The Employment Report

How to Transition from Student to Professional

As a college student, working part time or not at all, it is understandably hard to save money. You parents may be paying all expenses for you, but there are still certain necessities that cannot be overlooked and which you must pay for yourself – beer bongs, frozen pizza and Spring Break in Daytona Beach.

Perhaps you aren’t one of the lucky ones and are faced with paying for college on your own. Either way, money troubles paired with graduation is a hard combination to beat.

Tip 3: Save money. 

Here’s where the trouble stems from: Being an adult is expensive. If you weren’t on your own in college, you are now. Just after graduating, you’ll inherit all of the bills that your parents used to pay. Some people give their kids a grace period to get a job lined up, but that hourglass runs out in no time. So, you are left with no job (because you didn’t start looking early, remember?) and more bills than you can pay.

This is what happens when you don’t save money. In six months, you’ll be kicking yourself as you think of all the money you wasted on things you didn’t need. Sacrificing smaller pleasures in order to save money will make life exponentially easier in the future.

There’s also that graduation money from your aunts and uncles that you desperately want to spend – keep it. Put it into a savings account or a CD. Even if you keep it rolled up in an old sock in your closet, there’s nothing better you can do for yourself than save up. Of course, it’s fine to go blow a little of it on some new clothes or a car to replace the Oldsmobile you’ve been driving since high school. Treating yourself is a great way to celebrate this new found freedom. There is a difference, however, between treating yourself and throwing away money (No, you didn’t need that Slip ‘n Slide you bought when you started feeling nostalgic).

It doesn’t truly matter how you decide to save money. Some people find it useful to have an investment plan, with a certain amount of every paycheck going straight to savings. As a college student, you may have an unreliable, fluctuating income that requires you to save differently as your budget permits. Ideally, you should have enough in a savings account to cover at least three months of bills.

Hopefully, it won’t take you this long to find a job. If you do find a position before three months have passed, keep saving. You never know when you might be out of a job or faced with an unexpected expense. If more people had the foresight to start saving money in college, we would live in a world full of forty-year-old retirees.

This small step will be enough to get you through the rough patches of financial independence. Money isn’t everything but, for the college graduate, money can mean the difference between flourishing and flailing.