Hey guys. It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet. And this week's video is brought to you by Metro Mile.

And today, I thought I would do something fun and a little bit personal, which is talk about the things that I am definitely not going to accomplish by the age of 30. As of this recording, I am almost exactly 29 and 1/2, which is a cool age to be, because it gives you just enough time to actively think about the person you want to be when you hit that 3-0, and maybe even make a few changes. That, being said on TFD we're so often talking about the goals and objectives and the things you can do to reach them and the good habits and all of those success stories.

And sometimes it's just kind of nice to talk about the things we're just not going to do. Aside from the fact that we all miss the mark or don't do certain things that we thought we were going to do, it's also nice to realize, especially when you're hitting a certain age, that you're happier not having done them. The more we look at things like age 30 as a time at which we must have accomplished certain things, the less we get to live our life on our own terms and decide what really matters to us.

So without further ado, here are six things I am definitely not going to accomplish by age 30. Number one is cut something out of my diet. Now, as I've mentioned on the channel before I practice something called intermittent fasting which, means that between the hours of 2:00 PM and about 10:00 PM I eat food.

And the rest of the time I don't. I eat a small lunch and then basically whatever I want for dinner. I'm someone who has a really hard time doing those three to four square meals where every one is really caloric reduced and super healthy.

And I also just don't like having to think about it too much. But that kind of puts me in the minority. Because if you guys have not noticed, especially in the past 10 years, there has been a huge rise of diets that are centered around cutting out one thing or another.

Obviously, for a long time we've had diets that are, for example, low carb. But increasingly diets seem to be hyperspecific and centered less around eating less generally and more about being super "clean" in your eating by a total variety of definitions there are diets like Keto, which tend to be extremely low in carbs and extremely high in animal fat and protein. There are diets which center the blame on nearly every illness and ailment on gluten.

There are also things like Whole30 as a lifestyle, which center around cutting out most of what an average person consumes. There are even subsets of veganism which focus only on eating things like fruits, nuts, and seeds, and are extremely high in sugar. The point is, a lot of these diets are based on fairly spurious nutritional advice.

They make claims about things like toxins and cleansing which are incredibly difficult to prove and often blatantly untrue. And they also often mix up the concepts of healthy and low calorie. Let's be honest, you can be vegan and eat a ton more calories than you need.

But they do make sense as a sort of pseudo-medicine in an overwhelmingly unhealthy food culture. We're surrounded and inundated with advertisements and availability of junk foods, processed foods, and things that are just loaded with corn syrup. Sometimes it can feel inescapable and seem like our only move is just radically restricting our diets or cutting out entire food groups.

And to be clear, if you are doing something like veganism for ethical reasons, that's totally different. And a choice I respect. But many people are choosing these diets for these spurious medical reasons.

You can find conflicting medical advice for almost every kind of diet out there. And people who swear by it. But ultimately what works for most people is a diet that is about moderation, that is mostly based on fresh fruits and vegetables, and which allows you to live a normal life and not have to constantly be thinking about food.

For me, the habit that allows me to do that is intermittent fasting. But for you it might be something else. The point is, I thought that I was going to change my diet in some radical way by age 30 and cut something out because I wanted fewer toxins.

And I haven't done that. And honestly, I'm glad I haven't. Number two is have kids.

Now, I'm someone who, like a lot of you, maybe always somehow thought that I would have kids at the age my parents had kids. And my parents had me at 27. And I am almost 30.

So that's clearly not happening. But I'm actually maybe a unique case in that I never even wanted to have my own kids. I always told my parents from the time I was very little that I was going to adopt one child.

But as I've gotten older, I've felt more and more that having kids just might not be my thing. And while I'm not the type of person to ever say never about something, the older I get, the more it just seems like it's not really in the cards for me. And that's OK.

Quite frankly, amongst many other reasons, I don't actually think I would be a good mother. And I say that not at all to self deprecate. I just genuinely think the qualities that I have in life that lead me to accomplish a lot of the things that I love and live a life that is meaningful to me are very incongruous with the qualities that I think are very important in being a mother.

The truth is that parenthood is simply not for everyone. And being honest with yourself about that is very important. But here's the thing about saying you don't think it would be a good parent.

Most people, when they hear that, will go out of their way, almost as a reflex, to say, well of course you would. No, don't say that. And try to correct you.

I think that they do this largely because people assume that saying, you don't think you would be a good parent is automatically a negative thing. The culture we live in, especially for women, is overwhelmingly directing us to have kids. It's the default assumption.

