Stuff Every Adult Should Know: A Pocket-Sized Guide to Grown-Up Know-How, from Taxes to Small Talk (Stuff You Should Know) - Hardcover

Favreau, Alyssa; Kalb, Alanna; Cohen, Brett

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1683694791 ISBN 13: 9781683694793

Publisher: Quirk Books, 2025

Synopsis

Do you ever feel like you missed the day in school when they taught you . . . literally everything you were going to need for a successful adulthood? How do you iron clothes? Where do friends come from? Why are there so many types of insurance? Does everyone else already know this stuff, and where did they learn it?

Stuff Every Adult Should Know is a pocket-sized guide to the practical skills, everyday responsibilities, and social situations that come with grown-up life. Learn how to make and stick to a budget, deal with taxes, write a cover letter, change a tire, sew on a button, and handle other everyday tasks that somehow everyone expects you to know already. On the fun side, discover how to go about things like hosting a dinner party, making small talk, building new friendships, holding a baby, and finding a cause you care about.

Compact, funny, and easy to reference whenever a grown-up question catches you off guard, this 144-page hardcover is Adulting 101 for young adults, recent graduates, first-time independent adults, and anyone who occasionally wonders how everybody else learned this stuff.

• Learn the practical life skills you will need to know, from managing money and taxes to maintaining clothes, cars, and everyday responsibilities
• A funny, practical gift for recent graduates, twenty-somethings, first apartments, first jobs, and anyone learning how to do life on their own

Featuring handy tips, tricks, and techniques collected from Quirk Books’ best-selling Stuff You Should Know series, Stuff Every Adult Should Know is the handbook you’ve been waiting for! Keep it handy and tackle adulthood with confidence.

About this title

About the Author

The Stuff Every Adult Should Know team includes confirmed adults Brett Cohen, Alyssa Favreau, and Alanna Kalb, who previously contributed their expertise as (variously) men, women, graduates, and parents to the series.

From the Back Cover

A pocket guide to all the adult stuff you’re expected to know (but that nobody ever explains).

Do you ever feel like you missed the day in school when they taught you . . . literally everything you were going to need for a successful adulthood? How do you iron clothes? Where do friends come from? Why are there so many types of insurance? Does everyone else already know this stuff, and where did they learn it?

Here’s the handbook for that day we all missed—and it fits right into your pocket! Get the background knowledge you deserve for life skills like:

• How to Write a Cover Letter
• How to Change a Tire
• How to Make a Budget
• How to Host a Dinner Party
• How to Deal with Taxes
• And more!

Featuring handy tips, tricks, and techniques collected from the best-selling Stuff You Should Know series, Stuff Every Adult Should Know is the adulthood 101 you’ve been waiting for!

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

Almost nobody actually feels like an adult. And yet, at some point, almost all of us start being expected to act like one. People stop rescuing you from your own mistakes. They stop cleaning up after you. They stop telling you what the heck you’re supposed to be doing. You start having to take responsibility for things like work and taxes and cleaning and your health and the health of houseplants and animals and even actual babies (but you’re the baby!). And sometimes it seems like everyone else is just breezing through and you’re the only fraud.

But again, almost nobody feels like an adult—we promise! Because adulthood isn’t a feeling. It’s a set of skills. And if you don’t have those skills, you can get them. In fact, getting the adulthood skills you don’t have yet is one of the most important adulthood skills.

That means you’re on the right track, and you’re in the right place.

This book probably can’t solve every single one of your grown-up problems. But it can give you enough background knowledge that when life throws adult stuff at you—a tire you have to change, a lease you have to sign, a button you have to replace, a baby you have to hold—you won’t feel like you’re starting from zero. And there’s fun stuff in here, too, about making friends and throwing dinner parties and finding a cause you believe in! Adulthood isn’t all chores and insurance forms.

People probably still won’t clean up after you, or save you from your mistakes, at least after the first ten or fifteen—but we lied when we said nobody would tell you what the heck you’re supposed to do. We’ll tell you! It’s all here.

Edition details

• Publisher: Quirk Books
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1683694791
• ISBN 13: 9781683694793
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144