotten married two years ago;
- Spend around 33 minutes cooking per day;
- Spend not quite six hours reading per week;
- Be getting almost eight hours of sleep per night;
- Have at least $3,1000 in my checking account and at least $12,000 squirreled away for retirement;
- And belong to a gym, but never go to it.
That’s… actually surprisingly accurate.
I don’t own a house, I usually get somewhere between seven and nine hours of sleep a night depending on how restless I’m feeling, and I’ve got a pretty healthy chunk of cash set aside for later. I’m not married yet, but we already knew that I’ve long since stopped worrying about marriage as a life milestone; I also never even bothered to join a gym, since I know I would never go to it anyway (instead, I’ve been biking on the trail outside my apartment. Also my complex has a fitness center, but that’s beside the point). The only area in which I can be said to exceed expectations is the amount of time I spend reading. I’m one of those people that usually reads for at least an hour or two before bed every night — it’s the only thing that makes my brain calm down enough for sleep.
Ultimately, though, I feel like adulthood is kind of an illusion anyway. The older I get, the more convinced I become that no one actually knows what “being a grownup” means; we all just fake it and hope for the best. Here, take a watch yourself and see how you stack up — but don’t stress about it too much, okay? Statistics are just numbers, after all.
Images: Giphy
