By Amanda Barroso | NerdWallet

It’s college graduation season, a time to celebrate the years of hard work and effort you’ve invested in your education and career development. Hopefully, the future feels full of endless possibilities. But there’s also an undeniable reality: those possibilities cost money.

One antidote to the uncertainty you might feel about your financial future is to put together a plan. Here are five first steps you can take now.

1. Build a budget you can stick to

The best budgets account for your needs, wants and financial goals. A 50/30/20 budget might be a good place to start.

The idea is to spend 50% of your take-home income on needs including housing, utilities, groceries transportation and minimum monthly debt payments. The next 30% of your income goes toward wants, like travel, monthly subscriptions and entertainment. The last 20% should go toward savings goals and paying down debt.

While your circumstances — like living in a high-rent area — might require more flexibility, this is a good framework for managing your monthly income. The key is to find a budgeting approach that’s sustainable.

2. Stash some cash in an emergency fund

Now is the time to start setting aside some extra cash for the unexpected. If you were lucky enough to get money as a graduation gift, consider using it to start an emergency fund.

“It’s important just to start building up some cash,” says Jaime Eckels, a certified financial planner and wealth management partner with Plante Moran Financial Advisors in Michigan. “The very basics should be just having three to six months, at least, of living expenses on hand.”

This type of savings could take years to build, so starting with smaller goals can make it feel more attainable. Having $500 saved could be enough to avoid going into debt, but any amount will make a difference. Consider putting your emergency fund in a high-yield savings account, which can have annual percentage yields (APYs) of 5% or more and will grow your balance more quickly.

3. Be proactive about student loan repayment

The federal student loan landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and Biden administration policies. The key to making on-time payments and staying on top of debt is being a proactive manager of your student loans.

Because there’s a six-month grace period after you graduate, “it’s easy to get complacent,” says Winston Berkman-Breen, the legal director for the Student Borrower Protection Center. “But there are things you can do to make your month-to-month payments work for you.”

First, set up online accounts with your student loan servicer and studentaid.gov. You’re assigned a servicer when you take out your loans, and you’ll manage repayment through this servicer.

Activating your accounts can help you get a sense of your loans and ensure the servicer and federal government can contact you, says Berkman-Breen. You can find the name of your servicer and link to their website by logging into your studentaid.gov account and checking the upper right-hand side of the dashboard.

A common mistake graduates make, according to Berkman-Breen, is not knowing they have a choice when it comes to picking a repayment plan. “You can move pretty fluidly” between repayment plan options, says Berkman-Breen. Income-driven repayment plans, like SAVE, can lower your monthly payments and lead to eventual loan forgiveness. And generally, you can switch plans anytime.

To estimate what your payoff journey would look like on different repayment plans, use the Education Department’s loan simulator.

4. Enroll in a retirement plan and get the employer match — if you can

While retirement feels like a lifetime away, taking advantage of the retirement plan your employer offers at your first job will pay off big down the road.

You’ll likely be offered enrollment in a defined contribution plan like a 401(k) or 403(b). Eligible employees can contribute money toward retirement, typically through a payroll deduction. These are fairly easy to set up and can make saving for retirement something you don’t have to think about.

Do your best to take advantage of an employer or company match, where employers match employee contributions up to a certain percentage. If your employer offers a full match on contributions up to 5% of your salary, but you contribute 3%, you would lose out on the extra 2% of “free money” from your employer. This could make a meaningful difference in retirement, so if you can make it work in your budget, it’s worth it.

5. Check your credit score and review your credit report

Your credit score is the gateway to much of your financial life, and the first step to growing your score is knowing what it is. You can check your credit score for free with personal finance websites like NerdWallet, or find it on your bank’s app.

If you already have established credit, focus on making on-time payments each month, and use 30% or less of the total credit available to you. Set up alerts on your credit cards to know when you’re approaching that threshold.

If you’re new to credit, you have options. Find a trusted person with a strong credit history and become an authorized user on their account. You can benefit from their positive credit history without being responsible for payments. Also, consider enrolling in a rent-reporting service to get credit for on-time rental payments.

Next, use AnnualCreditReport.com to download a free copy of your credit report. Look for things you don’t recognize, like accounts or names. Set a calendar alert to check on your credit report quarterly so you can catch mistakes or dispute errors quickly before they damage your credit. Credit scores can feel mysterious, but you have what it takes to build a strong score.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

As you work through this financial checklist, remember that you don’t need to have it all figured out right away.

“Asking for help is very important, and if you can start off on a strong foot, the future is very bright,” says Eckels. You don’t always need to turn to a financial advisor, she says. Your parents, family and friends are also valuable resources.

Amanda Barroso writes for NerdWallet. Email: abarroso@nerdwallet.com.

The article 5 Financial Steps for New College Grads in Their First Jobs originally appeared on NerdWallet.

