By Travis Richmiller

On Monday, April 24, Quincy University students were invited to see the final discussion in the #Adulting series on investing.

The presentation focused mainly on how students should invest their money once they graduate and begin their careers after college. Some of the main points were to make sure they start investing at a very young age. Starting in their early twenties, combined with compound interest, could add up to an extra million dollars in their retirement accounts.

Some other main points of emphasis were to take intelligent risk and to only invest in things that students fully understand. Students were told to make sure they have both a Roth IRA and a Traditional IRA. They were also told to be very skeptical of advice that people give them and to take it with a grain of salt, unless they know that their advisors have good financial understanding. They were also told to diversify their retirement money across many assets and asset classes and to make sure they are paying attention to the fees that are being charged to manage their money. Finally, they were told to try to cut down on the amount of fees as much as possible, because fees, over time, can kill their retirement accounts.

The speaker at the event was Professor of Accounting and Finance Mitch Ellison. He loves doing events such as the ones in the #Adulting series because he wants to help students with managing their money when they get out of college.

He hopes that his latest presentation helped to direct students’ attention to saving for retirement.

“You need to think about retirement early because, if you start saving early, it will practically take care of itself,” he said.

Ellison is hoping to put on more events such as this one during the fall semester. To go along with topics covered in the #Adulting series, which were human resources, budgeting and investing, Ellison is also hoping to do a couple more presentations on housing and insurance to help students choose the right type of life insurance that is best for them.