5 Money-Management Musts for New Grads

by Center for Personal Finance editors

McLEAN, Va. (5/19/15)—This spring will bring a lot of "firsts" for many college grads including first jobs and first paychecks (USA Today May 4).

In the months after graduation, financial experts agree on five things every new grad should be doing with his or her money:

• Create a spending plan. Understanding how much money you have coming in as well as going out is the first step you must take in keeping a successful budget. Become familiar with the difference between your gross pay and net pay so you know what you'll actually have left to live off of after monthly financial commitments.
• Pay yourself first. Start saving in an emergency fund—even if you only can stick a minimal amount aside each paycheck, that amount will add up quickly.
• Develop a student loan repayment plan. Understand financial obligations and how long it will take you to pay off debt. Get up to speed on details about your loan and pay attention to interest rates. Visit your credit union for information about refinancing or other student loan repayment options.
• Understand company benefits. Once you get a job, make note of important dates such as deadlines for signing up for health insurance and when you'll be eligible to participate in your company's retirement plan. Also become familiar with your company's vacation policy, corporate discounts, public transportation benefits and the like.
• Start investing in a retirement plan. Whether you open an individual retirement account (IRA) at your credit union, or a 401(k) through the company you work for, start saving for retirement now. It probably seems like retirement is so far away that you don't need to worry about it yet, but now is when time is on your side and the benefits of compounding interest are highest. If your company offers to match your contributions to your 401(k), contribute at least the amount you need to in order to get the match. If you don't, it's like leaving free money on the table.

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Meet Chuck Bomar and Julie Keown-Bomer!

Chuck Bomar and Julie Keown-Bomar “Anytime We can be Outside is a Pretty Good Day.”

Chuck Bomar is a Dean at UW-Stout, and Julie Keown-Bomar is an administrator for the University of Wisconsin Extension program—yet both of these educators will gladly admit they are still learning.

Chuck is a big fan of online banking, and appreciates the fact that he can pay bills and monitor their WESTconsin account without a single trip to the mailbox.

Julie’s job means a lot of driving. She researched and purchased a reliable vehicle and, while closing the sale, agreed to the dealership’s expedient financing through a large bank, rather than securing a loan through WESTconsin Credit Union, where they have been members for many years.

“It turned out to be a nightmare,” Julie recalls. “They accused me of not making payments and they treated me like a criminal!”

Julie turned to WESTconsin, where she and Chuck already had multiple home and refinancing loans, and was able to resolve the situation—and transfer the car loan to the credit union—in just a matter of days. Lesson learned! #CountOnWESTconsin

Meet Andrew and Laurentia McIntosh!

Local Service and Local Underwriters Get it Done

When the McIntoshes wanted to refinance their log home and property – which they have dubbed “Wise Acres” – the bank that held their mortgage disappointed them immediately with what seemed to be a turtle-pace procedure.

“The process just kept getting longer and longer,” Laurentia remembers. “It was very frustrating and I’d lost my patience.”

The final straw came when their original lender concluded that, because they rented a small portion of their property to a local farmer, they could not qualify for refinancing because it was “income producing property.”

Andrew picked a name from the WESTconsin Credit Union website, and it turned out that Mortgage Loan Originator Jordi Buchner was a neighbor of theirs. She lived on a small hobby farm as well and was well acquainted with the issues they needed to tackle.

The McIntoshes got their loan, and got it fast. WESTconsin uses local underwriters with intimate knowledge of regional issues - quite a contrast with the anonymous, national underwriters that Andrew and Laurentia struggled with earlier.

Laurentia sums it up: “Instead of feeling like we were falling through the cracks with a large corporation, we had these people who knew exactly what we needed and were able to make it happen within weeks. I love banking with WESTconsin Credit Union because they are our friends and our neighbors.”

Six Slam-Dunk Ways to Trash Your Credit Score

Six Slam-Dunk Ways to Trash Your Credit Score

by Susan Tiffany, CCUFC

It's a fact of financial life that if you want to borrow money, your lender will look at information about your credit habits before deciding how to price the loan.

If you're a good risk, you won't have to pay as much interest for the privilege of borrowing. If you've been a credit screw-up, expect a lender to charge you more. That's only fair, not only to the lender but to other borrowers the lender serves. It wouldn't be right to expect responsible borrowers to subsidize careless borrowers.

This is where your credit score comes in. It's a three-digit grade for your credit behavior to date. It changes all the time, based on your improving or deteriorating credit habits.

Some of the ways you can damage your credit score are pretty clear, while others might surprise you.