Hey, guys.

It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet. And this week's video is brought to you by Adobe Document Cloud.

And this week, we wanted to talk to you about the small changes that you can make within the course of a day to make yourself more grown up. And what does it mean to be a grown up? At TFD, we think the best definition for grown up is the simplest one.

It's someone who can be responsible for themselves and who cares for themselves the way a parent cares for a child, which is to say, thoughtfully, unconditionally, and practically. Being an adult is not any one amount of money, or a particular career path, or checks on an imaginary adult to do list. It's simply being an autonomous person who can rely on themselves.

You don't have to be a homeowner, a parent, married, or own a golden retriever who wears a bandanna around its neck in order to be a real adult. And the reason that people often say they never feel like an adult is because they keep defining themselves by these arbitrary moving goalposts instead of by their own growth. I feel like an adult because I am my own keeper and guide.

It's as simple as that. But becoming that person can feel really overwhelming. So we wanted to stay, in the time honored TFD tradition, of little things that you can do literally within the course of a day to help you on that path.

When taken in these little, super manageable steps, it's actually way more achievable than you thought to get you to this place. So here are 11 actions you can take right now to get you started. Number one is all at once, make the appointments you've been putting off.

So what is one of the biggest things that parents used to do for us as a kid that feels the most impossible to get a hold of as an adult? For me, at least, one of those things is just making regular appointments for shit I know I need to do. From your doctor to your dentist to your HR person, which, by the way, if you have not set up a meeting with them to go over your benefits and make sure that you're maximizing them, you should do that.

Putting appointments on your calendar can be one of the weirdly hardest things to do as an adult. But the surprising thing is, once they're actually on the calendar, they're actually fairly easy to follow through on, because getting them on the calendar is most of the battle. So let's go inception here.

Make yourself a making appointment day, and put that on your calendar. Pick a lunchtime slot during the week when all of these places are open to just sit down and go through all the appointments that you need to be making yearly. An easy way to make sure that you do it is to treat yourself to a yummy lunch while you're doing it, that you actually look forward to.

And writing the script for this video reminded me that I need to treat myself later this week to sushi and calling all of my doctors. Because I have not been back for a regular checkup in a while. Get your appointment making out of the way all at once so that it's something that you never have to think about or feel that pang of oh shit, I haven't seen a doctor in like five years, I probably have like eight diseases.

It's the grown up thing to do. Number two is to create specific, well labeled savings accounts. So as Erin from Broke Millennial recently told us on an awesome episode you should check out in the description about uncommon saving strategies, the more precisely you have labeled your various accounts that you're using to save up for specific things, the more likely you are to actually contribute to them.

So that means go from having account number 138972 to Belgium trip, summer 2018. Or new car. Or emergency fund.

Whatever it is you're saving for, the more it feels like a real, tangible, human thing that you can get excited about, the more actively you will want to save for it. It's a small psychological trick, but it really works. Number three is get the right tools for your productivity.

One of the easiest ways to ensure that you are actually going to do the stuff that you have a tendency to put off, which is one of the biggest keys to grown-up-dom, is having the right tools to let you do these things easily and conveniently. Adobe Scan is a free app that lets you take pictures of documents with your phone and instantly turn them into editable and searchable PDFs. Adobe Scan now even can detect photos of documents you may have already saved to your phone.

Bills, doctor's forms, work documents, applications, everything that you can imagine that you would want to quickly and seamlessly turn from paper to digital can be instantly changed with a snap of your phone's camera. Never again rifle through stacks of paper to find what you're looking for, and start seamlessly organizing and sending all of your documents today with the totally free Adobe Scan. The link is in the description.

Number four is stock your always-need items. Make a list of every item you constantly find yourself running out of and having to run to the store to get more of, which leads you to spend more money, wastes time, and often leads you to buy other stuff you do not need. This is often things like cleaning supplies, toilet paper, face wipes, salt, et cetera.

Buy these items in bulk at the best prices you can find them, and store them in a specific space in a closet or under a cabinet, which is now referred to as your restocking zone. Being prepared and having things on hand is one of the best markers of adulthood, because it means you're thinking ahead for yourself and saving yourself time and money. You'd be shocked at how much more confident you actually feel just from knowing that you have the stuff you need on hand when you need it.

Number five is make a few 70 30 calls. Practice being a good and thoughtful listener by taking time to call a few people that you've been meaning to talk to, and making sure you spend 70% of the call listening and 30% talking. It not only makes us actually truly catch up with the person, but it helps us practice a really good skill, which is being an active listener, whether at work or just in everyday life.

Because the truth is, being a good listener is one of the ultimate secrets to being liked in life, especially from important people like your boss or your colleagues. Because at the end of the day, most people just want to be listened to. Number six is prep a whole week of breakfasts and lunches.

Challenge yourself to take one day and prep out five breakfasts and five lunches. Usually, obviously, this will take place on a Sunday. You can make yourself a big batch of soup, cook off a bunch of hard boiled eggs, make a big flatbread that can be cut into individual servings and reheated-- whatever it is, just make sure that you have enough for the whole week and can alternate in a way that will keep you excited.

