So, recent grads: how’s the transition to the real world? If you graduated last month – or as recently as last weekend, if you’re Dartmouth’s Class of 2014 – you might have already started to feel withdrawal pains from collegiate life. You miss your friends, you miss the freedom, and whether you have a job or are still looking for one, you probably miss having life’s expenses taken care of with just one check, grant or loan made out to the bursar’s office.
The financial jolt of transitioning out of the college bubble can be a big one. If you lived on campus for all four years of school, you might not be used to paying for rent and internet and electricity on top of food, clothing and other living expenses. If you have student loans, you have to account for anything from $100 to upwards of $500 going straight to the student loan servicers each month. And if you lived solely on a meal plan for four years, you have to budget for meals in dollar amounts, not number of dining hall visits left.
The good news is that because you’re a recent college grad, you have a set of skills and habits that you picked up in school that can actually help you manage a budget and even save money – you just might not realize you have them.
“We tend to compartmentalize our lives, particularly academically. While people may be extraordinarily practiced at looking things up, we’re not well practiced in [asking ourselves] ‘how might this skill help me buy a flat screen TV?’” says Art Markman, a psychology and marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “Smart Change: Five Tools to Create New and Sustainable Habits in Yourself and Others.” Markman says that students – or people who were recently students – need to take a step back and realize that they’ve learned to do a lot of things that can make their financial life better.
“Who you are is the sum total of experiences you’ve gotten,” he says, “and school is a big part of that experience.”
To that end, here are ten collegiate behaviors and habits that, if applied to your post-graduate life, can make you a more financially responsible adult and even save you money:
1. Calculating return-on-investment before making a financial leap. Remember the pro-con lists that you made before you went to school? The financial aid award letters you analyzed and the numbers you crunched? That experience, says Erin Lowry, founder of BrokeMillennial.com and content manager for MagnifyMoney, will help you with all big purchases going forward.
Lowry explains how she was down to deciding between two colleges — let’s call them College A and College B — and ready to enroll in College B when her dad made it clear to her exactly how much money she would owe if she chose that school. “I ended up going to College A because they gave me academic scholarships and the major programs weren’t different enough at each school,” she says. Lowry calls the college decision process the first time she had to make a big financial purchase without making an impulse decision and said that it was also good because it honed her negotiating skills: by choosing the cheaper college, she got a car (from her parents) out of the deal.
2. Looking out for free food and great deals. You know how you never had to buy dinner on Tuesdays because your a-cappella rehearsals always offered a plethora of pizza? Or how you and your friends never ventured off-campus for the movies unless one of you had a Groupon or Living Social deal? That ability to scavenge for free food and discounts will serve you well in adulthood. There’s nothing shameful in saving money by using coupons and discount codes – or, Lowry notes, even a student ID if you can get away with it.
“That student ID is very valuable, especially when you go to a city like New York, where there so many deals for college students — or people with college IDs that don’t have expiration dates,” she laughs, noting that a student ID can save you money at museums, theatrical performances and even some beauty salons.
It’s also worth noting that if you can’t get away with using a student ID when you’re out of school – or are uncomfortable with the fib it involves telling – many employers offer special discounts for their employees. Check with your human resources department to find out if working for Company X saves you money on your cell phone bill, at the car rental counter or even on your auto, home or renter’s insurance policy.
3. Renting, re-selling and sharing. By the time you hit sophomore year, you probably realized that you didn’t actually need to buy your calculus textbook new, no matter how many commas were changed for the “updated” edition. You may have even recouped that purchase by selling your used book to someone who didn’t mind using a doubly-used one. This ability to take a long-term view on a purchase — and realize that after three and a half months you’ll never have to take calculus or use its books again – is a mentality that you should apply to all aspects of your life. Moving to a new apartment but not sure if you’ll like the area? Find cheap furniture on eBay or Craigslist and keep it in good enough condition that you can sell it when you move out. Heading to a formal event but don’t want to splurge on a $500 dress (or tux) you might never wear again? If you don’t have a friend with similar measurements – though a recent survey found that nearly 80% of have shared clothes with a friend and 45% of us do it at least once a month, so you likely have at least one – sites like RentTheRunway, Lending Luxury or Bag Borrow Or Steal let you find and rent designer threads without paying designer prices.
This so-called sharing economy can be a great way not just to save money but to make money as well. Lyft and Uber are two good ways to squeeze extra cash out of your car – if you pass each site’s requirements and don’t mind toting strangers from place to place – while hosting a pooch through DogVacay can be a great way for dog lovers to do cash doing something they’d be happy to do for free. And sites like TaskRabbit, Gigwalk and Field Agent connect people and employers who need errands and market research done with those who could use a few extra bucks.
4. Researching until dawn. While you might have said “good riddance” to term papers when you received your diploma, the painful research process you went through in order to wow your poli-sci professor will come in handy – and be a lot less painful – if you apply it to things you buy in adulthood.
“ Doing research is an amazingly effective tool that is underused after graduation. For example, 10 hours of research and writing might get you an A on a term paper. But just one hour annually of research and phone calls can save you $1000 per year on home and car insurance,” says blogger Mr. Money Mustache (real name: Pete), who garnered internet fame by retiring at the age of 30 and now dispenses personal finance advice to thousands of loyal followers. “Similarly, you can buy a new car every five years at the dealer and lose $20,000 every time in depreciation. Or you can spend 8 hours every 5 years to shop for a used car on Craigslist, and cut that cost by 75% – which saves you over $30,000 every decade.”
