5 Healthy Habits to Start in Your 20s

Your 20s are a great time to instill healthy habits that will benefit you for the rest of your life. Here, read through 5 things you should start doing now.

Americans don’t live as long as people from most other high-income countries. One of the main factors contributing to this unfortunate truth is that Americans tend to live an unhealthy lifestyle. 

Instilling a healthy lifestyle when you’re young is one of the best ways to prevent heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases. 

But, how can you live a more healthful life? Keep reading for five healthy habits to start in your twenties. Developing these habits will help you look and feel better and may even help you to live longer.  

 

1. Get a Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep is crucial for maintaining your physical and mental health. Lack of sleep contributes to many issues, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, and poor immune function.

In your twenties, aim for at least 7 hours of quality sleep a night. If you’re having trouble, there are a variety of effective herbs that may help you fall and stay asleep. 

Improving your sleeping habits will boost your memory, creativity, and brainpower and provide you with the energy needed for an active and healthy day. 

 

2. Read Regularly

Recent research suggests that regular reading can improve your mental and emotional health. 

Some of the psychological benefits of reading include:

• Makes you more empathetic
• increases mental flexibility 
• Improves rationality
• Heightens creativity
• Enhances brain connectivity
• Promotes healthy brain function
• Helps stave off dementia 

It may seem challenging to find the time and energy in your busy schedule for regular reading, but even just a few pages a night can do a world of good. 

 

3. Exercise Daily

Daily exercise provides you with more energy and can add years to your life. Maintaining regular exercise habits will help combat several health conditions such as stroke, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, cancer, and arthritis. 

Need more convincing? Some of the many benefits of regular exercise include:

• Weight loss and maintenance
• Improved mood
• Better quality sleep
• Enhanced sex drive
• Improved circulation 
• Increased strength and flexibility

Come up with an exercise routine that realistically fits into your schedule and do your best to stick with it.

Shoot for at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise spread throughout your week. For an added boost, consider purchasing some women’s activewear clothing to make your new routine feel more stylish and comfortable. 

 

4. Drink Enough Water

The human body consists of almost 60% water. Drinking ample H2O is one of the most essential habits for physical health. 

Staying hydrated will not only improve your energy levels, brain function, physical performance, and metabolism but can help prevent headaches, constipation, kidney stones, and hangovers. 

The amount of water you should drink depends on your body weight, activity level, and personal health. A good rule of thumb is to drink half of your body weight in ounces every day. 

 

5. Eat Your Greens

The Vitamin K contents of dark leafy vegetables provide several significant health benefits. Eating your greens regularly from a young age protects your bones from osteoporosis and prevents many inflammatory diseases. 

Green leafy vegetables, such as kale, spinach, and swiss chard, are incredibly high in antioxidants and are considered some of the best cancer-preventing foods. 

Cook your greens, enjoy them in a salad, or throw them into your favorite smoothie or juice recipes.  

 

Maintain Healthy Habits

By following these five steps, you’ll be well on your way to a healthier lifestyle. 

Starting and maintaining healthy habits in your twenties will not only help you look and feel better but may even enable you to live a longer, happier life. 

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Spring Money Management Tips for Women in Their 20s

 

Today’s economy is challenging by any stretch of the imagination. Unless you’re among the fortunate few with a trust fund, you need to hustle hard.

However, you can improve your financial picture considerably by making the right choices that grow your assets. Here are six spring money management tips for women in their 20s to set themselves up for a secure economic future.

 

Cover Your Loved Ones

What would happen to your children if you could no longer take care of them? Even if you have a loving spouse, your kids could end up penniless if you both die in the same accident. If you are a parent, please cover yourself with life insurance and update your beneficiaries every year — you don’t want your ex to profit from your demise.

 

Even if you haven’t yet started a family, you may want to secure life insurance now. You lock in your policy, meaning your insurer can’t deny your coverage if you later develop health issues — as long as you keep paying your premiums. Plus, the younger you are, the less you’ll pay, making it possible for you to investigate options like whole policies that provide additional security.

 

Insure Yourself

It’s a sad reality for anyone with a chronic condition — the United States remains the only industrialized nation that doesn’t guarantee health insurance coverage to all citizens. As a result, you could pay a small fortune in premiums to stay alive, but it beats the alternative of medical debt and bankruptcy.

 

Ensure you get sufficient coverage to keep one hospitalization from shattering your financial future. If you require ongoing care, research your options early and often, and accept that you might face tough choices your peers do not.

 

And if you are healthy, secure disability insurance for yourself now. If you wait until you get sick, no company will cover you minus a rider disallowing the very condition likely to rob you of your working ability. It can take years to navigate Social Security, and unfortunately, many people die while awaiting a determination.

 

Start a Side Hustle You Love

In more grim economic news, the average wage hasn’t kept up with inflation since way before you were born, despite ever-rising productivity. Even if you grind your hardest, you could find yourself falling further behind each year as the costs of everything keeps rising, but your paycheck doesn’t budge.

Answering to multiple bosses every day can quickly kill your soul. Even if they are empathetic and kind, you need to express your unique spirit in your work, not follow orders 24/7 like a robot.

