How do I run as non-admin?

I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, and if it has, I apologize. I recently read that running my home PC network as administrator is dangerous and that I should use a local user account. Not knowing where to begin, I added a new account under "Family & other users" account.
The problem was that when I restarted my PC and logged into that account, it was as if I was a newbie first starting out with a fresh screen and desktop. None of my icons and settings from my "admin" user account transferred over. This meant that I would have to start over from scratch building my screen resolutions, favorite desktop icons, preferences, etc.
I did not, and do not want to set up a "Microsoft Account", but unfortunately it seems that I cannot sync my settings unless I do so (according to the "sync your settings" page).
Is there a better and less painful way of setting up a "normal" user account that will allow me to keep most of my settings intact? If you don't have the time to detail what steps to take, please at least direct me to a link that will give me the steps.
Thanks for any and all suggestions.

If you want to sync your settings, those settings have to come from somewhere. The MS account is one way to synchronize them.

thanks for the information. I believe I found the easiest solution to my situation. What I did was to create another user account, but made it an administrator account. I then took my original administrator account and changed it to a standard user account. And if I need to tweak anything on my now "user" account, I just type in the administrator password. Case settled (I hope).