Money-Management Advice for New College Grads

Personal finance writer Kathy Kristof offers advice to new college graduates on managing their money in the coming years. A key piece of her advice is conveyed in the following passages:

There are a handful of money moves you can make now that will virtually ensure your financial security -- and possibly create great wealth -- later in life. The younger you are, the greater the opportunities and the easier the wealth strategies are to execute. But if you start out spending too much, too fast, your ability to set yourself up for long-term wealth diminishes and eventually evaporates. That makes the first months and years after graduation pivotal to lifetime financial security...

The key, experts say, is a simple one: Live like a poor college student for a couple more years. While you're doing that, you can pay off your debt, start a savings plan and embrace healthy habits that will serve you well for life.

Given that many new college graduates will be eager to accelerate their transition to full-fledged adulthood, and perhaps see acquisition of material goods as a way to do so, Kristof's advice is particularly important.

Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood to Form

The people who've put on the biennial Emerging Adulthood conferences (Jeff Arnett, Jennifer Tanner, and others) have moved forward in crystallizing their informal working group into a formal organization, namely the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood. As part of this growth, there's been a major revamping of the group's website. The website states that a 2009 conference will be held, but details are not yet available.