I week or so ago I received an e-mail from a writer working on a new book about 20-something America – who we are as a set, how we differ from generations previous, what we want out of this phase in our lives.

Her e-mail contained a long list of questions developed – I assume – to get a sense of who I am as a 27-year-old person. Questions about my interests and lifestyle – how I perceive work, what I want in a family. All things I can answer fairly easily as this point my march from 2-0 to 3-0.

“But if you only have time to answer one question in the survey,” the e-mail said, “I’d like it to be this: do you think of yourself as an adult? And if so, what was the single thing that made you realize you were, and how old were you then?

The first part of the question is easy – yes, I think of myself as an adult. I’m 27-years-old. I live outside of my parents’ home (and time zone) in an apartment I am responsible for affording and cleaning. I drive a car that I lease to a job where I do unsupervised work for which I am paid a salary. I take care of having someone do my own taxes. I go to the lady doctor without my Mom. I am all grown up.

But when exactly this happened is a question I can’t quite answer.

I know for a fact it didn’t happen the moment I graduated from college. I was one of those kids who spent six plus months miserably unemployed watching the Ellen DeGeneres Show on my parents’ couch as I applied for every job mediabistro.com listed as “entry level” and “in Manhattan.” I made zero dollars. I spent zero dollars, and yet I had meals, lodging, and insurance at my finger tips. I was closer to a kid than my 18-year-old sister who’d just started her first year of college.

Even after I finally got a job in Manhattan, moved out of my parents’ house and re-joined the post-grad world I can’t say I truly felt like an adult. My parents moved me into an apartment with our Toyota Siena mini-van. They stored the opposite season’s clothes in the closet of my old bedroom (a space my sisters’ unaffectionately referred to as “the shrine”). I paid my own way for all major expenses, but home was in my back pocket. If I needed a new dresser my Dad drove me to IKEA and helped me build it (in the hallway of my 4^th floor walk-up). On special occasions I was allowed to use the emergency credit card for a new dress. After every weekend visit home they sent me back with boxes of Special K and Kashi Healthy Heart oatmeal. I don’t think I purchased my own breakfast food for three full years.

So then when, exactly, was the mental shift?

As I look back on those first years in Manhattan the moment that sticks out as a game-changer is the first time I overdrew my checking account. How’s that for a memory of the transition from one life phase to the next?

I was making just enough money to eek by, so the bi-weekly check-in of the BofA online interface was a dreaded task. That month I’d joined my college girlfriends for a weekend getaway to Miami – the very first trip I booked on a credit card because I didn’t have the cash to pay for it up front. Even before we took off for the trip I remember thinking, “This is a mistake. I don’t have the money to do this.” But when you’re 22 and all your other girlfriends are going, you don’t make the sound financial decision. When we got back I was firmly in the red – so much so that I spent the next week and a half of the month eating Kashi Healthy Heart oatmeal two meals a day. It was the first time I remember feeling like my financial life was out of control, like I needed to make smarter spending decisions and set myself on a course so that my future was more secure. I distinctly remember thinking, “I can’t go on like this and be a successful, single mother with a brownstone in Chelsea.”

Those are the overdramatic thoughts you think when you’re a single, city-dweller intending to live off a writing career. But dramatics aside, the mental shift was significant. It was the first time I thought – I want to plan, I want to save, I want to be a mature, responsible adult.

It was around that time that I took on some freelance writing assignments, put my pricey gym membership on hold and got a $20 coffee machine to curb my $3.50-a-day latte habit. Nothing made me feel worse than the prospect of asking my parents to bail me out, and so I re-organized things to prevent that from happening. I stopped indulging in every new outfit, bar, and city activity.

“Wow, that’s depressing!” my friend said when I told her how I’d decided to respond to the prompt. “You decided you were an adult when you were forced to snap into financial shape?”

And with that I realized that this writer’s question was even more complicated that I’d realized. For me becoming an “adult” was veiled in this negativity and stress that, yes, turned out to be empowering, but started from a place of, “time to shape up.” I had to get my life in order, stop having as much fun, deal with the scary things adults deal with. An equally valid answer would have been, “the first time I was recognized at my job!” or, “the first time I hosted a dinner party at my apartment!” or, in my specific case, “when I finally decided to move to L.A. to pursue a passion versus a job.”

But for whatever reason my mind didn’t go there when I read the prompt. It went to the moment I had to snap out of childhood to survive as a real person. Is that depressing or empowering? I don’t know. I’m happy to be an adult and very happy to have my financial self (mostly) in check. I’ll leave the interpretation of my personal transition moment to the expert in her forthcoming book.

If you’d like to help a fellow writer by participating in this same survey, please e-mail her at [email protected]. Thank you!