12 Things I Wish I Had Known In College

1. Credit cards are evil. =)
2. Buy & read David Bach’s The Automatic Millionaire and Smart Women Finish Rich…and live by them!
3. Create a budget and stick to it! Track your spending so you know where your money is going. Ideally all your "essential" spending -- taxes, food, shelter, clothing, and the rest -- comes out of the first 60% of your total, pretax income. The rest, in 10% chunks, is devoted to retirement savings, emergency savings (or debt repayment), short-term savings for irregular expenses (like holidays and car repairs), and fun money.
4. Immediately contribute AT LEAST 10% of your pre-tax income to your 401k. 15% is better. What you never see, you won’t miss, but it is a lot harder to make that adjustment down the road when you are used to having (and spending) that money in your paycheck each month, and you will see drastically higher returns the earlier you start saving. Compound interest is your friend!
5. Open a Roth IRA and start contributing to it immediately. You'll fund this with money that's already been taxed as part of your paycheck, but money in a Roth IRA withdrawn later is tax-free. Ask your HR rep if you can do automatic deductions from your paycheck so that you never see (and are tempted to spend) that money.
6. Be aggressive with your investments, with 90% of your funds in diversified stocks.
7. Create an Emergency Fund so you don't bury yourself in debt if your car dies, your roommate comes up short on rent, or you suffer some other financial mishap. Ideally, you'll stash three months' living expenses, but the important goal is to save something. Again, automatic transfers (preferably to an interest-bearing account like ING) are great for this.
8. Eliminate your bad debt. Get any credit card debt you have on the lowest APR card you can, & then pay off the one with the highest rate first using the “Snowball Method.” Student loans are not considered “bad debt” & have some of the lowest interest rates around, so don’t pay them off early, but do make sure to pay them on-time: a late SL payment will ruin your credit.
9. As tempting as it may be, do not run out and buy a brand new car. A car depreciates the minute you drive it off the lot and unless you pay cash for it, the monthly payments will count against you when you go to buy a house. Real estate appreciates on average 6% a year & is one of the best investments you can make. The in-town Atlanta market has seen appreciation of 12-18% a year in the last 5 years. If your current car is still running, hold onto it for a little bit longer until you figure out the other variables of the Real World.
10. Health Insurance is not optional! If you don’t have benefits, look into an accident/injury only plan you can get privately. Blue Cross/Blue Shield has a good one.
11. Just because you want it and you can afford it right then (or charge it), doesn’t mean you should have it! Before you buy any unnecessary item (like those cute Steve Madden shoes you have been eyeing), ask yourself “Can I pay cash for this?” and “If I buy this now, how does it affect my long term goal of _____ (paying off debt, buying a house, taking a vacation, etc.) If you cannot pay cash for something, do not buy it! Save up the money for it instead, and by the time you have the money saved, who knows, you may not even want the item anymore!
12. Credit cards are evil. Albeit sometimes a necessary evil.