Essential Life Skills

[nudge+]

Inspired by recent posts in the "Things Everyone Has Done But You"... What do you consider essential life skills that everyone should have? Obviously there will be different opinions on this but I'm kind of interested to see how much it varies from person to person, especially based on one's age and culture etc. Feel free to include both practical and social/interpersonal skills or anything else you think is important...

I'll get the ball rolling with:

• basic cooking
• basic home and car maintenance

[Smiley Culture]

Cooking, definitely. I can’t comprehend how people in adulthood can’t cook the most basic of meals like your Spaghetti Bolognese's, Fajita’s etc. 

Obvious ones that we take for granted but reading and writing are probably up there with the greatest skills we have. 

[Bluewolf]

• Learning to Swim
• Learning to Budget
• How to make a Fire
• Basic DIY skills

[MUFC]

For men it has to be manual labour, not saying we should be able to do all D.I.Y jobs. But we should be able to do the physical prep work for house maintenance e.g. rip off floorboards and skirting boards, take paper of the walls, smash plaster from the walls right down to the brick, fill skips, carry flags and heavy gardening stuff up the drive. In general we should be able to gut a house with brute force.

Also in this day and age, PC skills are essential.

[Stan]

2 hours ago, Smiley Culture said:

Cooking, definitely. I can’t comprehend how people in adulthood can’t cook the most basic of meals like your Spaghetti Bolognese's, Fajita’s etc. 

Obvious ones that we take for granted but reading and writing are probably up there with the greatest skills we have. 

Language is the greatest, of which reading and writing are incorporated. 

 

As already mentioned, things like cooking and basic DIY I'd say are essential. In this digital age too, being able to use technology is becoming essential. 

@Bluewolf mentioned a great one - budgeting skills. It feels more than ever that it's imperative to manage your money sensibly and mange it well. Whether that's through spending within your means or investing shrewdly and wisely, I think it's important to save as you earn. Especially for those proverbial rainy days. It's all well and good to rely on bank of mum and dad but you have to be responsible with your own money so that you don't (always) have to rely on them.

I experience so many bad decisions made by people in my job and it's such a tough battle to get back to normal after many bad decisions are made. I see people with the flashiest cars and phones and gadgets 'for their kids' but they could be hundreds or even thousands of pounds in debt to us. I genuinely had a tenant who brought a new Mercedes on finance even though she already owed us £1k in rent debt. And she ended up stuck in this £300/m agreement with the car finance company and she, wrongly, prioritised that payment over her rent payment and the rent debt increased, leading to her eviction. All because of bad decision-making.

I'd say another life skill is just being polite and kind to others. And basically as they say on The Last Leg, 'don't be a dick'. Learning how to empathise with others is quite important I'd say as well. An underrated trait I think. 

[CaaC (John)+]

• First Aid
• Survival Courses
• Languages (including sign language)
• Cooking
• Personal Hygiene

More than likely a lot more for me but First Aid should be essential in everyday life where you might be on hand in a situation where you can help out like someone choking, having a fit, rescued from drowning, basic cuts and bleeding etc.

Survival courses would also be handy if suddenly you are stranded on a mountain etc far away from any contact with anyone and then you can cope with the situation, cold/hot weather, lighting a fire, catching game to eat or what not to eat like knowing the difference between a poisonous mushroom etc.

Languages can help if you are in a situation where someone who looks in distress but does not speak your native tongue and this is where sign language is essential if the person in distress is deaf & dumb and trying to indicate things to you in sign language.

Cooking or basic cooking skills will more or less join up with the Survival I have mentioned above.

Personal Hygiene is another essential thing to know like washing your hands after you have done your bit or the call of nature in the loo and even if you have been sitting there for a couple of hours and then decide to make yourself something to eat, go and wash your hands before handling food etc.

 

[nudge+]

11 hours ago, Bluewolf said:

• Learning to Swim

Learning to swim was one I didn't have until about 5 years ago... Definitely should be taught in schools.

11 hours ago, Bluewolf said:

• Learning to Budget
•  

9 hours ago, Stan said:

@Bluewolf mentioned a great one - budgeting skills. It feels more than ever that it's imperative to manage your money sensibly and mange it well. Whether that's through spending within your means or investing shrewdly and wisely, I think it's important to save as you earn. Especially for those proverbial rainy days. It's all well and good to rely on bank of mum and dad but you have to be responsible with your own money so that you don't (always) have to rely on them.

I experience so many bad decisions made by people in my job and it's such a tough battle to get back to normal after many bad decisions are made. I see people with the flashiest cars and phones and gadgets 'for their kids' but they could be hundreds or even thousands of pounds in debt to us. I genuinely had a tenant who brought a new Mercedes on finance even though she already owed us £1k in rent debt. And she ended up stuck in this £300/m agreement with the car finance company and she, wrongly, prioritised that payment over her rent payment and the rent debt increased, leading to her eviction. All because of bad decision-making.

