Originally published July 5 2005
Tips for new college graduates about savings and investments
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
This article in the Royal Gazette gives helpful tips to recent college graduates about eliminating credit card debt, creating a savings account, getting good health insurance and investing in a Roth IRA.
Well-to-do Americans are more worried about their kids being able to make it in a challenging economy than they are about terrorism, according to a recent survey by US Trust Corp.That's not surprising.
It's hard to imagine that today's liberal arts degree-holders will ever be able to afford a house, health insurance, and their own family on the $30,000 starter salaries that are reportedly average now.
Today's young adults may feel stretched to the max by college loans, an underwhelming job market, an overheated housing market, the disappearance of company (or parent-) paid insurance programs, and the need to buy career clothes, furniture and wheels all at once.
They are further hampered by the fact that they often don't know a lot about money management; it's not something that most colleges teach very aggressively.
If they are lucky, they've heard a few lectures about the perils of getting in over their heads in credit card debt.
There are steps that newbie workers can take to start getting ahead, and ways in which their parents can help a little bit more and worry a little bit less.
If you build up card balances during college, use all of your graduation gifts to pay them down.
If you're graduating college with any savings at all, use that savings to kill your card balance.
*Get a checking account and a savings account.
Recent graduates move a lot, and change their addresses a lot, and just because a bill can't find you doesn't mean you're not supposed to pay it.
Once your account hits $2,000, find a money market mutual fund to put that money in.
You can make your hard-working grad scrap for her own clothes, car, and health insurance, but if you can afford the gift, feed her Roth IRA until she's making enough to feed it herself.
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