Just about two years ago I got a summer internship and moved to St. Louis for the summer. After I graduated a year later, I took a full time position with the same company and relocated here. While I was doing this internship, the real world finally hit me. It finally dawned on me that the academic world wasn’t all there was and that I could actually be financially sound.

During those couple of months, I was being paid more than I had ever gotten before (partly because never really worked a full 40 hours consistently during school), and I took an increasingly greater interest in my personal finances. I’ve always been pretty independent, but I was now applying it to my financial situation.

I went to the library quite often and checked out many different books on personal finance and investing. I began reading Yahoo! Finance, MSN Money and CNN Money. By the end of the summer I knew all about 401k plans, Traditional and Roth IRAs, the basics of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

What I’m getting at is that I made a concerted effort to learn all I could about how money finances work. I wanted to find out the best ways to put my money to work. I’m still learning more and more everyday, but I encourage you (if you haven’t already) to also make it a priority to learn how to save and invest. Make a trip to your local library. I didn’t read everything in every book; if a chapter wasn’t interesting, I’d move on and read the sections that I wanted. The point is the make the effort. You may surprise yourself at how you can change your financial outlook just by educating yourself with the basics of money and personal finance.

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