Good call there... Budgeting and personal finance management in general is a big one; it's a skill that parents should start teaching their children as soon as they start getting pocket money in my opinion. Kids and teens being irresponsible with money is one thing, grown ups living way beyond their means and accumulating pointless debts without a justifiable reason is such a common thing it's unbelievable.

 

 

[Rucksackfranzose]

45 minutes ago, nudge said:

Learning to swim was one I didn't have until about 5 years ago... Definitely should be taught in schools.

Good call there... Budgeting and personal finance management in general is a big one; it's a skill that parents should start teaching their children as soon as they start getting pocket money in my opinion. Kids and teens being irresponsible with money is one thing, grown ups living way beyond their means and accumulating pointless debts without a justifiable reason is such a common thing it's unbelievable.

 

 

You haven't been taught swimming in school? Was part of PE lessons since elementary in Saarland, and thought that would be the case all over Germany?

[CaaC (John)+]

Swimming is another one, I can remember when I was a young lad I had a fear of water especially the deep end in the local pool, all I would do is when I jumped in at the deep end I always made sure I would be near the side where I could grab hold of the pool side bar running around the pool and I only learnt to swim by accident when we emigrated to Australia and I was in the top decks ships swimming pool.

At that time I had jumped into the deep end, started to rise to the top and some kid stood on top of my head and pushed me back under, some instinct inside me made me flap my hands and feet and when I hit the surface still flapping my hands and feet I realized that I was staying afloat and moving in the water, thus I discovered the doggie paddle and then it was plain sailing from there on and I learnt freestyle, butterfly, crawl and backstroke all by myself, my favourite stroke though is the backstroke.

The wife had a fear of water after seeing her sister nearly drown when she was young so I got her swimming again and not to be feared of water and our two children now adults we had them in the local pools when they were a year old and over the years they were swimming before they were 6 years old and they have done the same to our grandsons and had them in the pool when they were young and taught them how to swim.  

[CaaC (John)+]

12 hours ago, Bluewolf said:

Learning to Budget

A good one, when I retired from work the first thing I did was write out a schedule of all my payments as I knew I was not working now and had more time to concentrate on home and social life, so I pay my bills off my pension every 4 weeks like tomorrow morning is my pension day and I have my budget book in front of me for tomorrow morning when it's nice and early and quite, my rent, gas/electric, council tax, tv licence and a few other small bills I have that I will pay off, I won't touch the wife's pension as we both work together 50/50 wise and we will then see what money is over, put some aside as savings and use the rest for domestic use.

I don't have a credit card and would never touch one, to be honest, I have a bank overdraft but have never used it in years, we have a couple of cards like Argos that we might use in emergencies like the tv, washing machine may go on the blink and we have to get a new one but the account we have with Argos is a no interest account as long as you pay the article off within 6 months.

So far I have used the Argos card for this laptop as my last one went pop and our old fridge-freezer started to play up so we bought a new one and we had them all paid off within 2 months to save out on interest, our Argos card is now clear and will only use that in an emergency, in the kitchen we have two small money boxes in the shape of a football boot that wee Kaiden uses for any pennies we give him (normally £1 coins lol) and when it is full he will go up the bank with our daughter and put it into a bank account she has opened up for him.

[nudge+]

5 hours ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

You haven't been taught swimming in school? Was part of PE lessons since elementary in Saarland, and thought that would be the case all over Germany?

I didn't go to school in Germany... 

[nudge+]

36 minutes ago, CaaC - John said:

I don't have a credit card and would never touch one,

I got one when I was screwed over a lot of money and needed to have a few thousands urgently... But yeah, I closed it as soon as I paid it off and would never get one again (emergency excluded). 

[CaaC (John)+]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

I got one when I was screwed over a lot of money and needed to have a few thousands urgently... But yeah, I closed it as soon as I paid it off and would never get one again (emergency excluded). 

I had one years ago when we had our own house but I got made redundant and lost our house and the credit card I had been using for the house got a right pain in the arse so I managed to pay it off, very stressful at the time after losing our house, but like you I would never use one again.

The shit we get through the post though like from the Barkleys Bank offering me a credit card, we kept getting the spam for a while until I sent them a nasty reply saying "STOP sending me this shit through my letterbox, I am a 60 odd year pensioner living off a pension and just retired from work so stick this up your private parts and fuck off!!", I never heard from them again, I wonder why?      

[Eco]

Budgeting is clearly #1 in my book. So many people (including my myself) didn't grow up learning about money, we just 'had' it and were able to do grand vacations. 

Now, as an adult, it's taken a few years and I still slip into the 'I'll buy whatever I want', but it's a lesson I wish I was taught as a child. There is a massive debt problem here in the States, and most of it stems from ignorance on money and interest rates. 

