You finally graduate after four (or more) hard years of work at school, land your first job after college, and earn your first paycheck as a working adult. But how do you save and spend your newfound income wisely?

Finance 108: Personal Finance helps students answer this question by teaching them to protect and bolster their bank accounts in the complex world of personal wealth management. Finance 108 professor James Miles teaches students to create a budget, build a solid credit record, factor taxes into decision-making, and successfully shop for loans and insurance.

While teaching finance majors, Miles noticed that many students didn’t understand several fundamental details of personal money management. He had a “wake-up call” after a student came to him for help with a financial form from her future employer. After that incident, Miles knew that Finance 108 would be useful to all of his students.

“[Students] were aware that IRAs and 401K plans exist, but not aware of how to make important choices regarding these saving vehicles, such as whether to contribute, how much, how to have the funds invested, mutual funds versus exchange traded funds, and more,” he said.

Miles cited several former students who said Finance 108 successfully prepared them to make these seemingly daunting decisions after graduation, including the student who initially gave him the idea for the course.

“About 40 percent of the course is devoted to wealth building and wealth management,” Miles said, referring to the course’s units on investing, mutual funds, 401K planning, and IRAs.

The bulk of FIN 108 students are engineering majors, but Miles also teaches students earning degrees in  the liberal arts, information technology, science, turf grass management, and accounting. Finance 108 can also be taken online by the first one hundred students to sign up each semester.

At the moment, business majors cannot use Finance 108 to fulfill major requirements. Miles hopes that this policy will change in the future, though he believes that “having too many required classes can be counterproductive.”

“Life is much more than money,” Miles said. “Nevertheless, smoothing out the ups and downs of our financial lives with appropriate insurance, credit management, and wealth-building can add significantly to our sense of well-being.”

Whether you’re nervous about protecting your first paycheck or steadily diversifying your investment portfolio after graduation, Finance 108 provides the tools necessary to tackle the big questions of real-world money management.