Getting Down to Basics
“The peer mentors sit down and show students how to look up credit reports, and show them how to improve their credit score. They also go into classrooms and fill in for a teacher that may be gone for a day and teach money matters in class,†says Czech. “Last year, we had 72 one-on-one appointments and 16 workshops on the basics of money management and budgeting, credit basics, fraud protection, creative couponing, and more,†Czech adds.
“It’s also a good developmental program for students who are interested in counseling or going into financial planning. The student worker format also allows us to provide this service and juggle our budget,†says Czech.
Danforth says many of the questions she gets are about budgets. “I can give them plans and papers, but I try to give them something tangible. ‘You need to put this money into a separate savings account for emergencies … You need to put this money in this account to pay your bills.’ I try to make it real things so that they can see themselves living it out.â€
Danforth also gets plenty of questions on student loans. “People need to understand them. Understand how to get them, how they work. In some cases students don’t need as many loans as they sign up for.â€
Apples and Trees
Danforth credits her interest in money and helping people to the role modeling she received from her mother (an accounts payable specialist at Polar Semiconductor Inc.) and her grandmother when she was growing up in Eagan, Minnesota, – a suburb of St. Paul.
“My mother is very good with money; she’s frugal in that she knows how to live within her means. My grandmother always taught me to save 10 cents out of every dollar and all of my birthday money,†says Danforth.
“It was just the two of us – my mom and me living together. We get a little support from my dad, but mainly, we live on my Mom’s income. I knew I would have to pay for college myself. I hold three jobs and have taken out as many loans as I can. My friends say I’m cheap because I don’t spend much on clothes and things like that, but I learned early how to stick to a budget.â€
Danforth understands how important it was for her to have good financial role models growing up. “A lot of people can’t go to their parents. They may not be there, or they may have poor money management skills. Students want to do better. I focus my mentoring on first-generation students of color. They want to do better than their parents,†she says.
More than Dollars and Cents
While students learn basic financial concepts from each other in peer-to-peer mentoring, the programs also serve a significant role in helping them cope with the stress and anxiety surrounding financial issues, particularly in this era of tremendous student debt loads.
The Federal Reserve says Americans are carrying more than a trillion dollars in student loan debt. Meanwhile, the Gallup-Purdue Index found that half of all black graduates reported taking on at least $25,000 or more to complete their undergraduate degrees between 2000 and 2014, compared to 34% of white graduates. Research also shows that financial strain leads to depression, anxiety, and ill health.
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