STAFF PERSPECTIVE: Personal Finance 101: What I didn't learn in college

It's been nearly a year since I graduated from college, and I already have a laundry list of things I wish they'd taught me there. Mostly financial things.

I see my main purpose in life now is to make a living. I've gone from worrying about my GPA to my IRA. Earn money, invest in my future.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to do that.

There's so much I don't know about managing my money. Filling out the forms for my 401(K), I stared blankly at the 10 or 15 funds I had to choose from to put my money in. How do I know which one is better than the other? What's the best way to break it up? How much do I even put in?

I wish I had been taking Personal Finance 101 in college rather than sitting in a classroom learning about sedimentary rock formations. That information would be much more useful to me right now than the principle of uniformitarianism.

What are those high-yield savings accounts and where can I get one? What's a deferred annuity? You mean a CD is something other than what you can burn off of iTunes? And what does the government tax?

Oh, taxes. Another thing I can't wrap my mind around. The first time I tried to do taxes myself, I sat there for hours on TurboTax.com, huddled in a growing ball of frustration and doubt. I had no idea what I was doing, whether I was paying too much or too little, whether I was forgetting to include things that could be written off or whether my random button-mashing was going to wind up getting me audited. People as clueless as me should not do their own taxes.

That's why this year I'm turning to the professionals. This past week I went to H&R Block and had them do my taxes. The fee they charge was well worth the headache it saved me from doing it myself, plus I like having the peace of mind that my taxes were done right.

I've also been talking to a financial consultant to help me set up investments, to pick the right funds for my 401(K), and to get me off on the right financial foot.

Maybe if I take notes I can learn a thing or two.