Your college years are one of the most important years of your life because they lay out the foundation and fortify the rest of your adulthood habits, including how much you know about money and the discipline you have with it as well. I naturally got curious about money because there are certain goals in my life that I want to achieve and they heavily depend on my financial discipline. As a result, I’ve learned how to budget, invest in stocks, invest in my retirement, and do other things so that I can prepare myself for adulthood post-college and continue to develop my habits. Here are some things that I’ve done for my finances while in college and things you can do to give yourself a jumpstart on preparing your finances for now and beyond.
Here are three things that I recommend doing
start a savings account
- Starting and maintaining a savings account is the most important thing you should do because it allows you to have something to rely on in case of emergencies. You also don’t have to save a ton of money, even placing $5 in a savings account every week is a good start because it allows you to have discipline and create long-standing habits.
create a budget
- Although not everyone might not have a job or a steady income during college, it’s important to not spend all the money that you have available to you. To combat this, it’s important to create a budget based on any expenses that you are responsible for (such as a phone bill), Creating a budget will allow you to balance your money throughout the months and will help create discipline to help bring this habit into your adulthood for post-college. Excel is a platform that I personally use for my budgeting, but there isn’t one way to do a budget, but my best advice is to do something that works with your lifestyle and that you know will follow.
get a credit card
- Credit cards are intimidating, but they don’t have to be. Credit cards help with establishing your credit history and your credit score which can help you in the future when you are ready to purchase a car or a house. They also have benefits depending on the type of credit card and the company that sponsors them.
Although this isn’t a complete list, this is a great start on where to start if you’re feeling lost or curious about what to do. The great thing about trying to manage your finances in college is that this is the time to build habits so that when you have more money, you’ll know exactly what to do with it.
