Generally speaking, if you’re under 30 you are cheap for the company to employ, so your job is most likely safe, but be ready to take on extra responsibilities without a pay raise.  After we are out of this recession, the experience you have gained will better position you for promotions and raises.  Keep your head down, wear some corporate camo and work hard.  If you are graduating and worried about finding a job, take comfort in the fact that over a third of recent grads move home after college.

If you’re under 30 you don’t need to worry about your retirement much, in fact one of the best things you could do right now is to put more into it.  If you haven’t started saving for retirement…start!  The markets are depressed, so a good investment that would have cost you $50/ share a year ago, might very well still be a good, if not better investment at $20/share today.  If you are worried about picking stocks, consider index funds!  Purchasing index funds is like purchasing one of every stock on a certain exchange, it balances out the risks of individual failures with the rest of the market, including the biggest performers.

Millennials, go outside, the sun is still up, it’s not all doom and gloom.  This is the perfect time to seize opportunities and responsibilities as they come to us!

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For the first time in my adult life I experienced positive peer pressure, and it made me glad to have the friends I have.  The other night I called one of my former roommates, who is a very good friend of mine and I caught him in the middle of a beer pong game with a fraternity brother of ours.  We all graduated at the same time, all with double degrees, all with finance as one of them.  We spoke about how things are going in life and our conversation came around to finances. 

My former roommate told me that he decided to splurge his tax refund on a new set of golf clubs to celebrate his year in the workforce and a recent promotion.  The conversation went something like this, I will use R for the roomate and G for my other friend (They have me I’m on speakerphone… mid beer pong game):

Me – Nice!  Congratulations…that’s a pretty big purchase!

R – I know, but I’ve already funded my 401(k) and started funding a Roth IRA for the year and I wanted to splurge on something nice as a reward.  Are you and Mary funding your 401(k)’s?

Me- Unfortunately we don’t get 401(k)’s until we have been at the company for a year because of high turnover in our industry.

R & G- THAT SUCKS!

Me- I know, BUT we have both fully funded our Roth IRA’s for 2007.

G- Very good.  So you’ve each got your 4 grand sacked away… that’s impressive.

Me- Thanks.  Have you been funding yours?

G- Absolutely, and I’m saving all the rest of my money for an engagement Ring…

Towards the end of our conversation we all agreed to peer pressure another friend into making sure he is saving and on a good track.

Maybe it’s just my circle of friends, but I’m starting to think that we might be getting it!  We have seen family members want to retire but not be able to, we have seen friends and family get in way over their heads in debt, and we don’t want it to happen to us!  The credit crunch/recession/whatever you want to call it may end up being a good thing for our generation because we are seeing first hand what can happen when your priorities are not in line, and we are learning from it!  We are learning from other people’s mistakes and enriching our own lives because of it. 

I am very proud of my friends for having their priorities in line by not getting caught up with excess, splurging when everthing else is taken care of, and still making time for fun by enjoying a good game of beer pong on a weeknight.  Way to go guys!

On second thought I may have gotten ahead of myself, I need to call them back and make sure they have emergency funds as well… I will update.

Update:  I checked back with R.  And I am pleased to say that he has quite a few separate funds set up.  He says that he has an Oh Shit fund (read: emergency fund), 401(k), Roth IRA, and a mid-life crisis fund (which apparently could double as a house down payment fund as well).  Wow…good job R!

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