The end is in sight, and it scares me.

I have one more final exam before I graduate. Even if I don't show up, my grade is high enough that I'll get a B in the class and complete my requirements. That should make me happy, right? Why does it feel like graduating means I move on to a new stage of my life with even more ways to fail and let down everyone I care about?

Safety deposit box, fire safe, or neither?

One of the million tiny moving related details I need to deal with is figuring out is what to do with my important documents. They are all in a fire-resistant lock box at my parents house, but won't do when I live several hours away instead of half an hour from home. Putting them into the new. larger, fire-resistant, electronic media rated, waterproof filing box I bought my mother for her birthday today isn't an option. (Happy birthday, Mom. Please quit reading my blog.)

Nothing I need to store is irreplaceable. It would be a hassle to get new copies of my birth certificate, passport, social security card, immunization records, and savings bonds, but it could be done. Really, my losing those things if I don't have a designated place to store them is probably a greater risk than theft, fire, or other natural disaster.

I could just stick them in my accordion file and forget about it. That would keep things organized, and it wouldn't cost anything. However, it might fall into the cheap rather than frugal category since a firesafe is fairly inexpensive and would provide better protection.

A safe deposit box at a bank would be an even more secure storage place than a cheap firesafe, but then I'd have to pay the bank every year instead of making a one-time purchase. Also, in addition to making my documents less accessible to thieves, a safe deposit box would make my documents less readily available to me. Just because I probably won't ever develop a sudden need for my passport at 2 a.m. on a Sunday doesn't mean I like the idea of not being able to get it at all times.

Where do you keep all of the papers you rarely use but mustn't lose?

There are way too many options.

Today I'll be heading to the bank to deal with my newly mature cd. I'll be awash in liquidity again, but not for long. The time has come to open a Roth IRA. It's clearly the right move since I place a high priority on not starving on the streets in my old age, but figuring out what investments will best help me attain that goal is proving tricky.

Individual stocks are out, at least for now. Having led my fourth grade stock market game team to stellar returns doesn't mean I know a thing about investing for the long run in the real world. Owning the market seems like a much more reasonable approach than betting on my ability to pick winners.

So I want indexing, diversification, and low expense ratios. I'm also willing to admit that at this point in my life I'm both lazy and ignorant and probably couldn't be trusted to periodically rebalance in any sensible manner. The Vanguard Target 2045 or Target 2050 funds sound like exactly what I need, right?

Except, for one teensy little problem: that level of aggressiveness makes me nervous. I'm not sure I can stomach the risk. Much as I like to tell myself that I won't touch the money for decades, I have a suspicion that substantial losses might cause me to bail and move to something insanely conservative instead, much as my parents did with my father's 401(k) in the wake of the bursting tech bubble. Investing would be easier if I were a robot, but human frailty may have to play a role in my decision-making process.

So I'm considering a couple of other options as well. The Vanguard Balanced Index Fund is probably way too conservative for someone my age and lacks international exposure, with 60% in a total U.S. stock market index and 40% in a U.S. bond market index, but the 0.19% expense ratio seems reasonable. The Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund is a fund of funds with a higher expense ratio, 0.23%, probably because is contains one actively managed fund as well as index funds. Points in its favor include keeping just 30% of its holdings in bond funds and putting about 10% into a total international stock index.

Where should I go to research things further? Do I need to talk myself out of my timidity and try the target date fund, or is it ok, as a recent New York Times article suggested, just to pick an asset allocation I can live with? Is it ok to make a decision without worrying overmuch about whether it is the optimal choice and trust as long as I don't do anything truly stupid the outcome will probably be alright?

Throughout college I had a goal of amassing a sizable emergency fund before graduating so I could begin the next phase of my life with a greater sense of security, but I've been rethinking just how large that fund needs to be. My recent bond purchases mean I'll have a somewhat smaller liquid emergency fund, and I think that's ok. Saving for retirement and earning returns high enough to combat inflation are somewhat larger priorities than liquidity for me right now.

After my cd matures next week, I should have enough money to fund a Roth for 2008, cover my summer expenses, and still keep about $7,000 liquid. There are several reasons that should be enough:

• I'm single and have no dependents. If other people relied on my income to meet their basic expenses, larger reserves would be necessary.
• I have a job lined up for after graduation, and it is in a fairly stable field. There is an ongoing shortage of qualified physics and math teachers in most areas of the country so a recession probably wouldn't leave me unable to find employment.
• I have no debts of any kind. If I lost my job, I would only need to worry about taking care of my ongoing expenses rather than having to pay creditors as well.
  
