Young adulthood is the perfect time to learn great money habits to see you right through the rest of your life. Being financially secure as an adult is vital to stability and can help to maintain good mental health too.

Anxieties about money are a huge problem for many young people in the UK today. By looking after yourself financially in your teens and early twenties, this can help ease money worries in the future and enable you to have a good relationship with money.

Start Earning Money

Sounds like an obvious one, but the sooner you get a Saturday job, or a part time job in the holidays, the sooner you will have experience of managing money.

That first pay slip feels AMAZING, and you get to decide on the best way to spend or save that money for the future. It’s your own responsibility to decide what to do with your hard earned money. You no longer have to rely on your parents quite so much.

Do you want to save up for a car? A trip of a lifetime? Or maybe you want to save that money for the future?

Learn About Investing

Investing can sound intimidating. But once you learn a thing or two about it, it soon feels manageable.

There are great courses and content out there on the internet that you can use to learn more about investing.

The reason that learning about investing is a great money habit for teens and students is that age is on your side. It is a well-known fact that in the world of investing, the earlier you start to invest, the better.

Anyone who invests money themselves will tell you that they wished they started sooner. If you already know something about investing, when the time comes and you are ready to start investing your salary- you’ll already know what to do!

Switch Bank Accounts

Switching to a different bank is something that many of us put off. However there can be serious benefits to switching your bank account to a different provider- the main ones being interest rates, and switching bonuses.

Many banks will offer you a cash bonus if you switch your current account to them- a brilliant way to make some extra money.

Many banks also provide great student bank accounts- these accounts are based on the standard current accounts, but have additional extras like freebies and interest-free overdrafts (not that we are endorsing using those!)

Learn How to Create a Budget

Creating a budget is perhaps one of the most important money habits to put into practice when you are a young adult.

Tracking your expenses and then drawing up a budgeting based on your income is without a doubt one of the best ways to manage your money. By doing this, you are truly engaging with the figures, and you know exactly how much money you have to spend each month.

Getting into the habit of budgeting as a student will hopefully mean that you do this for the rest of your life. Remember to also include your yearly bills in your budget!

Creating good money habits sooner rather than later is the best thing you can do for ‘future you.’ Do you think many people look back on their lives and wish they had been worse at managing their money? They do not. The small number of people who manage their money well as a young adult are always glad that they created those good habits early in life.