Oh you ballin’ now!! It’s the second best time of the year (Christmas being the first of course): refund check season! Financial aid finally decided to stop playing games and release those funds! If you are anything like me, you probably already started spending the money before you even got the money. We’re becoming older now and no, you can not blow your refund money on Fashion Nova sales. So how do you know what you should immediately do with your money and what you should probably save for? Well, let me show you!
Bills, Bills, Bills
Oh yes, the worst part of adulting. Taking care of bills that your mom and dad always used to take care of for you. Welcome to the real world honey, it absolutely sucks out here. If you’re an off-campus college student, the first thing you should do is take care of your rent FIRST. Yea you ballin’, but you have nowhere to lay your head because you decided to spend your rent money? Trash. Depending on how big your refund is, pay up your rent to a certain month. I know you want to spend it but you will thank yourself in the long run when it’s October and you don’t have to worry about rent for the month because you paid it off back in September. Same goes for any bills. Pay your car note, light bill or phone bill months in advance. Take care of your necessities first before you log in to Amazon.
Pay back any debt
So you got your refund, you paid rent, and now you are ready to go. BUT you just got a phone call from your mom saying you owe her $150 because you needed to “borrow” some money back in May. Yea, you did it, so go ahead and pay it off. When you have money, the best part about having it is knowing you do not have to pay anyone back. When you first get your refund and you know you owe your friend $60, just pay it! Take care of it now before people are asking you to pay them back when you have no money at all.
Save it!
I think this is everyone’s least favorite responsibility, but it is a responsibility that helps you out a lot. So yes I said it, save your money! If you still want to spend money but know you should save it, take out around 15% of your check and put it away for a rainy day. You will thank yourself when your car breaks down and you need money to fix it. We can call this emergency money. We never know when we are going to run into emergencies so it’s best for us to keep money on us just in case because sometimes the devil works hard.
So I hope you took those shoes out of your Forever 21 cart. Take care of yourself and your responsibilities first before you decide to splurge. It’s okay to spend some money on yourself but don’t blow it all in a week!
Good Luck!