How To Be An Adult A Step-By-Step Guide to Getting Your S$%t Together - Money Under 30

How To Be An Adult A Step-By-Step Guide to Getting Your S$%t Together - Money Under 30 How To Be An Adult: A Step-By-Step Guide to Getting Your S$%t Together Being a young adult in 2016 is no picnic. You (mostly) dont know what you want to do, your love lifes a slow-motion disaster film, and your parents keep asking when youre going to settle down/get married/go to med school. Oh, and youve got crazy student loan debt, wages have been stagnant for decades, housing prices are through the roof, and climate change just killed a bunch of reindeer  in Siberia. Its enough to make you feel like this: It  doesnt have to be this hard. While we cant tell you how to figure out what you want to do with your life, or get you to stop drunk-texting your ex, or bring those poor reindeer back to life, we can help you get your finances in order. Heres how to be an adulton paper, at least. 1. Pay yourself first Its a personal finance cliche, but its still the first step on the road to financial stability. Saving money often feels like deprivationyou cant buy stuff you want. But if you change your mindset, and see saving as an investment in (pretty near) future yous health and happiness, it makes it a lot easier. How to pay yourself first? Here are a few ideas: Do (at least) the bare minimum when it comes to retirement savings Ideally, you’d be putting away a significant amount of money toward your golden years, but we know you’ve got bills: Those fat monthly payments to Sallie Mae, as well as rent, food, and the (more than) occasional night out. But one of the few advantages (financially speaking) of being young is that you’ve got decades until you’re going to need your retirement money. Thus, every dollar you put away now  will be worth more at retirement than dollars you put down in 10 or 20 years, when you’ll be a little farther along the slow crawl to the graveand thus more flush. Why? Compound interest. With time, your money earns interest, and then that interest earns interest, and then the interest on your interest earns more….you see where this going. Time is on your side on this one. So what’s the bare minimum? If  your employer offers a match, contribute as much as you need to get the maximum match. For most of you, this will be 6 percent, with an additional 3 percent coming from your employer. Free money! And with that, you’ll be close to halfway to the 20-percent savings rate that most financial advisors (and Money Under 30) recommend. If you start right out of school, it might even be enough for you to  have a years salary saved up in your 401(k) by age 30. And because that 6 percent comes out pre-tax, you won’t feel as much of a pinch in your (slightly) reduced paycheck. If you employer doesn’t offer a match? Then you should open up a Roth IRA and aim to max out your yearly contribution. Since youre young, and probably not making a ton yet, youll be paying less in taxes than you will later on. Contributions to a Roth IRA are done with post-tax money; withdrawals you take in retirement are tax-free. Regardless, youll want to put your money in low-cost index funds, as fees can really eat up your returns. Set up an emergency fund According to a recent study by the Federal Reserve, almost half of all  Americans wouldn’t be able to cover an unexpected $400 expensecuwzveczrdzvwrzzwydfbaewscxzezqeu. $400! To compare, the average visit to the emergency room costs $1,233. An emergency fund is important for a lot of reasons: Stuff happens, and often it’s expensive. If you’ve got a nice cushion of cash socked away for the unexpected, then you’ll be less likely to raid your 401(K) or IRA in the event of an emergency or unexpected job loss,  which means those investments can keep appreciating tax- and penalty-free. Psychologically, you’ll be less stressed because you know that you can handle anythingwhether a new set of tires or your pet’s expensive dental workwithout going into debt. You might not have a ton of cash to put aside right now. Even setting aside small amounts can help, and small amounts eventually add up to  big(ish) money. An app like Digit, which analyzes your spending and takes out small amounts when it thinks you wont notice, is a great way to start, especially if you take a hands-off approach to your finances. Digit takes advantage of your lack of attention, and uses it to help you save. If youre the more conscious type, then consider setting up a high-yield savings account. By putting your money in a separate account, you set up a nice little psychological barrier between you and it,  meaning youll be less likely to spend your emergency fund on impulse buys. And the interest your money earns will help offset inflation. Want to set it and forget it?  Use our free tool to automate your finances. Build a bank account bufferâ„¢ If the idea of savings several thousand dollars seems far off, aim for the bank account bufferâ„¢ first. Its like a mini-emergency fund you keep in your checking account. Think of it as  a cushion of cash you keep in your checking account, and that you never spend. No fun, right? Its not much fun, but it can keep you from having to  worry about whether the  landlord will deposit your rent check before you get your next employer-sponsored infusion of cash. It also protects you from overdraft fees, which means  being broke wont make you even more broke. It can be $500, $1,000, or equal to the amount of one paycheck. You dont want your bank account bufferâ„¢ to be too much (unless youre using a high-yield checking account), because youll be missing out on the (admittedly pretty minimal) interest that money would be earning in a high-yield savings account. 