[Don’t miss the free giveaway in this post! Click here to download our comprehensive student loan guide!]
Congratulations to everyone graduating this semester! If you are finishing your undergraduate career this month, welcome to the working world! If you are finishing a masters or professional degree program, congratulations on finally (probably?) being done with school! And if you didn’t graduate this year, stick around anyway- I have some information here for you, too.
As the excitement of your graduation weekend ends and you begin to take the next steps on your journey, whatever they may be, I recommend that you take a step back and take an assessment of your current financial landscape. Your life is changing (for the better!), and as such, you should take some time to reflect and take action to set yourself up for financial success in your new endeavors.
There’s a lot to take in here – if you have any challenges in any of these areas, I recommend that you reach out to schedule a free consultation.
Congratulations again, and let me know how you are doing as you progress through this list!
Negotiate Your Salary
If you’re still working on lining up your first job out of school, make sure you prepare yourself to negotiate your salary before you accept a job. If you already have a job lined up, file this one away for your next performance review.
I’ve discussed this in much more detail before, but it’s absolutely critical that you negotiate your salary when starting a new job.
Over 60% of millennials aren’t negotiating with employers at all regarding their salary. And the worst part? Three out of four employers have room to negotiate salary by as much as 10%- but only if you ask for it. And, truthfully, hiring managers and HR are expecting you ask for it.
I know it’s uncomfortable, but you have to do it.
Set a Student Loan Paydown Plan
The bad news? T-minus six months until your first student loan payment is due.
The worse news? The vast majority of millennials are told by their loan servicer how much they owe and automatically start paying the bill, without double checking to make sure they’re paying down their loans in the smartest way possible.
The good news? You have the power in your hands to make sure you’re handling your student loans with the care they deserve.
I highly recommend downloading my free guide on managing student loan payments. In it, you will learn:
- How to review each of your student loans and determine what payment plans each is eligible for.
- How to know if you are eligible for a loan forgiveness program, and what you need to do to qualify for the program under current law.
- When you should refinance your student loans, and when you absolutely should NOT refinance your loans.
- How to set goals around your student loan payment strategy (i.e., should you try to pay down your loans as fast as possible, or should you try to minimize your monthly payment?)
- … and much, much more!
Go ahead and grab your free copy of “13 Steps to Take Before You Make Your Next Student Loan Payment” today. It will be worth your while to work through the guide in order to set you up for success with your student loans.
Set Financial Goals for the Next Five Years
I remember graduating college like it was yesterday. The last thing I wanted to do was to try to imagine what the future was going to be like. I just had the best four years of my life, and was scared to face all of the responsibilities that I knew would fall on my shoulders in the real world. If you had told me back then to spend some time setting goals for my first few years in the working world, I probably would have laughed at you.
But, I wish I had taken that advice. I’ve improved my own personal financial situation significantly after I started setting financial goals for myself. (Not too long after I started my first job, luckily!) And I recommend you do the same.
Take some time and imagine what you want your life to be like in one, three, and five years from now. Will you be going back to school to get a graduate or professional degree? Do you want to buy a new car or, a little while down the line, a new house? Are you gunning for a quick promotion at work, or maybe even thinking about launching a business or side hustle someday?
All of these things are great, and they are much more likely to happen if you (literally) put pen to paper to clearly articulate what you want your life to look like. And, once you have done this, you can manage your finances accordingly to begin to make progress against these goals.
Set Up Your 401(k)
It can be easy, in the flurry of paperwork that accompanies a new job, to accidentally forget or neglect to set up contributions to your 401(k). Don’t forget, it’s critically important. At a minimum, you should contribute at least to your firm’s matching point.
So, if your firm matches up to 3% of your salary, you should contribute, at a bare minimum, 3% to your 401(k). Not contributing up to your firm’s matching point is, quite literally, turning down free money.
And unfortunately, it’s not enough just to set up how much you want to contribute to your 401(k). You need to choose how you’d like to invest the money you put into your retirement plan, too.
Unfortunately, firms usually give very little guidance to their employees on how to do this. Which is why I’ve written about how to choose investments in your 401(k) in more detail on this blog.
…And If You Can, Save Beyond The Minimum for Retirement
Retirement might be a long way away (spoiler alert: it is a long way away), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start saving aggressively for it now. In fact, due to the beautiful thing that is compound interest, the more you save for retirement in your early working years, the much better your retirement picture will be.