And if we deviate from that, people automatically feel that they want to convince you to get back on that path. And something that has taught me is that with all of this noise around us that is encouraging us as women to have kids as an automatic life choice-- if we're feeling a resistance to that, that's probably a huge indication that it's not for us. Being a parent is almost undoubtedly the biggest life choice that anyone will make.

And not only for their lives, but for the lives of their future kids. It's something you should only do if you feel enthusiastically that it is what you want and something you're ready for. For me, it's definitely not something I will do by 30, if ever.

And learning to accept that the arbitrary timelines I had set for myself when I was younger don't have to matter has been hugely freeing to live the life and make the choices that I do want to. Number three is stop having acne. Now, I've mentioned both on the site and on this channel many times that I suffer from adult acne and rosacea and have received many comments along the lines of, your skin looks fine in these videos.

Stop complaining. Here's my secret, guys-- I wear makeup. I have never once filmed a video without at least a little bit of concealer.

Because if I did, I would look red and blotchy the entire time. Do I have the worst skin in the world? No.

But is it something that I'm still very self-conscious about at the age of almost 30? Absolutely yes. And like most of us who had bad skin as a teenager, I kept thinking in my mind as I went through my late teens and through my 20s that it will resolve itself by some certain time.

But that didn't happen. And not for lack of trying. I have been to many dermatologists, taken many medications, specifically for my skin.

I've been tricked into buying basically every acne solution that they sell at Sephora. I have put a ton of time and money and effort into solving my skin issues. The one thing I refuse to do out of principle is cut out dairy, because I love cheese and ice cream too much.

But whatever, that's the deal with the devil I'm making. The point is, I was really hoping that by 30 I would find that magical skin care routine that allowed me to have the face I think I should have. But I didn't.

And I might never. I might be the only 80-year-old in the retirement village who's still having to cover up her acne. And you know what?

Fine. One thing I will say about these ongoing skin issues is that it's taught me that almost everyone is dealing with something like this. There's almost no one out there who doesn't have some sort of physical insecurity that they hoped would either resolve itself or that they would have the willpower to resolve by a certain time.

But the ultimate truth of being in a human body is that even if you do get everything perfect, we're still going to get older. Which is then its own host of appearance problems. But one thing I do have the power to accomplish by the age of 30 is to stop associating the fact that I have to use things like concealer or foundation with some kind of moral failing.

As women, there's so much rhetoric around going makeup free, or bare faced. Or no makeup makeup. And being natural and confident in your own skin.

Which can lead you to feel like if you do have to wear makeup that you're somehow more superficial or have a weaker character or don't love yourself as much. But the truth is, my mild to moderate skin issues have nothing to do with the person that I am. And I can go into 30 feeling like, hey, this Russian roulette I have to play in the bathroom mirror every morning does not define me as a person.

Number four is own a home. Now, this is something that I really did think I was going to accomplish by the age of 30. And a variety of factors have made it so that that is not the case.

I live in New York, which means that buying a home is insanely expensive. And the definition of home here is, let's be honest, very variable. But I also started a business, which means that my savings with my husband took quite a hit during the first year.

And Mark and I have also really changed what we want in a living space over the past few years, which means that buying a home would have locked us into something we might not have been happy with. While I do admit there is a slight twinge of feeling like, damn, I could be a homeowner by now, as I go into 30, I also realize that the ideas I had about what it meant to be a homeowner were kind of ill-informed. Owning a home can be a wonderful financial decision.

But it is not universally a good one. First of all, one must be extremely sure that the house that they buy is one they are happy to stay in for at least five to 10 years. Not only because the house needs time to appreciate in value, but also because a lot of the tax benefits that most people stand to get from buying a house are only applicable if you live in that house as your primary residence.

And even if you do decide to rent out your home, in many cities like New York, the amount that you would reasonably be able to charge in rent is often a lot less than what you are likely to be paying in your mortgage, plus all of your fees and taxes, especially if you're doing it in the first five years that you own the home. There's also no guarantee that the home that you buy is going to appreciate at the rate that you think it will when you buy it. And there can always be tons of issues with the home itself or the property that you were not properly let in on when you buy it.

Now, those are all things to consider. But again, they don't mean that buying a home is a bad thing. Usually for most people, it's a good thing.

But there are other ways to invest. And there are also lots of cases in which it wouldn't be a good idea. And that's been something that's been really important for me to change my mindset on as I go into 30.

A lot of us received these big, sweeping statements about what it means to be an adult. What we should want, what we should accomplish, what we should have. And because we heard them so much as a little kid, we don't really think about them that critically.