• I'll be in a low cost of living area and have roommates. My obligatory monthly expenses should be fairly low, enabling me to live for quite a while on a few thousand dollars if I spend only on true necessities, as I would if I lost my job or had to rebuild my savings account from scratch following some major emergency.
• My e-fund won't be my sole financial resource. Taking principal from a Roth IRA is rarely a good idea, but if I needed the money to put food on the table, it would be an option.
  

Beginning in April 2009, it will be possible to cash out the $3,000 in I Bonds that I bought this month, and at that point they too will be something I can draw on if necessary. It's hard to envision a scenario in which I'd spend over $7,000 more than my income in the course of one year. As soon as I get my first paycheck I plan to start socking away money for car repairs and/or eventual replacement, but even if I had to find a new vehicle tomorrow, I could get a decent used car without totally wiping out my savings account.

I think I have a reasonable plan and will be in better financial shape that most people who are fresh out of university, but I'm fairly new at this whole adulthood thing so there are probably a lot of important factors that haven't occurred to me. If you have any suggestions for additional things to think about or have any words of wisdom on surviving the transition from college to work, please do share.

Would terrorists buy I Bonds? Seriously?

After much vacillating on how much of my emergency fund I should sink into I Bonds, I went ahead and put $2,000 in last week. After reading more about the probability that the Fed would cut rates yet again today, I decided that inflation protection just keeps looking better. Today was hectic and I wasn't sure I'd have time to head to my bank, but based on Jonathan's informative post it should have been possible to get them at another bank as long as I had cash, which I did. So this morning I headed to the bank branch in the student union to see if they sold bonds.

The girl at the counter responded to my question by asking me if I had an account at their bank. I told her I didn't, but had cash. She rather snippily replied that that wouldn't work because they "need to track who buys bonds." I informed her that I had my driver's license and social security number, but she insisted, "Because of the 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, you can't buy bonds if you don't have an account here. It's policy."

So, never mind that my savings bond order form goes straight to the federal government, it's a security risk to let me purchase U.S. government bonds without opening a bank account? How would having ten bucks in a checking account at that bank make anything more secure? (I'll spare you the rant about the U.S. government's cavalier attitude about the importance of civil liberties in general.)

Fortunately, I had time this afternoon to walk to the main branch of my bank where I filled out paperwork with the same clerk who sold me the bonds last week. I guess there must not be much demand for savings bonds because she remembered me. It took a bit longer this time because she tried to talk me into changing to a different kind of checking account, which would actually have been a good deal if I weren't moving away soon.

There's always an opportunity cost.

One of the many nice aspects of being assigned to the Mississippi Delta is the chance to get a masters in education for free through a program that offers an assistantship for a community project rather than serving as a teaching assistant. I'd assumed that I'd want to sign up, but now I'm having second thoughts.

Teaching is going to be time consuming. There's no way around that. Starting a graduate program in my second semester as a high school teacher sounds like a great way to increase my stress levels, but I think I could probably handle it.

The going to school full-time during the summer part is the problem. I'm going to spend this summer at Institute trying to learn about teaching while teaching summer school in Houston. Last summer I worked in the physics lab full-time as an undergraduate researcher, and I spent two months before my junior year living in New York in order to work full-time in a molecular biology lab there. The summer before my sophomore year I took two semesters of organic chemistry. I like productive vacations, but I may need to focus next summer on tasks other than coursework.

If I want to get a Ph.D. in physics, the dreaded Physics GRE is the next big hurdle. Everyone I've talked to describes it as a grueling experience, in no small part because it doesn't reflect how anyone actually does physics. The key to success is memorizing vast numbers of equations, constants, and terms and being able to solve problems very, very quickly. Six months preparation time is recommended, making sure to work through all of University Physics I through Modern Physics until you know it cold and going back over your notes from upper division classes to refresh your memory of various key problem types. If I'm going to have a prayer of doing well enough to get into a good physics graduate program after spending time away from enforced discipline of being a student, I'm going to have to make studying for the test my top priority next summer.

It would be much easier if I knew what I want to do with my life. If teaching in a secondary classroom is going to be a long term career, then getting a masters in education is clearly the right choice. If I'm going to miss higher level physics and research enough to want to become a professor and teach at the college level instead, then I need to hit the GRE prep as hard as possible. Unfortunately, the only thing I'm truly certain of tonight is that I really don't want to do my electromagnetism homework right now.

What can you do with partial money?

I was walking through a campus parking lot on my way to a pointless awards reception when I spotted a bill lying crumpled on the ground. Since hundreds of people pass through the lot every day and there was no one around who might have dropped money, there was little hope of locating the person who lost the greenback. "Neat, something a bit more useful than the three paperweights I'm about to receive," I thought to myself as I picked up the twenty. Then I unwadded it and discovered that I only had one fragment of the bill. Since I have over 2/3 of the bill, is it possible to spend it?