Securing Your Financial Future: A College Student's Guide
Welcome to the Future Gen Wealth Management guide for college students looking to get a head start at impacting your financial future. As you approach graduation, it's crucial to lay the groundwork for a stable and prosperous financial life. Here are essential tips and strategies we created to help you get started.
Understanding Personal Finance:
1) Budgeting Basics: Learn how to create and stick to a budget. Understand the importance of differentiating between needs and wants, and how to allocate funds accordingly.
2)The Power of Saving: Start an automated savings plan, even with a small amount. Begin to fund an emergency fund and split your savings into “buckets” for short-term and long-term goals.
Building and Managing Credit:
1)Credit Score Fundamentals: Find out your credit score, and begin working on building a good credit history. This can help to reduce the cost of future borrowing and could even help with future job searches!
2)Responsible Credit Card Use: Use credit only if you can pay off balances in full and on time. Know what your interest rate is on all credit cards that carry a balance. Automate your payments so you will never have a late fee.
Investing in Your Future:
1)Introduction to Investing: Familiarize yourself with the basics of investing, including different types of investments like stocks, bonds, Exchange Traded funds (ETFs), and mutual funds.
2)Retirement Planning: Begin saving for retirement using investment accounts such as 401ks, Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) as soon as you start working. Even small amounts saved early in your career can grow significantly over the years.
Navigating Student Loans:
1)Understanding Your Loans: Know the amount, interest rate, and minimum payments on each of your loans.
2)Repayment Strategies: Begin to research student loan repayment plans, refinancing options, loan forgiveness plans and the impact of interest rates on each of your loans. Don’t hesitate to ask for help.
Career Planning and Income:
1)Maximizing Your Earnings: Research the market rate for your type of position using employment websites so you are able to negotiate salary and benefits in your first job. Conduct networking meetings with people in your industry. Continue to take training classes to enhance your skill development.
2)Side Hustles and Alternative Income Streams: Explore the benefits of having multiple income streams, including freelancing, part-time jobs, or passive income sources.
This list will help you think about the many aspects of securing your financial future. Executing this is a whole other matter, which is where we come into the picture. Future Gen WM makes financial management and accountability easy for you. By combining the power of state of the art technology and our years of experience in financial advising, we do all the hard parts of financial advisement for you, so you can access our advisors without having to walk into the office. The power of a sound financial strategy is at your fingertips!
Contact us today 716-445-7465 or sign up for one of our many services here.