The solution? Start a side hustle that you love. Don’t fall prey to get-rich-quick schemes. It can take years to build a successful blog or YouTube channel — especially if you also juggle a full-time career and family. However, once that residual income stream starts rolling in, you’ll make money in your sleep while spending your waking hours doing what you love.

 

Save Toward a Home

You might have bragging rights as the most economically challenged generation in recent memory if you are a woman in your 20s. In still more depressing news, the average rent keeps rising faster than inflation, making it challenging to find affordable housing.

 

The solution is to buy a house, but doing so requires a solid credit score and a decent downpayment. Even if you can’t afford your dream home at first, you still pay yourself in equity instead of making your landlord richer each month. When it’s time to sell, you can put the profits toward your future palace.

 

Get Over Your Fear of Investing

Historically, the stock market keeps pace with inflation far better than a traditional savings account, but investing doesn’t come risk-free. As a result, you might shy away out of fear of losing cash.

 

However, you don’t have to spend your mornings perusing the stock market pages. You can invest in a mutual fund that diversifies your portfolio for you, minimizing risk while maximizing your returns.

 

Embrace Minimalism

Take a look around your room. See all that stuff? It represents minutes and hours of your work time. You start looking at that designer handbag differently when you realize it costs you 30 hours of labor.

 

Start embracing minimalism. You don’t have to KonMari your abode necessarily, but you should become more mindful about your purchases. Before buying anything new, choose one item to sell or donate to keep that excess clutter from turning your closet into a disaster area — and your credit cards from hitting their max.

 

If You’re a Woman in Your 20s, Use These Spring Money Management Tips 

If you are a woman in your 20s, please use these spring money management tips to get a handle on your finances. Making wise choices now sets you up for a secure economic future.

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About The Author

Oscar Collins is the managing editor at Modded. He writes about cars, fitness, the outdoors, and more. Follow @TModded on Twitter for more articles from the Modded team.

5 Differences Between Real Best Friends and Fake Friends

Your twenties is the time in your life when you are constantly making new friends through friends you already have, school, work, social events, etc. During this time, you begin to learn a lot about what it means to be a real friend and the traits that you look for in a true BFF.

 

Sometimes, you think a new friend is going to turn out to be your new best friend, but that ends up not being true. Other times, you begin realizing that some of your oldest friends may not be the most true either, which is always tough.

 

Here are some ways you can tell the difference between someone who is a true best friend, and someone whose “friendship??? you may want to question:

 

A Real Best Friend is genuinely happy to see you succeed, and genuinely sad for you when times get tough.

 

6 Reasons You’ll Be Broke in Your Twenties

Ah, your 20’s. That whimsical, glamorous decade you always dreamed about in your teens, most likely fueled by Friends reruns and an over reliance on early-millennium alternative rock. Of course, much of the wisdom imparted by the quintessential “twenty-something” pop culture phenomenon did include several warnings of a fiscally-challenging post-grad world, but let’s face it: we were all too distracted by the cute outfits and dysfunctional romantic entanglements to pay attention to the real lessons.

Though there are, in fact, a number of benefits to being a twenty-something, many of the best aspects of the years immediately following college come with a steep price tag. And no, you probably won’t be able to afford it.

Here are the main reasons you’ll be spending your first few years of freedom eating Ramen noodles and over utilizing your credit cards:

1. Student Loans

This one’s a bit of a given, but always worth mentioning. Student loans are financial drain on everyone, and thanks to economy, you might not actually have a job when they kick in. Expect to start receiving your monthly bill around six to eight months following graduation, and unlike several other forms of debt, your student loans won’t even qualify for bankruptcy.

2. Underemployment

How many 25-year-old interns do you currently know? Are all of the 25-year-olds you know currently interns? I thought so. Though many of your friends will probably be lucky enough to find a job directly after graduation, almost none of them will make a decent salary. Wages are at an all-time proportional low for millennials, and you will likely be living paycheck-to-paycheck for at least seven years.

3. Rent

The rent is too damn high, and the cost of actually getting into an apartment is higher. Even if you can afford the monthly rent for a studio in a desirable neighborhood, the moving costs, broker fees, and security deposits will wipe you clean.

4. Equally Broke Friends

If you want to spend time with your friends who haven’t found jobs yet, you’ll probably be footing the bill way more often than you can afford. There’s a very fine line between wanting to preserve your friendship and your bank account, and we all cross it eventually.

5. Weddings/Engagements/Baby Showers

Were you the “cool guy” in high school and college who always had a lot of older friends? Congratulations, Asshole. All those older friends are going to start getting married and reproducing this year, and you’re going to have to shell out a present for everything.

6. Going Out

Getting drunk probably wasn’t cheap in college, either, but at least you weren’t paying for any other bills during that time. Now, it’s a battle between that second gin and tonic and your electricity bill, and you won’t always know which option is more important at any given time. The most important thing you need to do when it comes to paying your electricity bills is figuring out how much electricity you’re using or plan to use. This is because the effective rate that you pay for electricity depends on how much you’re using. Some electricity plans in states like Texas will favor lower-usage levels, while others favor larger homes that use a lot of electricity. Checking the electricity comparison rates and knowing your usage is key to finding the cheapest electricity rate for your home and keeping your electricity bills as low as possible.

 

Knowing your usage is key to finding the cheapest electricity rate for your home and keeping your electricity bills as low as possible.

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