5 Things About Life You Only Learn When You Start Living On Your Own

Living on your own is a huge, exciting step. Suddenly, you have your own place where you can do literally whatever you want.

Want to eat chicken nuggets for breakfast? Who's going to judge you? Paint the walls that shade of blue your old roommate hated? Go for it! Spend hours of the weekend in just a towel? It's your space. Do what you will with it.

But of course, living on your own comes with certain drawbacks you may not have considered. Once you start living alone, you have a whole new set of issues to contend with.

Wow, electricity is expensive.

Before you moved out on your own, you didn't care about leaving your lights on when you left a room. When your parents would yell at you because you didn't turn off the lights when leaving, you just blew them off.

With your own place, you are now yelling at all visitors to turn off every single light when they leave every single room so you can save yourself some moolah.

Sure, they may think you're being a little over-the-top requesting you watch all TV in darkness. But hey, do they want to pay your electricity bill next month? Didn't think so.

And you're so hot except for when you're so cold.

You know what else is expensive? Heat.

Now that you're paying for that comfort, you make sure you turn that baby down during the cold winter, as much as it kills you. And forget about summertime. You'll find yourself accepting that AC can only be used for select times.

You're a grown up now, life is real, bills are real and you want the most bang for your buck.

You learn about budgeting.

Ugh, then there will be that moment when you go stock up at the grocery store, confident you have enough food to eat. Then you pop your frozen meal in the microwave and realize it's not even kind of good but you still have to eat it.

After all, you have to eat dinner -- you don't want to starve before you go to bed. You have to be willing to make ends meet to uh, pay rent and survive. In other words, you're ballin' on a mad budget.

You despise the beginning of the month now.

Woo, new month, new day, new year -- that used to be you, enjoying the possibilities of a fresh start. However, thanks to rent, you now understand the start of a new month is the worst.

You better admire your bank account before the first of the month creeps up on you and totally drains you of your dreams. Shelling out for rent is just depressing. Forget about those nice boots you wanted to buy yourself.

Paranoia is real.

We've all watched our fair share of scary movies. Whether they're a thrill to you, or you're like me and you can't even talk about scary movie, the paranoia they cause is real.

You psych yourself out constantly when you live alone. You hear a strange noise and think it's an intruder. Your towel hanging from the bathroom door is a ghost. There is somebody under your bed, you just KNOW IT.

Trust me, you'll be triple-checking your locks and sprinting from your bathroom to the safety of your covers more than once. Living alone can be scary.

And sure, living alone has its issues. But for those who make the leap, you may find the privacy and ownership of your own space is worth eating peanut butter for three meals in a row. Hey, you don't know until you try!