Minnesota United has signed a potentially versatile depth piece with an impressive youth background to try to help the club during the second half of the 2024 season.

The Loons have inked 25-year-old attacker Samuel Shashoua to a contract through the end of the season, with club options for 2025 and 2026, the club announced Wednesday.

Shashoua was in Minnesota on Wednesday and can begin training with the Loons immediately, but he will not be eligible to play in MLS games until after the summer transfer window opens July 18.

Shashoua was out of contract in Spain, so MNUFC did not need to pay a fee to order to add him to the roster.

Shashoua was born in London to an American father and FIFA changed his affiliation to the U.S. from England in 2022, according to the Associated Press. He has a U.S. passport, so he will not occupy an international roster spot with MNUFC.

MNUFC likes the upside potential of the Shashoua, with one comparison being Ismael Tajouri-Shradi, whom the Loons added for the second half of last season and he contributed to three goals in 347 minutes.

Shashoua played for Albacete in the Spanish second division, La Liga 2, playing only 254 minutes and not contributing to a goal last season, according to fbref.com. Shashoua had three seasons with Tenerife in La Liga 2, where he had 15 goal contributions in 3,751 minutes, per fbref.com. The stats site had the right-footed player him down for playing multiple positions in 2024, and that potential versatility is valued and often utilized under head coach Eric Ramsay.

Shashoua represented England at the youth national team level, including the 2016 Under-17 European Championship, and was a member of the Tottenham youth system, playing for its Under-18, 19 and 21 teams.

“Samuel has experience having already competed at a high level at the early stages of his career and has intriguing attacking attributes,”  Chief Soccer Officer and Sporting Director Khaled El-Ahmad said in a statement. “We welcome Samuel and look forward to see his growth and contribution to the team this summer.”

As chronic kidney disease rises nationwide, a new study partially conducted in Orlando suggests weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy could be part of the solution.

The pharmaceutical-industry-backed study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed more than 3,500 people with type 2 diabetes and kidney disease for an average of 3.4 years, including several in Orlando. One group was given weekly injections of semaglutide, the main ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, and another was given placebo injections.

The double-blind clinical trial found that kidney disease progressed more slowly in those taking semaglutide compared with those taking a placebo. They were less likely to need dialysis or a transplant.

The group taking semaglutide also had an 18% lower risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes and a 20% lower risk of death.

“This is a groundbreaking trial because it addresses this very high-risk group and provides this benefit across the spectrum of risk — kidneys, hearts and lives,” said Dr. Richard E. Pratley, a study co-author and senior investigator at the AdventHealth Translational Research Institute in Orlando.

It’s easy to forget that Ozempic wasn’t originally intended to help celebrities shed pounds for the red carpet, a diet craze that has fueled a global shortage.

Drugs with semaglutide work by mimicking a naturally occurring hormone that causes the pancreas to release insulin and makes people feel full.

The drugs are FDA-approved to help people with type 2 diabetes manage their blood sugar, to help obese people lose weight, and to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke in obese or overweight adults with cardiovascular disease.

Pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, creator of Ozempic and Wegovy, funded the study and has already shared plans to use the trial’s results to apply with the Food and Drug Administration to expand the drug’s uses.

It’s likely that after this study, at least one of Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide drugs will get FDA approval for treating kidney disease too, Pratley said.

Kidney disease has become more common in recent years as rates of diabetes and high blood pressure rise. Florida alone has seen a 28.3% increase in people living with kidney failure since 2009, according to the American Kidney Fund, with over 50,000 in 2022.

About 35 million Americans have kidney disease, and 800,000 live with kidney failure.

Once this drug is approved to help, the next hurdle will be convincing doctors to prescribe it. Medical professionals can be suspicious of changes to the status quo and are sometimes reluctant even to administer already-established therapies for kidney disease, Pratley said.

Several studies have found that cost also deters some people from taking medication to manage their chronic kidney disease.

“There are a whole lot of people out there with kidney disease, and not so many people who are actually on these potentially kidney-saving therapies,” Pratley said.

That being said, questions still remain. For instance, why does Ozempic slow kidney decline?

“The short answer is: we don’t know, but there’s a lot of theories,” Pratley said.

Diabetes, kidney disease and heart disease are often interconnected, so it’s not unreasonable to suggest that a drug that targets one helps them all.

The kidney has receptors for the molecule Ozempic is derived from, which could play a role, he added. Ozempic and drugs like it also decrease inflammation, which is linked to both kidney and heart issues.

“It could be a combination of small contributions of all of these different factors,” Pratley said.

Future studies may examine whether the drug can protect people who have kidney disease but don’t have diabetes. They may also attempt to reach more diverse populations: Most of the study’s participants were white, but kidney disease disproportionately impacts minorities.

Ccatherman@orlandosentinel.com