If I could travel back 10 years….good Lord!  I can’t believe I just said 10 years! Anyways, if I could travel back 10 years and give advice to my new grad self I would have these “golden” new grad money tips that would save me so many headaches down the road.

I have many financial regrets in my life, but taking out $230,000 of debt to go to veterinary school is probably my biggest regret.  You make these choices based on passion without taking into account the reality of what your life will be like.

I wish someone would have talked to me about money when I was in high school and helped prepare me for a different path away from professional school.  After graduating from veterinary school, getting married, buying a house and two cars, my husband and I had over $500,000 of debt (including our home).

Half a million dollars folks!  That’s freaking insane!

Did anyone around us tell us what we were doing was crazy?  Of course not!  This is all considered normal and what people do to just live their lives, right?  Man, we walked right into the debt trap. No, we ran into it like there was a pile of freshly glazed donuts with sprinkles calling out to us.

• If you are a new grad and have aspirations of getting even more education via student loans
• If you are a new grad and have student loans at all
• If you are a new grad and you have zero experience handling money

you NEED these new grad money tips.  

I wish someone had told me to do these things 10 years ago.  My life would look so different today.

New Grad Money Tips:

New Grad Money Tip #1:  Get to know your loans.

This seems logical, but I don’t remember doing this.  My mom had just taken care of all of the financial stuff for me throughout my life and high school.  What I didn’t realize though, was she was super good at just shifting debt around.

Watching her behaviors set me up to live the same way.  I thought debt was normal and loan companies are super awesome and the people are all nice and helpful.

When you are a new graduate, you had better get to know your loans ASAP.  They typically give you a 6-month grace-period while you are adjusting to adulthood, but do not wait for that grace-period to be over before you start paying attention to your loans.

You should know everything about your loans.  There should be no question of:

• The terms of the loan
• The expected repayment
• The interest rate
• The total debt
• Online accounts’ login information and passwords

Loan companies are not forgiving. They are a business.  They loan money because they make money. They are not there to “work with you” if you get behind on payments.  They want their money. You got to use it for a period of time, but now it’s time to pay the piper!

Let me give you a story of ignorance:

When I graduated from vet school with a cool $230,000 of debt, I decided to do a rotating internship for additional training.  This training only paid me $20,000 to work insane hours. Without looking into anything, I put the loan repayment in deferment, I took the internship, and we borrowed money to pay our rent that year.

All super smart things.

I ignored this loan for a year, never looked at it once.  I took my six month grace period to “get my life together,” and THEN I looked at this loan.

Because it was in deferment for a year, it just racked up interest.  Not just a little interest…no, no, no………..$30,000 of freaking interest!!!  That’s for real.

My decision to ignore this for a year added $30,000 of debt to my total.  This got added to the principle and made my new loan total of $260,000.

One decision changed my life by 30 freaking thousand dollars.  Major screw up.

Meet Rachel.  Rachel was ignorant.  Rachel buried her head in the sand.  Don’t be like Rachel.

Get to know your loans on a personal level.  You should know more about them than the loan people do.

New Grad Money Tip #2:  Commit to a standard of living.

Here’s the thing, you may be a new grad with a shiny new job, but if you have student loans, you are broke.  You have no business living above your means.

Even though you are entering the adult world, if you have debt, you are going to continue to live like a broke student.  

I screwed this up.  My husband and I went out to eat all the freaking time as our form of entertainment.  We went shopping because it made us happy. We spent sooo much money we had no business spending.

Then, instead of renting a small 1-bedroom house, we bought a house we couldn’t afford.  BUT, to even close on the house, we had to live in a hotel for a month while we were working our new jobs to have proof we could finance the home we couldn’t afford.  And on top of all of that, we had to borrow the $5,000 to pay for the hotel we were living in.

If you are a new grad with debt, you can not live like a “grown up.”  You are going to have to commit to living below your means, even if you feel like you deserve to live at a higher standard of living.

Listen to me, I graduated with a doctorate, I thought we could live at a higher level because my pay increased.  Do not be this naive. You should always be living way below your means.

I don’t care what your fancy degree is in.  You do not deserve to live any certain way if you have student loans.  Those loans take priority and your paychecks have already been spent on your loans, you just spent them in the past.

You need to commit to living like a broke college student even when all of your friends are making fun of you, buying new cars, financing furniture for their fancy new apartments and townhomes and getting pets they can’t afford.

You are going to be wiser than them and in 5-10 years, you will be on the road to becoming rich and they will still be in debt.  You’ve got this! You just have to commit to living below your means.

New Grad Money Tip #3:  Get a career.

If you took out student loans, you need to get a career.  What I mean by this is, typically only ⅓ of college grads actually have a job related to their degree.

Now I don’t care if you have a career related to your major…would it be nice?  Yes, it would be a great thing if the loans you took out for the degree you earned were actually paying off in the form of a lucrative career.

But, even if you don’t have a career related to your major, that’s okay.  You just need to have a career, not a job. Jobs are great for extra income on the side, but you need a career that has growth potential.  

If you want to be successful and build wealth (aka: have a retirement), you should be on a career path.  A career should spark passion in you, it should have room for growth, and it should provide you with health benefits (this will be super critical if you are over 26 or if your parents boot you off their insurance early) as well as retirement options.

An added bonus would be a great career with a mentor to help you develop your skills and advance.  If you can find someone to take you under their wing and teach you how to become more, this is absolute gold.

Having a career instead of a basic job is going to set you up for wealth building and long term success.  

New Grad Money Tip #4:  Set up a budget.