Pete, who uses what he calls “carpentourism” to trade his fix-it skills in order to snag free lodging in places where he wants to vacation, also recommends that recent grads use their ability to navigate the depths of the internet in order to learn how to do home improvement projects. “A bit of research on YouTube and other websites will teach you to build or fix almost anything you need,” he says, “saving hundreds of thousands of dollars before you even turn 35.”
5. Pre-gaming. Though the term is inelegant and brings to mind the worst kind of undergraduate stereotypes – you know the one, that you partied all day, partied all night and graduated without any real skills except the ability to shotgun a beer while Wikipedia-ing a term paper for history class – the general concept of consuming food and drink at home before a night on the town is one that, if employed sensibly and in moderation, will save you money. After all, a cocktail in New York City can set you back $15; a bottle of wine split with three friends will only cost you a quarter of that. Have hors d’oeuvres and wine at home before hitting the restaurants each Saturday night and you can save hundreds of dollars annually. (For more on how much money you can save by drinking and dining at home, check out one Forbes staffer’s one-month eating-in challenge here.)
6. Living with roommates. This is less a habit and more a condition of college – very few dorms and universities give their students single rooms much less apartments – but it’s a condition that you should replicate at least during the first year out of school, if not longer. Yes, the living quarters can feel tighter with more people and yes, it’s a complete pain when your roommate’s 5am alarm goes off for an hour before he decides to get up. But consider all the expenses you get to split if you live with a friend or two: your $60 electricity bill now sets you back just $20 per month, your portion of a monthly $120 cable and internet subscription is just $40, and instead of buying toilet paper, paper towels, tissues and other household products once a week, setting up a rotation with your roommates means you’ll only do that shopping once a month (or even less frequently if you buy in bulk).
7. Multitasking and learning to prioritize those tasks. Whether you were a double major with a part-time job, a single major with three minors or a single major with an over-crowded schedule of extracurriculars, you may have had a plate that was not just full, but overfilled. And as stressful as this may have been at times, learning to juggle those many, many tasks is an ability that will help you juggle the many demands on your money.
“Sometimes when I was in grad school, I couldn’t do all the reading. It’s learning that, hey this is what has to be done, this is what would be nice to do, and this is what you don’t have to do,” says Alan Moore, a fee-only financial planner and co-founder of the XY Planning Network, which specializes in advising Gen Y with how to manage their money. Moore says this is a skill that you will definitely need even when you’re not hitting the books, because when you’re juggling saving for an emergency with saving in a 401k and paying down your student loans and trying to squirrel away fun money on the side, “there’s rarely enough money to meet all of your financial goals. It’s about prioritizing what’s most important.” (If you are juggling all of those things, start by funding an emergency fund while also making minimum payments on your debt. After that, grab the employer match on your 401k if one is offered – it’s free money! And for more on tough financial decisions Gen Y has to make, check out this article here.)
“The difference in college is you’re prioritizing a time deadline; in life, it’s more about competing dollars,” Moore adds, cautioning that the process won’t be completely identical to the one you used to triage reading assignments. “It’s saying, ‘okay, where do we allocate the resources?’ that it’s the same skill set.”
8. Walking or biking to class. Again, this is less a collegiate habit you fall into than a condition of living on campus and having the ability to walk or bike to class – if your campus allowed for that – but consider how little you missed worrying about the price of gas during the academic year. It didn’t matter if your parents were complaining about it being $4 a barrel; you could walk to your French literature seminar. Attempt to replicate this in your post-graduate home as much as possible. If a monthly unlimited subway pass costs you $112 a month but you’ll only spend $80 if you pay as you go and bike the rest of the time, that’s a not-insignificant amount of savings. And, not to mention, if you bike or walk everywhere, it’s healthier, too – possibly negating the need to spend money on a gym membership. (The pricey surcharge on organic food aside, a general rule of thumb is this: if it’s good for your body, it’s good for your wallet. Walking is cheaper than taking the subway or driving; it’s also more active. Cooking is cheaper than eating out, and it also happens to be healthier.)
9. Making summer money last all through the school year. Did you work a summer job or internship, save up your earnings and slowly spend it on books and food throughout the year? This process involved three of the most important money management skills you’ll need in adulthood: saving (you didn’t spend every last dime of your summer money), making a budget (you calculated what you earned and how much you could spend on books each semester), and most importantly, sticking to that budget, even when the income streams were not consistent throughout the year.
“In college, you do have irregular income. You might have student loans [disbursed] twice a year, money from working in summer, and that has to last the school year. That’s incredibly valuable to learn in school,” Moore says, noting that if you can effectively manage this type of income disbursement you are more likely to successfully manage a career as a freelancer because you’re practiced in making your money last. “Those are translatable skills.”
10. Getting involved in activities and seeking out experiences, not things. Chances are your best college memories don’t involve material goods, but rather the things you did: an a cappella concert, a great game with your club soccer team or even a particularly competitive Pictionary showdown with the girls and guys from your dorm hall. This, say the experts, is the most important lesson you learned in college that you didn’t realize you were learning.
“College is like this perfect environment for happiness,” Moore says. “The things that make up happy are all around experiences. When you live in college you don’t have any money – so you focus on getting involved in activities. [But] those are the things we lose in adulthood.” You don’t have to lose this ability, of course. Sites like Meetup.com connect people with similar interests and every city has its own set of softball and Ultimate Frisbee and basketball leagues to join.
Seeking out experiences and not things is “a set of skills you developed in college that it’s easy to lose because of the big change in your [post-grad] environment,” adds Texas professor Art Markman, “but if you manage not to lose that, life is better on a lot of dimensions.”
