S ending your child off to college this fall?
Well, make sure you heed the words of Moser Claus, a British academic, who said: “Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.”
The fact is that many graduating high school seniors will go off to college without the skills they need to cope with a wide variety of personal finance issues such as budgeting and handling credit, warns Consumers for Responsible Credit Solutions, a national consumer advocacy group.
That lack of knowledge could result in serious financial problems for many of these young adults.
So, if you haven’t had a money talk with your college-bound child, I’ve got a book to help start the conversation.
For June’s Color of Money Book Club, I’ve selected “Getting Through College Without Going Broke” (Natavi Guides, $8.95).
The book was written by students for students and published by a company founded by two recent college graduates. The primary author was Theresa Fives, a linguistics major at Cornell University who graduated this year. Fives got help with the book from Holly Popowski, who graduated from New York University with a major in philosophy in 2003.
This paperback guide is quite different from the usual impenetrable books on the subject, written by experts who haven’t been in college since “groovy, man” was, well, groovy.
“Getting Through College Without Going Broke” is a quick and easy read that covers some basic money management issues all college students will face, perhaps for the first time.
This book reminds me of the mantra “Each one, teach one.”
What better way to help incoming students get a handle on their finances than to give them advice from peers who have been there and done that – as in missed deadlines for college aid, racked up credit card debt or wasted money on pizza and clothes long forgotten by the time they really needed the cash.
“There is no better expert than a student who is currently dealing with or has dealt with the issues relating to money,” Popowski said. “I think that college students know what’s going on right now in college. They know how to talk to other students in a reasonable way. If you read a book written by an ‘expert,’ they have unreasonable expectations on what students are really going to be spending money on.”
Throughout the book there are budget sheets, templates for keeping track of financial aid and comments from current students and recent college graduates offering good, practical financial tips. Here’s a sampling:
* A junior at Trinity College said: “I would have saved more of my paychecks from my campus job. I also would have stopped ordering out sooner. Late-night pizza and Chinese food thinned out my wallet and had the reverse effect on my waistline.”
* A sophomore from the State University of New York at Albany said: “Don’t necessarily depend on your parents to do everything for you.” (As a parent, can I get an ‘Amen’ on that?) “I had a friend who got no aid (one) semester because he thought his dad had filled out all the papers, but his dad had completely forgotten.” (Just a note from the authors: Every student needs to re-file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid every year that they are in school in order to be considered for federal student aid, including grants, loans and work study programs.)
* A recent grad of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said: “The most challenging part about financial aid was understanding what my dad was talking about with fixed rates and subsidized loans and the economics of loans. If I had known those words meant thousands of dollars back then, I would have read a bit more on what I was getting myself into.”
Chances are your children may roll their eyes if you give them this book. But don’t let that deter you, because the alternative – financial ignorance – is too costly.
Washington Post Writers Group
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