Nobody on earth can tell you why you need to have it all figured out by twenty-five. They just made the number up.

Deadlines about life stages have no authority behind them, only repetition. Somebody said it, it sounded plausible, and now it functions as a rule that nobody can trace to a source or defend if you ask. The pressure is real; the legitimacy is not, and the two are easy to confuse when everyone around you is behaving as though the date exists.

When a deadline of that kind starts pressing, ask who enforces it and what happens on the day it passes. Usually the answer is nobody and nothing. Then pick a pace based on your actual circumstances rather than a number somebody repeated.