Login | October 02, 2025
Starting your first job? Financial decisions await
JULIE JASON
The Discerning Investor
Published: October 2, 2025
If you are a young person starting out in your first job, you'll want to be able to make informed decisions that can lead to long-term financial success.
Being on top of personal finances involves two time dimensions -- the present and the distant future. You act in the present, and what you do on a day-to-day basis dictates the future. It's that basic. And it's this little piece of information that determines what life looks like 10, 20 and 50 years from now.
Your starting point: A realistic way to be intentional when handling take-home pay. Call it a "budget," or better yet, a "tracker." What you want is to track where your money goes.
If you track your expenses and your income for three months, you'll have valuable information that can lead to good decisions.
Let's review some tools together.
Bank of America's Better Money Habits website lists steps a person needs to consider, including calculating net income, tracking spending and setting realistic goals (tinyurl.com/muxpy8xz).
You'll also find budgeting ideas such as a 50/30/20 strategy (50% for needs, 30% for wants and 20% for savings or debt) or a pay-yourself-first plan (put an amount in savings before paying bills or making purchases).
The Federal Trade Commission (tinyurl.com/bd655ypb), the Navy Federal Credit Union (tinyurl.com/3j8k5uf5) and financial technology company Intuit (tinyurl.com/47y3ktxk) offer budget worksheets. You can also find budget-tracking cellphone apps, such as Rocket Money and YNAB (You Need a Budget).
Once you have a budget, think about managing cash flow. One method offered by the credit reporting agency Experian is a personal cash flow statement (tinyurl.com/5uydb75a). The statement has two sections: a balance sheet (what you own versus what you owe) and a cash flow statement (your cash inflows and outflows).
Be alert to overuse of credit. It's ever so easy to pay for everyday expenses with a credit card -- and if you are not mindful, it's ever so easy to borrow money without thinking about it.
Before you use credit, be sure to understand how to repay it. You can easily run the cost of borrowing by using this Discover interest calculator -- tinyurl.com/yu83jfu6.
Take this example: You have $1,000 in credit card debt with interest of 29% that you want to pay off in 12 months. If you pay $25 a month, it will take you 159 months (13.25 years) to pay off interest of $2,953 on the $1,000 you borrowed. (The 29% example is real. When was the last time you checked your credit card interest rate?)
The consumer financial services company Bankrate's "Effective strategies for getting out of debt" points out that paying off debt "requires commitment, patience and a little bit of grace" (tinyurl.com/bur97awd). Personally, I would strongly recommend avoiding debt for consumer purchases.
Borrowing to buy a house is a different story, raising the importance of credit scores, which assess a lender's risk of extending a loan to you. A good resource is FINRA's "How Your Credit Score Impacts Your Financial Future" (tinyurl.com/4emdua64). FINRA oversees member broker-dealers who do business in the U.S.
If you are looking to pay down debt, Bankrate highlights a few strategies: debt snowball (pay the minimum required on all debt, but put added dollars to the one with the smallest balance); debt avalanche (a similar plan, but the added dollars go to the debt with the highest interest rate); and debt consolidation (all debt is combined into one new loan with one interest rate and one payment).
To make wise financial decisions when starting your career, being mindful is the secret.
Keeping track is the method. Everything else will fall into place if you just pay attention day to day and month by month. Time will pass. The future will unfold. Where you find yourself decades from now will depend on what you do all the "todays" from now until then.
The topic of making sound decisions is part of a series of virtual presentations I am giving through the Greenwich Library. For information, please visit juliejason.com/events/upcoming-events.
On another note, the judges of the 401(k) Champion Competition have picked their winners for 2025. See www.401kchampion.com. Congratulations to all four champions!
Seasoned investment counsel (tinyurl.com/52nus8hz) and award-winning columnist and author, Julie Jason, JD, LLM, promotes financial literacy and investor protection. Read her latest book, "The Discerning Investor: Personal Portfolio Management in Retirement for Lawyers (and Their Clients)" (tinyurl.com/4u7h9pjs), published by the American Bar Association. Write to Julie at readers@juliejason.com. While all questions cannot be answered, each email is read and reviewed and can lead to discussion in a future column.
COPYRIGHT 2025 Julie Jason, DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106; 816-581-7500.