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Tips for New Social Work Graduate (MSW) Students

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  Happy start of the school year! Perusing social media, I came across a NASW blog article called “Guide for the First Year Social Work Student”. This post provided lots of great information tailored for new undergraduate students interested in studying social work. I wanted to take that NASW post a bit farther and compile a list of tips specific to graduate students pursuing a masters in social work (MSW). In my opinion, graduate school is a completely different experience from undergraduate, so my hope is that these tips will serve to be beneficial. Tips for New Social Work Graduate (MSW) Students -Don’t worry about grades so much When I was in graduate school, one of my professors told a story about a straight A student who committed suicide several years after graduation. His point was that given the people we need to work with, we social workers need to focus less on being perfectionists (as demonstrated by obsessing over grades and test scores) and work on being empathetic an...
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Opening a Roth IRA

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Today, I opened a Vanguard Roth IRA thanks to some help from my boyfriend. It was a fairly simple process that took me less than 10 minutes. While I am roughly six years behind my peers who opened accounts after receiving undergraduate degrees, it's never too late to start saving for retirement.

What makes a Roth IRA different from a Traditional IRA is that you're taxed when you deposit money as opposed to when you withdraw it. Since I'm an entry level social worker working per diem, my income and tax rate is not very high. A Roth IRA seemed like the practical choice as I'd rather pay taxes now than have to pay more later.

I feel that as a social worker, I should be especially conscious about saving money. I'm not only saying this because of my profession's reputation for being underpaid. By being knowledgeable about money issues and applying money saving tactics to my own life, I can better counsel individuals and families with their own money problems. One tip I will definitely suggest is to open an IRA and put as much money as possible each year. As of today, I have maxed out my IRA contribution for 2010 and plan to max out subsequent years.

This is not to say that I don't like to shop and have fun, as I've been doing a considerable amount of shopping lately and have a few excursions planned for the immediate future! However, there should always be some balance between spending now and saving up for more fun down the line. I suppose I will (hopefully) see the money I deposited today again in 35-40 years!

I'll post another update later about the different funds I picked and why. This is all new to me, and I have a lot to learn about the investing process!

Comments

  1. Kristen Marie (Kryss) Shane, MSW, LSW, LMSWMarch 26, 2011 at 9:14 PM

    check out my blog post on money issues and social work, http://blog.socialworker.com/

    congrats on taking the first step!

    ReplyDelete

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