[Rab]

Budgeting is something that's always fucked me over. I rarely had money when I was younger, so now that I do have it I tend to overspend.

That changed in November of last year though when I created a budget for absolutely everything. Food, fuel, debt... everything. My financial position is pretty good just now although that's to budgeting it'll keep getting better and better.

[Eco]

15 minutes ago, Rab said:

Budgeting is something that's always fucked me over. I rarely had money when I was younger, so now that I do have it I tend to overspend.

That changed in November of last year though when I created a budget for absolutely everything. Food, fuel, debt... everything. My financial position is pretty good just now although that's to budgeting it'll keep getting better and better.

It's funny - as I was in the exact opposite position, yet the same outcome. When I was a child, it felt like we were part of the 1% (but of course, we weren't, but we were more well off than most), and so I had zero concept of earning money, spending money, and budgeting. 

Fucked me over really - but having a child has really changed that, but we are still making up for bad decisions we made in the past. 

[Inverted]

Budgeting is something I skip a lot because I'm naturally quite frugal I think, but it's still risky not to have a solid budget, 

Something I've not seen mentioned is the ability to interact with strangers. Of course theoretically you could live a life without having to do so, but it strikes me as a fairly essential skill for most people. 

[Eco]

5 minutes ago, Inverted said:

Budgeting is something I skip a lot because I'm naturally quite frugal I think, but it's still risky not to have a solid budget, 

Something I've not mentioned is the ability to interact with strangers. Of course theoretically you could live a life without having to do so, but it strikes me as a fairly essential skill for most people. 

Certainly proper communication is essential. It's amazing how many people I meet who can't seem to structure a proper thought or sentence. 

 

[Danny]

Being able to balance home time and arguing on the internet time

[nudge+]

17 hours ago, Bluewolf said:

• How to make a Fire

 

7 hours ago, CaaC - John said:

• Survival Courses

Also reading a map and using a compass for navigation. And being able to determine direction using the stars. 

[Lucas]

18 hours ago, MUFC said:

For men it has to be manual labour, not saying we should be able to do all D.I.Y jobs. But we should be able to do the physical prep work for house maintenance e.g. rip off floorboards and skirting boards, take paper of the walls, smash plaster from the walls right down to the brick, fill skips, carry flags and heavy gardening stuff up the drive. In general we should be able to gut a house with brute force.

Also in this day and age, PC skills are essential.

From a DIY perspective, I'm quite jealous of some lads that have the confidence to get on with some jobs round the house and do them well. It makes you feel such a prick when you hear mates doing their own fence, patio, tiling etc and you're like, fuck that, knowing you don't think you could.

I'm quite new to the game. I'm not a perfectionist but I do like a job to look as nice as possible. I hate to botch anything up. My easy get out is to use someone experienced that can do it in their sleep and I know I'll be happy, I'm lucky to have mates in different trades.

But I do think there's nothing better than taking on something yourself and being proper chuffed with the result, not to mention proud that you did that. Bit like @Bluewolf's garden project on here.

I think I need to take the plunge more and have a go at something rather than fear I'm going to fuck it up royally.

[MUFC]

2 minutes ago, Lucas said:

From a DIY perspective, I'm quite jealous of some lads that have the confidence to get on with some jobs round the house and do them well.

I'm quite new to the game. I'm not a perfectionist but I do like a job to look as nice as possible. My easy get out is to use someone experienced that can do it in their sleep and I know I'll be happy, I'm lucky to have mates in different trades.

But I do think there's nothing better than taking on something yourself and being proper chuffed with the result, not to mention proud that you did that. Bit like @Bluewolf's garden project on here.

I think I need to take the plunge more and have a go at something rather than fear I'm going to fuck it up royally.

If you can't do the actual job, which many require specialists. At least do the prep work, this will save you money.

[Lucas]

Just now, MUFC said:

If you can't do the actual job, which many require specialists. At least do the prep work, this will save you money.

I've no problem doing some of the jobs you said in order to work on a blank canvas, I just don't trust myself to leave it as good as i want it.

That said, I went and helped my mate strip his walls the other day, woodchip wallpaper all over the place. 

My patience was wearing thin pretty fucking quickly...

[MUFC]

Oh Lucas.

[Stan]

Talking of DIY, what's the biggest job that everyone's done/completed (aside from work projects), either inside or outside the house?? Can imagine many on here may have done total redecs or refurbs of inside of their houses. 

My dad and I laid our patio measuring roughly 6x10m with concrete paving slabs - mum did the design for the layout of the concrete slabs and pebbles around it; we bought all the foundations and slabs for it, took a good few weekends to get it completed but such a good feeling when you see it all finished when you know how much hard work has gone in to it.