This website is for anyone who thinks she or he was the one person born missing the owner's manual.

This website is for people who have just graduated from college, or perhaps almost graduated but dropped out temporarily, or maybe never even thought of going to college, and who want a little guidance in that mystery called The Real World.

This website encourages you to find your own answers so you can let me know and we can help the next comer find answers more quickly. Sort of like Wikipedia, except I don't have their technology, just some basic bloggery.

I am a musician and novelist, and also a life coach. With a miserable, though brief, two-year exception, I have worked for myself for my whole life.  I am a severely right-brained person who has somehow managed to cobble together an understanding of finances and how the world works, but really what I know how to do is solve problems.  When my clients come to me asking what to do about debt, I can give them some rudimentary steps to eradicate it, but more importantly, I can point them in the right direction for further resources and then give them a lot of encouragement while they figure out why they accumulated said debt.  I can't tell you how to invest your money and thus become a millionaire, but I can teach you how to develop the discipline and willpower to budget.  I am not a financial wizard, but I have a little black book full of names of people who are.

In the course of my painstaking research, I have interviewed over 35 actual adults and included their observations, comments and suggestions in this website.  Because there are many areas where I as an exquisite adult still totally fly by the seat of my pants and mutter "there but for the grace of my friends go I," I have relied heavily on their testimony, especially on matters financial, or in the arena of "real jobs."  This works out nicely for me in general; they tend to rely on me for matters culinary, health and emotional.  Also for good fiction and movie recommendations.

It has been famously stated that it takes a village to raise a child. I think that's because it takes a village of grown-ups to form what we think of as just one competent adult.  It's also been said that organizations survive because on any given day, not everyone is insane.  Part of my journey toward adulthood has been the acceptance that I will never be able to "know it all" or certainly, thank God, do it all.  I get by with a little help from my friends.  We all do. That's the secret behind this website.  Figure out what you do well, share it with your friends by responding to the various topics included here.  Ask for help for the things you don't do well.