Managing Future Risks

After graduation I, like many others, will be looking to put my degree to good use by obtaining a reasonably paying job. Currently, our economy is not what it was in the 90’s hence making the job market much more competitive. As an economic major at the university of Illinois, I believe that my personal resume is good but not outstanding compared to other college graduates. Similarly, lets assume that if I were to graduate in the spring and start working full time in June at a annual rate of $50,000. First, I would do my absolute best to be the hardest working employee that way a year later I would have much more leverage than my coworkers in regards to lobbying for a promotion. I am the oldest of my two siblings and the first in my family to go to college so I do not have any one to refer to in respect to following certain steps. Thankfully, I will be graduating very little debt (around $4000). My personal intent would be to stay at home for at least first six months and accumulate as much as I can into savings. I will have very little financial obligations if I am living at home; my father has already spoke to me about buying me a brand new car as a graduation present so all I would have to do is pay for gas and insurance which is completely reasonable. My goal would be to save as much money as I can and hopefully by the age of twenty-five I will be completely self-sufficient and move into an apartment. Then from there somewhere along the road prepare to put a down payment on a house and so forth. All the aforementioned are only plausible if I am successful in the sense that I have a full-time job and constantly improving at what I do. I also would like to begin to invest in a 401k plan, which is exponential so the earlier I start, the better off I am. A lot of the salary I have will not be spent on immediate gratification rather than towards many long-term investments. The best way to limit income risks for myself would be to develop a good credit score through timely payments, do well as an employee to garner positive recommendations, potentially pursue an even higher level of education such as masters, and overall just having a healthy state of mind and physical behavior. The last is better because I truly believe that when you are stress free, exercising, eating well, you are more prone to make better financial decisions as opposed to when you are stressed out and looking for ways to relieve that stress unnaturally. Growing up as a child I always loved playing games where you had to create a life with a long term plan, such as Sims or literally the board game life. It always interested me to see how certain actions will affect you immediately and five years from now. It is important that the financial decisions I make at twenty-two will keep me comfortable ten years from now at the age of thirty-two, etcetera. My summer jobs have been somewhat vague in terms of I was more focused on making money for school as opposed to getting a preview of the work force. The first summer after freshman year I worked for a construction company doing hard manual labor but made a solid $10 an hour which made me a lot of money that summer. The next summer I did office work for my father, which gave me an introduction to communication between employers and clients. All in all, I would most certainly be very conscious of all my purchases because of our unstable economy and the fact that I will never know if I could get laid off or whatnot. It is important to always focus on the future.