The Jewish faith taught that you become an adult at 13. A Bar or Bat Mitzvah is their coming of age ceremony. In America adulthood is recognized at 18.
A new survey though says it's much later. The age when life, money and the future really starts to feel “real” and you start being an adult is officially 27, according to a new survey.
It asks 2-thousand U.S. adults split evenly by generation about how they embrace adulthood and finds:
- Americans feel like they’re actually an adult when they start paying their own bills (56%), being financially independent (45%) and putting responsibilities over having fun (38%).
- The top two events that made people finally feel like an adult are moving out of their parents house (46%) and getting their first career job or job in their chosen field (28%).
- Overall, people start to take their finances seriously when they’re around 28, but 76% of older generations wish they’d started taking theirs more seriously earlier in their 20s.
- Gen Z is ahead of the curve when it comes to getting a credit card, learning how to budget, paying their own bills and opening a savings account, as they did all that around the age of 22.
- But 11% of Gen Zers admit they still don’t feel like an adult.
- That may be because more than half (53%) haven’t yet contributed to their 401(k) or retirement plan.
- While 39% of Americans don’t currently feel financially stable, they hope to be by age 46, but 41% of them don’t think they’ll ever achieve financial stability.
- On the bright side, Americans would rather spend $15 a month on life insurance (59%) than spend that much on a standard Netflix subscription (23%).
- Across all generations, 71% of respondents believe being an adult is harder today than it was 10 years ago.