“I’m still young” is a real reason for a few years and a fake one after that. Know when it expires.

Youth is a genuine allowance, and it is genuine for a while. Not knowing how a lease works at eighteen is simply true, and nobody should be hard on themselves about it. The trouble is that the allowance never expires loudly, so the same sentence keeps getting used long after it stopped applying, usually to avoid one specific thing. You end up defending a version of yourself you have already left behind.

Name one thing you have been excusing with it. Then go find out how it actually works, this month, while the stakes are still small enough to get it wrong.