If you’re a 2010 college graduate, we’re sure you have received all kinds of uplifting and inspiring advice. We’re going to give you some mundane, down-to-earth advice: Start managing your money right now.
We agree with everyone who has advised you to get a job, buy health insurance, avoid credit card debt, draw up a budget, live within your means and set up a regular savings plan. But here are some tips that may not seem to have anything to do with money yet will have a major impact on your financial life:
• Learn to cook. Not only will you save considerable money by eating at home, you’ll also be healthier. If you can read you can learn to cook well enough to sustain yourself.
• If you marry or enter into a domestic partnership, choose a partner who shares your financial values. Attitudes toward money are key to the success or failure of a relationship. Tying your financial life to the wrong person can be costly in more ways than one.
• Stay in touch with your friends. In the professional world, we call this networking, and it is one of the most important career skills you will ever learn. Thirty years from now, you may get a job through your college roommate’s son’s father-in-law. This was true before Facebook, and it’s even more true now.
• Eat right and exercise. Being overweight or smoking will cost you not only in longevity but in money. Start the habit of fitness now, and you’ll thank yourself in 30 years. (Yes, I regret I didn’t do this.)
• Splurge on experiences, not things. This is not the time to buy designer furniture or a BMW. Monthly payments, whether for cars, mortgages or credit cards, tie you down.
You’ll never be this free again. Take every opportunity to travel and try new experiences. Those are the stories you’ll tell your college grad someday, long after you’ve forgotten the leather couch.