There are other things you should be saving for as well (we’ll get to that in a bit), but if you have some discretionary income, I can’t recommend highly enough that you put some of that into a retirement account. What type of retirement account – either increasing contributions to your 401(k), opening a Traditional IRA, opening a Roth IRA, or even a nonretirement investment account – can vary significantly depending on your circumstances. This is probably something we should talk one on one about, if you have questions.
Build an Emergency Fund
Like I said, retirement isn’t the only thing you should be saving for. It’s critical that you gradually build an emergency fund so that if you were to lose your job, you have a way to support yourself during the transition.
The rule of thumb is that you should have enough saved to support yourself for six months (living on reduced expenses, of course – you probably won’t spend as much as you are today if you don’t have an income, after all). But, when you’re first getting started, I think it’s silly to dwell on six months of savings. That’s a pretty big and intimidating number for most people.
So instead, start by trying to save up to cover one month of your minimum living expenses. Once you’ve saved that much, make your next goal to be to save an additional month of living expenses. And so on, until you’ve hit that six-month goal. By breaking it up into pieces like this, it gives you a very clear way to take small steps, starting now, to work your way up to this major goal in the future.
Keep Your Living Expenses at College-Level For As Long As You Can
If you’re like me, there’s a good part of you that’s sad to be leaving college. College is hard, sure, but it’s fun!
Do you have that same bittersweet feeling I did about leaving school behind as you enter the real world? Good! Hold on to it. Embrace it. And channel it into how you manage your finances.
Simply put, if you had a blast in college living on a minimal income, there’s no reason to change that up now that you have a salary.
Sure, you can have some peace of mind that you have some discretionary money at your disposal if you ever were to need it. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with splurging every now and then.
But, since you’re used to keeping your living expenses low, you should continue to do that as much as possible. Have friends in your new hometown? Try to get them to sign on as roommates! Have some more free time on the weekends now that you’re not constantly writing papers and completing homework? Spend a little of that time learning how to cook so you don’t need to order takeout seven or eight times a week.
Simply put, it’s much easier to maintain your current standard of living today than it is to increase your standard of living, realize you’re overspending, and then try to cut spending back. You’re better off keeping your monthly spending where it is today, and saving the rest, rather than allowing your lifestyle costs to rise with your income.
And Speaking of Spending…
Yes, you need a budget for yourself.
I’m not the type of person to go through my clients (or my own) spending with a fine-toothed comb, analyzing every little expense here and there. It’s not fun; it’s not productive; and it’s not an effective, long term, healthy way to manage your finances.
Instead, you should set budget parameters for yourself to make sure you know where your money is going, and track against those. A free tool like www.mint.com is great for this.
You don’t need to worry if you go a dollar or two over any particular budget category each month. But, you should pay close attention to your biggest spending areas, and try to find ways to cut back on these highest impact spending areas first, if you’re having a hard time finding the money to save for retirement and build your emergency fund.
Budgeting should be a common-sense driven exercise. Don’t drive yourself crazy with it, but know your budget numbers and stick to them as best you can.
Increase Your Available Credit (But Don’t Use It)
It can be hard to build your credit score while you’re in college. After all, most financial institutions aren’t in the business of giving huge lines of credit to college students who have a minimal, if any, income.
But now that you’re out of school, that changes in a big way. As soon as you have documentable proof of income, you should open up a credit card and use it wisely to start to build your credit score.
Whatever the bank gives you for a credit limit, always keep your credit card balance below 30% of this limit. Always pay off your bill every month. In other words, don’t rely on your credit card to bail you out if you don’t have the cash available to make a purchase. Instead, use it as a tool to begin to build your credit history as an excellent manager of credit. When you’re ready to buy a house several years down the line, you’ll be happy you did.
An even better way to do this? Find a credit card that offers some great perks. If you like to travel, find a card that gives good points toward airfare or hotel stays. If you’d rather just have the cash, find a card that pays you cash back bonuses when you use the card. There are a lot of options out there, and some of them are fantastic. If you want to get some more ideas on great credit cards to use, give me a call.
This Isn’t a One-Time Thing
As you can tell, there’s a LOT here. As you transition in the workforce, it’s ultimately on you to set yourself up for financial success.
Start today by downloading my free student loan guide. Create a budget, open a credit card, and manage your cash flow (both income and spending) wisely.
But ultimately, most of these things aren’t just for when you make the transition from school to a job. You should periodically review each of these items to make sure you’re still on track. Set up a free call with me to talk through how we can implement a system to address each of these items, and more.