2. Get accustomed to living within your means Money Under 30 founder David Weliver got into $80,000 in debt before he was even 25. How did he do it? The way we all do: Spending more than he earned. When youre young and making real money for the first time, it can be hard to tell yourself no. But indulging every whim now means itll be even harder to reduce your spending later on. Its best to start developing good habits now, so you wont have to dig yourself out of a hole in the future. Track your spending I know, I know. I can already hear the resistance. Tracking what you spend is no fun (or at least it’s no fun unless you’re a little bit compulsive), but it’s also pretty much the only way to get a handle on your finances. If you don’t know where your money goes, how can you hope  to know where you canor shouldcut back? If you don’t want to do the most tried-and-true method, Ye Olde Spreadsheet, then perhaps let an app do it for you: It won’t be as helpful at encouraging fiscal discipline, but it will help you get an overall sense of where your money’s going. Wait three days before making a big purchase Telling yourself no all the time gets old. Eventually, youll break down and start saying yes to everything. Instead, tell yourself Not now. By offering your acquisitive impulses delay rather than denial, youll dull the edges of their disappointment. They can have what they wantthey just have to wait. Youll usually find that, at the end of three days, the desire itself has dissipated. In its place? Relief you didnt buy that kinda ugly sweater, or the gadget youd get bored with in two days. Dont budgetinstead, figure out your discretionary income Budgets work great for some peoplebut not for most  of us. Why assign an arbitrary limit to what you spend on groceries? What if you need toothpaste but youve already maxed your toiletries budget? Would being good with money dictate having rancid breath until next month? Instead of putting limits on unpredictable categories, figure out what you have left over to spend after youve paid all your bills (rent, utilities, insurance, debt  payments) and put some money into savingsAKA your nut, (which I think well all agree is an unfortunate term). Then, spend whats leftover on whatever you want. Youll still have to make choices (often difficult ones) but you wont be constantly bumping up against arbitrary limits. 3. Plan for the future (and the unexpected) Start building credit Building good credit takes yearsseven of them, in fact. Even if you dont plan on buying a house any time soon, its good to start thinking about your credit score. A high score will get you the lowest rates available, and may save you thousands of dollars over the life of a loan. There are a few ways you can build credit for the first time: Get a secured credit card. Become an authorized user on someone elses card (like a parent). Take out a credit builder loan from  Upstart. Maybe youre spooked by credit cardsa lot of people who came of age around the financial crisis are. But credit cards  offer benefits that debit cards dontnamely, credit card companies report your payments to the credit bureaus, and help you build credit. If youre worried about overspending, then a secured cardor even a charge card, which must be paid off in full every monthmight be the best for you. The most important thing, whatever you choose: Pay your bill every month. On-time payments are the most important element of building good credit. Missing a paymentby even a day!could set you back years. Check your credit report at least once a year Once  youve established a credit score, then you should keep an eye on it. Its not unheard of for errorsshowing missed payments on accounts youve always paid religiously, or an outstanding debt you never took outto show up on your credit report, and those errors can hurt you. Credit reports are often used by landlords and even employers as a means of vetting potential tenants and employees. You dont want the pristine credit you worked so hard for marred by a computer glitch. Many banks, including Capital One and American Express, offer credit monitoring as a perk of being a cardmember. Credit Karma and Credit Sesame both  offer access to one credit report a month, as well as monthly updates to your credit scores. Learn more about how credit scores are calculated, and use our credit score estimator to get a sense of what yours might be. Get renters insurance You may not own a house yet, but I imagine you already have plenty of stuff, and some of it is pretty expensive. Got a nice bike? A laptop? A flat-screen TV? Would it be easy for you replace them if they got lost, stolen, or damaged? If not (and even if so), you should get renters insurance. Renters insurance is like homeowners insurance.but for renters. It protects your stuff in the event of theft, damage, or loss, and it protects you from liability if, say, you accidentally burn down your apartment building, or leave the shower running and cause serious water damage. (Fun fact: Your landlord will not just pay for that.) Renters insurance tends to be pretty cheap, especially if you combine it with your auto insurance. A friend of mine recently lost most of her belongings in a house fire, and her renters insurance made it possible for her to recover. That kind of peace of mind is definitely worth $10 a month. For more info on the right policy for you, check out Money Under 30 partner Policygenius. 4. Set some money goals Tracking your spending and telling yourself not now will feel somewhat pointless once youve got six months of living expenses in your emergency fund and youre hitting your targets for retirement savings. Thats when its time to start setting savings goals. It could be for a down payment on your dream house, a trip to Europe, or a brand new car. It can be saving up money to go to grad school, or to pay for your wedding. It can be all of those! Capital One 360 has a great feature (unique among high-yield savings accounts) where it allows you to divide your money up into (up to 25) separate accounts. That makes it easy to prioritize different goals, and to see the progress youre making on each individual one. Goals are a great way to motivate yourself to save more, and to keep up the momentum youve built up while saving for your emergency fund. And, even better, it means you get to save toward fun stuff. 5. Be patient In your twenties, it can feel like so many of your goals are out of reach. If youre not making a ton of money, then saving a ton of money is going to take a while. Dont beat yourself up about it. Those small contributions will start adding up to something substantial soon enough, and you should be proud of yourself for making smart choices that will serve you well later in life. Summary If youre just out of college, youre probably overwhelmed by both new freedoms and new responsibilities. Jobs, money, taxesit can all be too much. But if you start with the basics, youll find yourself well ahead of the curve by the time you hit the big 3-0. Read more: The $1 Million 401(k): Investing Strategy For 20- And 30-Somethings How To Save Your First $500