Guest Blogger Jane Lovas' weekly series called “What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Life and Career” runs each Thursday

You landed your first job. Now, finally after years of scrimping and begging, you have your own money. Well maybe the scrimping and penny-pinching hasn't changed, but you still have your own money. Now what are you going to do with it?

As tempting as it is, this isn’t the time to go buy that fancy new car, new furniture or designer clothes. The very first thing you should do is take a look at the concept of Paying Yourself First.To be clear: buying all the stuff you want is not paying yourself first. That is paying the bank and the stores first. Think about this for a minute; you buy a car for $20,000 and in 20 years what is it worth? Not much! More than likely you’ll have spent money on 4 or 5 more cars (if you keep each one for 4-5 years). If you trade them in and even get $4,000 for each one in 20 years you’ll have paid the bank and the dealership $88,000, and what do you have? A 4 year old car worth about $3,000!

Let’s take a look at the principle of Paying Yourself First. Instead of going into a lot of debt for new wheels, you decide to buy a used car or use mass transportation until you’ve saved and gotten a pay raise. Now, instead of making a $300 per month car payment, you can put $100 per month into savings or investments and use $200 for a used-car payment.

This chart assumes a monthly investment of $100 at 8%. In 20 years you’ll have paid the bank and the dealership only $72,000 but you have $59,000 saved! In 30 years it gets better (even after you've stopped investing $100 per month); you’ll have only paid the bank $24,000 but be worth almost $150,000:

Time Period 10 years    20 years   30 years

Total invested $12,000   $24,000    $24,000

Account value $18,294   $58,902    $149,035

Of course the more you save and invest, the more you’re likely to have. The secret is to take some money now and start paying yourself first by investing it. Later, as your income increases and you gain more experience with investing, the more you’ll be able to do.

Remember every time you spend money you are paying someone else, so make sure you are paying someone else for something that is going to enhance your life. So pay yourself first, then decide what things are important and at what level. Maybe you want the money to start your own business or take a trip, you get to decide.

Do you have to have the most expensive stuff? If so, think about how those things enhance your life and what the real cost is of having them is before you pay others for (i.e. go buy) the things that bring you long-term enjoyment.

Jane Lovas is a career specialist who is the creator of the life changing 12 week tele-seminar “Creating the Life of Your Dreams”. She is also our guest blogger, whose column will run every Thursday. If you would like to contact Jane, you can reach her here, here or here.

"100 Dollars Money by Photos8" courtesy Photos8.com via Flickr Creative Commons

In what could be perceived as a never ending cascade of bad news on the job front, this year's graduating class could use some good news. And I've found it! The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that starting salary offers for the class of 2009 have remained stabled. (Applause)

NACE’s Summer 2009 Salary Survey report shows that the average starting salary offer for new college graduates now stands at $49,307. That’s off less than 1 percent from the average $49,693 that 2008 graduates posted last year at this time

As a group, graduates with bachelor’s degrees in the business disciplines saw their average offer nudge up less than 1 percent to $47,239. Accounting majors did better than the average, and posted a 1.9 percent increase for an average offer of $48,993.

Conversely, the average offer to business administration majors fell 2.1 percent to $44,944. (One factor in the decline: Many of their offers came from retail/wholesale firms, which offered an average starting salary of $40,220—down 6 percent from the average offer of $42,758 retail/wholesale employers offered business administration graduates just one year ago.)

Economics graduates also saw a decrease to their average salary offer, which fell by 1.3 percent to $49,829.

It's about time we saw some good news for recent grads. We've got more good news and helpful advice in The Links ...

Brazen Careerist Daniel Bowen Doesn't Think Anyone Cares About Your Resume: "No one wants to read them, not even recruiters. It’s a chore that takes time, and realistically the last time you did read one (instead of glance at it) was when you were writing your own." And he's right. He then tells you how to fix that.

College Recruiter Found Free Education: "If you are looking to experience a free undergraduate or graduate education at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), it's only a mouse click away. MIT and their Sloan School of Management, through their OpenCourseWare website, offer over 1,900 courses in the sciences, management and humanities for free." I think this is a great resource for enhancing your education.

The Career Doctor Says The Follow Up Phone Call is Still Important: "When we say it’s important to follow-up, we mean to follow-up. Employers often say “no phone calls” because they don’t want hundreds/thousands of people calling them to apply for the job. That wording does not mean, however, that a week or so after you have applied, that you cannot follow-up to be sure they have received your application." It's also acceptable to send along an email.

Jibber Jobber Offers LinkedIn Profile Advice: This is an in-depth and quality breakdown of an existing LinkedIn profile and offers a very useful comparison to your profile. There are some useful tips about upping your connections, adding more recommendations and avoiding grammar mistakes. Helpful stuff.

Careers That Don't Suck Helps You Avoid Identity Theft in the Job Search: "According to Javelin Strategy & Research’s 2009 Identity Fraud Survey Report, 9.9 million people were victims of identity theft in 2008. The Federal Trade Commission’s February 2009 report revealed that 46,950 were the victims of employment-related identity fraud. Both reports reveal a growing trend that you may already be aware of–identity thieves increasingly targeting job-seekers with identity theft scams." Good post on how to avoid it.

"Money" photo courtesey "AMagill" via Flickr Creative Commons

Welcome to the Daily Roundup. Each day at the ThinkTalk Blog we will post some links that we find informative, interesting, or just plain funny. The goal is to let you know what else is going on out there, and ultimately help you with the development of your career.

Some days The Daily Roundup is going to have a clear, cohesive message. Some day’s it won’t. I am at the mercy of the links here people. Deal with it.