How to make money after graduation from university

I lived on a shoe-string budget for three years at university which made me very uptight about spending. But I graduated last year and started to earn a salary. Like many graduates I was overwhelmed with the amount on money going into my account and I didn't manage it properly.

So this hub is about my experience and how others in that position could deal with it.

When I graduated, I opened an account with the Alliance and Leicester - now part of the Santander Group - which had a linked savings account. This was a bit annoying at the time because it reduced my monthly income. But £100 was automatically transferred each month and after a year I gained a useful pot of savings that I've now used to open an ISA.

So that's the NUMBER ONE tip for anybody who is eanring their first salary...make monthly deposits into a savings account. It could be a minimum of £25 or as much as £100. I wouldn't go any higher though as starting salaries for most people aren't great and you'll want to have plenty left over for rent, food, hobbies and socialising.

The SECOND thing that I have learned with money is to be patient. After a year of earning I started to get a taste for personal finance. I borrowed every book in the library about investments, stock markets, savings and money management. It didn't work! I think that the best way to learn about economics is to do it gradually. Here are some tips:

-Find a friend or relative that enjoys talking about money and have a conversation with them every couple of weeks.

-Browse the financial sections of a newspaper once a week. I like the Mail on Sunday.

-Check your bank account every couple of days.

-Compare the interest rates of different accounts.

-Bookmark a couple of good websites about money

THIRDLY, my tip is to look into other ways of making money away from your main income. This can be difficult if you come home from work exhausted everyday like I did and that last thing you want to think about is doing more work.

I've started doing this and the money goes straight into a savings account that I like to call my gambling pot. In other words, it could dissapear tomorrow and not affect my main income. This means that I can use it for speculative money ventures.

Here are some of the ways that I've made money for my gambling pot:

- Selling all my old university course books on Amazon

-Selling old bits of furniture and antiques at my local auction house

-Tipping off newspapers and magazines about stories.

-Opening an Amazon Associates account. I haven't made anything from this yeat and I'm still figuring out how it works.

So just to recap, my three tips for stabilising finaces after university are:

ONE - make monthly deposits into a savings account

TWO - become a little bit interested in personal finance

THREE - Make an extra income