I actually know several people even just personally who bought homes that they're going to end up taking a small loss on when they eventually sell, because they didn't properly see through the purchase and aren't staying in their home long enough to make it worth it. That's something that I just didn't even imagine happened to people when I was growing up and thinking about owning a home by 30. Today I can safely say that I'm glad I don't own a home right now.

And that when I do eventually buy a home it, will be with a much better understanding of what that means financially and in terms of the commitment. Number five is have an adult wardrobe. Now, I have been on a kind of personal struggle over the last three-ish years to change my wardrobe and it's something that I actually enjoy and feel like I can grow up in.

I used to dress in a very, very froofy way. I think some of you might remember that story I told about the Robin's egg blue fox fur collared coat that I got. That was pretty indicative of my wardrobe at the time.

Just think like a lot of foofy colorful dresses and patterns and generally looking like an Easter egg. Now, I don't hate everything I bought during that era. But in the past three years I've made an effort to curate my wardrobe into more neutral things that can go with other things more easily and be worn for longer periods of time because they don't look so "of the moment." But even still, I often find myself, if I'm being totally honest, hating what I have in my closet.

There are so many times when I just don't feel confident or I feel like I'm not an adult. Or I just don't look at the way in the mirror that I feel like I should in my head. And even if I never said it out loud, I always had a suspicion that by the age of 30 I would have figured this whole personal style thing out.

But I haven't. But I actually think that I'm more the rule than the exception. I don't think most people are as confident as we might imagine them in how they look.

Aside from the fact that we live in a time where people are buying more clothing items than ever and fashion is changing and turning over faster than ever, we're also in an era of social media, where we can be exposed to thousands and thousands of people who have unlimited budgets and unlimited personal style with which to curate their wardrobe. Ultimately, I think I'll never quite feel like I have the exact wardrobe that I want in my head. Mostly because it would be too expensive to do that.

But I also think an important thing that I need to do moving into 30 is to realize that ultimately my wardrobe, while an important and useful way to communicate myself to the outside world, is not really indicative of who I am as a person and can only do a little bit of the legwork when it comes to making an impression on others. The specific shade or cut of my blazer is way less important than how I make someone feel when I'm meeting them for the first time. And ultimately, it's often more what you get rid of in your wardrobe than what you buy that helps you really curate it into the thing that you love.

It sounds counterintuitive, but often people find that with fewer items in their wardrobe, they have an easier time picking out things to wear and loving what they put on, and while I may not be doing a capsule wardrobe going into 30, I'm certainly going to be striving to be more judicious in what I wear, and above all remember that it isn't who I am. And number six is get a college degree. So I have said before on this channel that I am so happy I went to community college.

And I am. But if I'm being 150% honest with myself, I always had this weird thought in the back of my head, even as recently as this year, that somehow magically by the age of 30 I was going to have finished my bachelors degree. Even when that was no longer even chronologically possible to do.

And honestly, when I think about why I wanted to do this, it really comes down to the fact that I feel like I should have been able to do it. So I want to have done it for just that feeling of like, hell yeah I finished it. And also because I felt like I was a smart enough person to have a college degree.

So why not have one? Plus, and this might sound superficial, I sometimes feel self-conscious around people who have really impressive degrees. I feel like I didn't read the right books or study the right subjects, and that I may reveal myself to be a totally uneducated rube if the conversation gets too heavy.

But looking at all of those thoughts, they're almost universally external reasons. They're about how I look to other people and what I seemed to be, not how we actually feel about myself or what I want to get out of my life. I actually don't think I would be in a great position to go back to school because my brain doesn't really work in the way of being a student anymore.

I've been leading my own company for some time now, which is very difficult, but in a very different part of your brain. And while I'm a huge fan of ongoing education and I'm often learning new skills and reading books, I just don't think that I'm in the right place in my life or in my mindset to go back for a formal education to get a formal degree. Also, that shit is extremely expensive.

The point is, I'm going to be 30 and will still have no college degree. I don't even have my associates. And if I'm being totally honest, that does not fit into the mental image that I want to have about myself.

But that's who I am, and it comes with a lot of upsides. Like, basically no student debt. There are always going to be things that I missed out on as a result of not having that traditional college experience.

And I'm sure that there will always be conversations in which I'll feel a little bit over my head. But the more you have a fixed and rigid idea of what 30 must look like in your life, the less you can enjoy and appreciate and curate it for what you want it to be. There's a good chance that one day I might be one of those chic older people who's sitting in the back of classes and being really diligent about their homework.

But that's not me today. And ultimately, while I'm still degree-less, I do still feel confident about my abilities and my overall competence. Yet another arbitrary goal I won't accomplish by 30, and yet another one that I'm actually not so disappointed that I didn't hit.

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