When all of your take-to-work food is prepped before Monday rolls around, you'll find yourself all week eating healthier, spending less money, feeling overall more prepared, and not spending time in the mornings running around in a panic because you have to make yourself something to eat. Meal planning does not have to be just the domain of fitness-ey people, and if you make sure to alternate flavorful meals, it's actually something you'll really look forward to. I'm pretty religious so far about bringing lunch to work, which I prep the night before, and it is crazy how much it totally eliminates that burning desire to run to the store and buy something expensive and bad for you.

Number seven is have a bank checkup. Take an hour to go through your quote unquote, bank self, and find out where you stand on things. How is your credit score?

Have you raised the limits on all of your credit cards to make sure you have the best credit utilization score? Have you been getting charged any weird fees? Do you have a personal relationship with someone at your bank who knows who you are?

Which is, by the way, extremely useful if you ever need to dispute a weird charge or kill a fee or ask them to waive a late payment on your record. That's something not a lot of people know, by the way. If, for whatever reason, you are late paying a bill, let's say, paying off your credit card because, let's say, you forgot to do it or you got paid late or whatever, you can actually call your banker and ask them to take that off their record.

And depending on your payment history with them and your relationship with them, they're actually totally able to do it, which can save your credit score from being seriously dinged. Doing a bank checkup just like you would a medical checkup is extremely effective for making sure you're making the most of your money. Number eight is get rid of all the clothes which you no longer wear or which are no longer usable.

You don't have to change anything in your wardrobe or buy anything new. Simply getting rid of what you don't use will A, give you a much clearer idea of what your real style is, B, ensure that you're not wasting tons of space with stuff that you don't use-- and by the way, let's not forget, square footage equals money when it comes to your apartment-- and C, it will ensure that you're never walking out of the house in something that's ill fitting or old or stained or makes you feel uncomfortable. And part of that feeling like a grown up sentiment is feeling confident in the clothes that you're wearing everyday.

But you don't necessarily have to add anything to have that confident adult wardrobe. You just need to know how to edit what you have. And that means letting go of all of the things that you keep in some weird back-of-the-mind sense that you might eventually wear it one day, even though you know you never will.

That stuff is just dragging you down and giving you that feeling of I have nothing to wear when you look at your closet every morning. Number nine is make a cleaning spreadsheet. Treat the act of cleaning the space you live in with the same level of attention and care that you would treat an important project you're working on.

Make a detailed, coherent spreadsheet for when you're cleaning your home. Everything from the products you need to the areas you're tackling to notes about bigger repairs or adjustments in your home-- the more you can make the act of cleaning feel like a passive, mindless thing because everything's already written out for you, the more you can just zone out and actually do it. And having that coherent spreadsheet that you can just quickly go through and check off will ensure that you do it thoroughly every time, even while turning off your brain and listening to a podcast.

Number 10 is do a fridge overhaul. First, throw out anything that's expired, unused, or totally unrecognizable. Label what needs to be labeled and sort things into containers that can be sorted, especially things that tend to smell up the whole fridge, such as having a cheese Tupperware.

Clean the shelves and the drawers, clean the outside of the fridge, and defrost the freezer if it needs to be defrosted, as well as organizing that too. A clean fridge is a healthy fridge, and one in which you can actually see all of your ingredients, and therefore, use them when you're cooking to their fullest, instead of forgetting that they're actually in your refrigerator until you look at it one day and it's this weird, unidentifiable, green mass in a Tupperware, and you don't even want to open it. You just throughout the entire Tupperware, because lord even knows what's going to jump out at you.

And cooking more and actually using every ingredient you buy because it's readily accessible will save you money in the long term. Plus, it gives you that quiet confidence of knowing that things are organized and ready to go, which again, is a huge part of that adult feeling confidence. Lastly, number 11 is to automate three things.

Pick three things-- any three things-- that you are consistently putting off, forgetting to do, or doing late. Automate them. Everything from bill payments to email reminders to savings transfers can be totally automated.

And making sure as much of your life is self driven as possible ensures that you will be able to dedicate your precious brain space to the things that are more complicated and really require your attention. Plus, you won't be constantly worrying about what you forgot to do. For example, I've set my calendar to remind me once a month with this little blast that just says, in all caps, do your payroll, Chelsea, five exclamation points.

And it's sent to me four times in an alarm form throughout the day. It's something that I always forget to do, or I'm doing late, and having that reminder just gives me that little extra kick in the ass which means I don't have to actively think about it throughout the month. And putting those little pieces of your life on autopilot means you will reap rewards from it for the rest of your life because this is what helps you not only create better habits but also learn that you don't have to be in control of everything at all times.

Remember that the journey to becoming a grown up starts with a few baby steps that you can take literally within the course of a day. And that having the right tools is half the battle, like Adobe Scan. You can learn more about Adobe Scan and download it for free at the link in the description.

As always, guys, thank you so much for watching. And don't forget to hit the Subscribe button and to come back every Tuesday for new and awesome videos. Bye.