When you graduate from college, it can be easy to fall into a pit of despair about your finances. Many recent grads throw their graduation cap off and realize that life is about to happen. In college, you are really in an incubation period where you don’t have to worry about the responsibilities of living in the working world.
However, once you are in that world, the reality can sink in fast and can sting. There are a number of ways to manage your finances so that you can live comfortably and not fret about your financial situation.
Get a Part-time Job to Bridge the Gap
It may be a while until you land that position with the company you’ve always dreamed of, so in the meantime, you will need to have some capital in the bank to cover some of your expenses. This is why you want to bite the bullet and get a part-time job. It doesn’t really matter if you got your degree from a Case Western online program or Harvard, you may have to get a temporary job until your resume lands in the right hands.
Sell Off Some of Your Old Textbooks
There is a good chance that you have a few textbooks laying around from your college years. If you haven’t sold them off yet, you may want to think about doing so. Each of them had cost a small fortune as a college student and even by selling them for pennies on the dollar to bookstores or directly to younger classmates you could subsidize a lot of your daily costs.
Start Paying Back Your Loans
Right when you graduate is when you want to start paying back those loans. If you don’t pay back your loans, the interest payment alone could start eating into your finances in a big way. There is a good chance that your loans have been mounting, especially if you attended a four-year college. This is why you may want to think about consolidating your loans to make it easier to pay back.
Practice Living on a Budget
Of course, until you find a great job, money will be very tight. You can make do by developing a budget for all of your expenses. If you don’t have a detailed budget that accounts for all of your expenditures, then you could risk spending more than you make.
The last thing you want is to be too broke to pay for rent or other expenses. If you do have a part time job and you are bringing in a little cash, you want to make that cash stretch as far as possible.
Take Care of Your Credit
On top of everything, you want to start getting on top of your credit. You may not realize it when you are young, but your credit is very important. Without good credit, you won’t be able to rent an apartment, buy a house, lease a car or do anything for that matter. Your credit score also impacts the interest rates you pay on credit cards, too. In the end, you may want to work with a financial planner to tackle your credit problem.