So it’s the big day and you’re finally turning 18. Now you’re officially an adult, no longer strung down by the chains of being a kid and can do whatever the heck you want. Though during all this excitement, I doubt your thinking about your financial situation. I mean why would you? You’re still pretty young and taxes are but a far away day in the future. Though as you navigate your way through adulthood it is very important to recognize that having sound financial knowledge is extremely important. Understanding how to manage your finances and creating a plan for your future will help you and make getting through life easier and a lot less stressful. So with your newfound freedom of being an adult try to take the time to manage your money.
If you don’t have it already, make a checking and savings account at your local bank. When you make this bank account, make sure to have a small cushion in it. A cushion just means that you have a small amount of money you can use at any time in a pinch if really needed and it just gives you peace of mind. As important as a bank account is, try to expand other ways to make your money work for you. Like putting money in your Roth IRA so you can retire at a good age when you’re older.
“Balance your checkbook once a month; pay your credit card bill once a month,” said Von Mitchell, business teacher. “Until you pay your own bills, you’re not really a grown up.” Everyone knows that with adulthood always comes responsibility and that is especially important when it comes to money. If you don’t have that level of maturity to manage your money, it will make it very difficult to survive financially with adulthood. “You make the money, you understand the value of the hard work that went into making that money,” said Mitchell.
Another big thing that a lot of graduates are afraid of doing is opening a credit card. They worry about raking up credit card debt and not being able to pay it off. So they just use a debit card to pay bills and as long as it accepts when you buy something you know you have something in the bank account. Mitchell said that “This is a miserable way to go at it.”People prefer to just put automatic payments from bills on to that debit card and if they ever don’t have money on that debit card account “then those bounce, and you end up having bounced check charges” said Mitchell.
In the end it’s really just about living within your means and saving up until you can afford what you want. Would you rather live always paying a monthly debt for having the latest iPhone or waiting until you can afford that without having to worry about that debt. Save up, especially when considering the new economy which is not helping with the price of everything going up like gas, groceries etc., It’s a more difficult world to live in every day, with new hassles and obstacles to go through every day. New hastles and obstacles like the new ways to get scammed, and new get quick rich schemes.
“Focus on what you want to do, and not everybody is going to make the same [amount of money]… what you choose to do is going to determine that in a lot of ways” said Mitchell. It all boils down to what you want to do.
