Welcome to WalletPop's series You've graduated. Now what? Our bloggers have a wealth of suggestions to help you find you way through that time of amazing transformation, from student to working stiff.

Previous: Start saving for retirement
Next: Shop for your own car insurance

When I was a college instructor, I liked to make my graduating seniors read a story by Franz Kafka. Titled "A Little Fable," it went like this:

"Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning, it was so big that I was afraid. I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."

"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.

Being a somewhat sadistic soul, I used to enjoy watching my students' looks of terror as the story sunk in. Like the little mouse, they had arrived at college wide-eyed and frightened, desperately in search of structure. Some of them had found it in their majors, others had found it in ROTC or sports teams, and still others had found it in extracurricular groups. Regardless, over the four or more years that they had spent at school, they had discovered some way of defining themselves and their lives. Now that they were comfortably in a groove, however, they stood before the final trap, the one that they had to run into.

Graduation.

In the course of the next year, my students would have to find a new set of walls. Some would go to graduate school, where they would be at the bottom of a new hierarchy. Others would go to work in a large company somewhere or perhaps join the military, the Peace Corps, or Americorps. Many of them would end up on yet another organizational chart, in which their name would be plastered on a branch, somewhere below their boss and somewhere above their underlings. Maybe some of my students ended up becoming artists, journalists, small business owners, or just bums. Perhaps some of them defined routes for themselves.

Welcome to WalletPop's series "You've graduated. Now what?" Our bloggers have a wealth of suggestions to help you find you way through that time of amazing transformation, from student to working stiff.

Previous: Decide where you'll spend the rest of your life
Next: Make your own decisions

Last summer my niece Cindy graduated from college and came to visit. I told her we needed to have A TALK. She may have been bracing for some trite wisdom or an age-inappropriate tirade on birth control. Instead I hit her with something much worse. I told her the grim news: she should already be thinking about saving for retirement.

Since Cindy is a far smarter kid than I ever was, it didn't take much to convince her of the "miracle of compounding" and how much easier it is to save for retirement when you start young.

Here's an example I found just plugging numbers into an online calculator: A 21-year-old making $25,000 a year and putting away 3% of her income would end up (after adjusting for raises and a 8% stock market return) with $3.1 million at age 65--enough to live on 90% of her last salary. If she started a decade later, she'd have less than half that at $1.4.

It's staggering how much better you'll do in retirement if you start when you're young. It's also amazing that we barely teach our young graduates anything about retirement savings even though the weight of the expense falls is falling increasingly on individuals to manage. Will there be any traditional pensions around when the class of 2008 retires? Or even Social Security?

Are you at the end of your academic career? Ready to charge into the world of opportunity and obligation? Let the WalletPop crew help you anticipate, plan and prevail in this all-important life transition. We've pulled together a series of posts on topics that will confront you in the months and years to come, offered with the humble understanding that we've made our share of missteps (some of us, way more than our share!) and hope you can avoid the same.

You've graduated: Now it's time to --

• decide where you're going to spend the rest of you life
• retire early and wealthy by saving for retirement now
• start making your own decisions (and live with the consequences)
• shop for your own insurance
• clean up your online image
• find a place of your own
• pay back your debts
• learn to cook
• dress for success