Advice to a sibling

Here is some general advice I passed to my sister when she start her first job.

• Have a checking account - only keep enough to pay bills with a little buffer so you wont overdraft.
• Put the rest into a saving account - look at online ones.  I use FNBODirect because the interest rate is much high then most banks and a great company. Another option is a money market account
• just remember if you need to take money out it take 3-4 days
• You should not have any accounts putting money into or taking money out of this except your one checking account.  This will help protect it.
• This is your emergency funds should be 6 months of expenses the rest you should invest
• Once you have a good buffer in your savings account 10k-20k  consider investing into stocks or mutual funds. 
• If you want to try stocks create an account from E-Trade, Fidelity, or TD Ameritrade they are all pretty equal. I would suggest a small amount. Something if you lose it you wont mind to much. I started by picking well know companies like Visa, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, lulu, and other companies I used and I know or can guess how they are making money.
• The other and better option is index mutual funds. These are less risky then stocks with about 6-15% return.  The thing about these they are long turn investments that compound and grow. This is very smart to do. Every two weeks I put $100 directly from my checking account into this
• Vanguard mutual funds - https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/
• Get VTI or VTSAX - to own all of the US stock market
• Fidelity is another option because of 0 cost index funds
• I only started to do this a few years ago and I feel like I really missed out not doing this earlier.
• Never carry a balance on Credit Cards
• If you have a balance stop everything and pay them off. Don't do anything else until they are paid off.
• You should have at least two cards to build your credit. I know this isn't popular with Dave Ramsey, but everyone needs to have a good credit score at some point.
• Chase Reward cards are good
• You should check your credit report at least a couple of times a year to make sure nothing unexplained is on it.
• I don't know if your job does pension, 401k, 457,or 403b if they do a match; max it out to get the most out of the maxing. Free money is always the best money.
• If they don't do anything consider investing in Roth IRAs or Traditional IRAs
• these will help on taxes and save on retirement. 
• If you want you can track your spending through MINT.com or personal capital

That should get you started on the right foot.  Good luck.