As I went through college, I learned many things. From the 5 P’s of marketing to tapping a keg, I had gotten a pretty broad education. But nowhere was there any guidance or information on how to be responsible with money. Fact is, when you leave high school where your parents support you financially, you’re thrown into a new world where (for most students) you’re completely on your own when it comes to the money situation.

As the saying goes “you learn from your mistakes,” college kids are destined to get one hell of an education after four years of making money mistakes. I sure made plenty, and still haven’t quite fully recovered. When I saw that 20sb was teaming up with a group that wanted to help young adults with financial guidance and education, my first reaction was “Where were you five years ago?!” All kidding aside, I’m glad to see Charles Schwab making these resources free and available to us young adults, and teaming with 20sb is a great way to help spread the education.

Now for the topic of this carnival:

How do your friends and others affect your choices regarding money?

I try to value experiences more than money, so I might spend more money than I normally would if it means watching a Blackhawks game with some friends at a bar instead of watching it at home by myself. With the Hawks obviously being so successful this season, I went out quite a bit with some of my fellow Hawks fan-frends, and probably spent a good amount of coin over the entire season. In that way, friends have a direct impact in my spending habits.

Aside from sharing experiences with friends or family, my friends don’t really have much of an impact on money. It’s not something that is typically discussed too often, let alone going into details like what kind of debt we have and how much we make at work. And we especially don’t talk about what kind of retirement plans we’ve got in the works.

I think sites like Mint.com have come a long way in making money management more visible in the social/tech space, which is where many of us play. Being able to track all of our spending and saving is great, but if the base financial knowledge is lacking, all that firepower is lost on many folks.

What was your quiz score?

I only got a 54- pretty crummy. Where did I lose points? Welp, I don’t really have much saved for an extended period of joblessness. Having some debt really makes that saving difficult, but I hope to get that going soon. I also lose on not putting money into a retirement account and not having health insurance.

I think money is a topic that needs to become more acceptable to talk about amongst friends, and hopefully within 20sb we can carve a niche community to discuss our money issues and thoughts. If you’ve got anything to add, feel free to drop a comment here or over on 20sb. Let’s get the money talk going.