3 Personal Finance Essentials Young People Need to Know

As many young people learn quickly, becoming fully independent comes with its share of freedom and fun, but also with quite a few growing pains. "Adulting", as you hear often, is hard.

When you're a young adult, you generally have to learn to cook, clean, do laundry, manage your finances - all the while focusing on your career and relationships. Eventually though, you'll likely figure it out, get married, buy a house, have kids and become the accomplished adult you knew you could be. If you're somewhere between young adult and seasoned parent, you're probably itching for tips on how to make the transition a bit easier.

For everyone out there adulting as best they can, try these quick personal finance tips on for size. They could be the difference between an extra meal out on the weekends and protecting the people and things that matter most to you.

Build a manageable budget you can stick to.

You can never start saving early enough, and you'll likely never look back on your savings with regret. A budget not only helps you understand how you're spending (or overspending) your money, but it can help you evaluate in what areas you could cut back. By calculating your financial goals for each month, you could be able to set aside money for retirement, your first home, a new car or even your dream vacation. It all has to start with a budget though.

Consider planning now for your retirement.

It's never too soon to put away money for your retirement. What you save in your twenties and thirties will have the most time to grow and mature, but at the same time, saving at this point in your life can prove to be difficult. As you grow into adulthood, saving for retirement may take a backseat to buying a house or paying for your wedding, and that's normal. However, even if you can only contribute a small amount each month to your retirement, building up a habit toward saving could pay dividends in the future when you have more money to give.

Help protect your growing brood with a life insurance policy.

While group life insurance is now a common benefit in the workplace, if you have significant assets to protect, it may not provide your loved ones with enough money to cover the necessary expenses. In cases like this, the importance of life insurance in personal finance cannot be overstated.

An individual life insurance policy (one that isn't provided by your employer) can be tailored to your exact needs, enabling your beneficiaries to help pay off your student loans, contribute to mortgage payments and help cover funeral expenses should something happen to you. It also may provide you with a larger death benefit than a group policy could, and individual policies aren't conditional based on your employment with any given company.

Following these tips can get you that much closer to being the stand up, responsible guy or gal that you want to be for your family. If you're interested in exploring the possibility of life insurance or researching how much coverage you need, try our life insurance calculator tool or request a free quote online.

Of course, if you're already on top of all three of these tips, you've clearly nailed this whole adult thing. Go out and help a friend in need.