Late Night Snippets: Graduation Edition

I confess that I like reading graduation speeches.  I mean, while I can barely remember who spoke at my college graduation, I think the concept of an older, more established person bestowing a few nuggets of wisdom is actually one of the rare clever instances when people come together and perhaps listen.  In this year’s set of graduation speeches, I found one by Jim Lovell, the astronaut on the famed Apollo 13 flight (immortalized by a Tom Hanks movie).  In his speech, Lovell urged graduates to go beyond the classroom.  But my favorite is that he quoted Dr. Seuss, “In the places I go there are things that I see that I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.” I’ve always been partial to Dr. Seuss, especially since among the first books I can recall reading were Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now and Green Eggs and Ham.  I was too young to know about the political allegory.

Graduation is also a right of passage to a different financial life for a young person, and there are a number of areas offering advice to new grads.  In the NY Times, they features a recent Q&A offering guidance to new graduates.  Single Guy Money offers advice to recent high school grads, encouraging them to avoid his mistakes of getting in to credit card debt.  And one of my favorites comes from Frugal Dad who offers up lessons that aren’t taught in school and in one of my favorite pieces of advice, encourages grads to “save for a sunny day”.