This is so so so so so so so so important.  I can not emphasize this enough. If you have never budgeted before, you need to start doing this.

I am not talking about hooking your bank account up to Mint.com where it “tracks” things for you.  I am talking about putting together a written budget….you write it down, by hand. This is vitally important to get you to understand your money and your life.

If you have never budgeted before, you need to sign up for our FREE 5-day email course to set up your budget.

This course will help you stay motivated to finally start and stick to a budget.  It will walk you through how to organize all of your financial papers to set you up for success.  You will prepare to set up your budget and remove the guesswork.

Then you will be walked through the budget set up process step-by-step, and you will learn to track your expenses and make adjustments for the future.  

By the end of the 5 days, you will know exactly how to budget, stick with it and be successful for your future.  

Your budget is your roadmap for your financial life.  Without a budget, you will be going nowhere super fast.  You have to know what your money is doing if you want to start heading toward your goals and dreams.

Do not ignore this.  It could be one of the biggest mistakes you make.

And do not put this on auto-pilot with an app.  A handwritten budget will help you understand your money, it will keep you on top of your spending habits and you will learn where your weaknesses are with spending.

My husband and I chose not to live on a budget for 2 years and we paid for it.  We lived in this constant state of waiting until our bank account dropped low enough that we were panicked and went on a spending freeze until the end of the month.  

We were up and down emotionally throughout the month in a state of joy with spending money and going out to eat, then we would be in a panic and stressed out when we ran out of money and had to go on a spending freeze.  

A budget will give you a plan to ensure you know where your money is going.  If you aren’t budgeting, you will be losing tons of money.

SIGN UP NOW TO BUILD YOUR BUDGET TODAY!  USE OUR FREE BASIC BUDGET SETUP SHEETS BY SIGNING UP BELOW!

New Grad Money Tip #5:  Set up a debt payoff plan.

If you have student loans, you have to get them paid off.  There is no way around this. Keeping student loans around for years will keep you broke.

When you are struggling with debt, it can totally seem like this thing you will never get rid of.  It feels impossible, and if you are like me, you don’t even know where to start.

When I started my first “real” job, I was looking at $320,000 of total debt.  A huge freaking mountain. It was scary. I was terrified about our future and didn’t know how we were going to live.

Was it even possible to pay all of this off?  Where should we even start?

If you are going to pay off debt, you have to have a plan.  If you try to just spread your income over lots of different payments, you are going to fail.  It’s like the phrase, “Jack of all trades; master of none.”

If you try to pay off everything, you are going to pay off nothing.

The plan that will work for you to pay off debt is called the debt snowball.  With this plan, instead of looking at all of your debt in one huge pile; the debt snowball will show you how to approach your debt in a way that will actually help you make progress.

How does the debt snowball work?

First, list all of your debts smallest to largest (not including your home).  Do not pay attention to interest rates. It’s nice to know what they are, so write them down next to the debt amount, but the rate won’t determine where you put the debt on your list.

Second, write down the monthly payment due for each loan.  This is how you will build your snowball.

Then to begin working your snowball, you will start throwing any extra money you have at the smallest debt, while you continue to make minimum payments on the rest of your debts.  Every extra dollar you can squeeze out of your budget will be thrown at this smallest debt to pay it off as fast as humanly possible.

Once your smallest debt is paid, you will then take the minimum payment you were making on that debt and add it to the next smallest debt.  Then you will do the same thing and focus all of your money on paying off this debt.

Before you know it, you will be completely debt free!

Using the debt snowball will help keep you laser focused so you can get rid of your debt once and for all.  If you are trying to pay off everything at once, you are going to fail. When you focus all your efforts on one debt at a time and build up your payment debt by debt, you are going to be successful.

Without a debt payoff plan, your student loans are going to feel overwhelming and without building good momentum you may give up before you pay them off.

READY TO BUILD YOUR DEBT SNOWBALL?  USE OUR FREE DEBT SNOWBALL CALCULATION SHEET TO GET STARTED.  GET IT INSTANTLY WHEN YOU SIGN UP BELOW!

New Grad Money Tip #6:  Get after it.

This is where everything comes together.  As a new grad with student loans, your only goal should be to get them paid off as fast as humanly possible.  You should be so driven to accomplish this that nothing stops you.

You will get made fun of, your friends won’t understand what you are doing and you will have moments where you really want to quit and spend your money on fun stuff.  Do not give up.

I regret the financial decisions I made early in my adult life.  It is 100 times harder to try to pay off debt once you bring children and pets into the equation.  The second you graduate, you need to get to know your debt, get your game face on, set up your budget and debt payoff plan and attack it with everything you’ve got.

Do not be ten years down the road and regret not paying off your debt when you were younger.  Decide right now to knock it out at all costs. You will never regret getting out of debt.

Your 30-year-old self will thank you for making the smart decision and paying off your debt.  Your kids will thank you when you are able to pay for childcare or can stay home with them because you don’t have your income eaten up by student loan payments.

If you are a new grad and you have debt, you need to be following these new grad money tips.  The decisions you make now are super important. Using these tips could be the difference between you being able to retire a millionaire or not.

Once you graduate (or even before if you want to be an overachiever), get to know your loans, commit to a standard of living, begin a career, set up a budget, set up a debt payoff plan and get after it!  

You can do this!  Your future is going to be so amazing when you have zero debt!

DON’T FORGET TO START WITH YOUR BUDGET SET UP TODAY!  SIGN UP NOW TO ACCESS OUR FREE BASIC BUDGET SETUP SHEETS!

PIN FOR LATER!