Nicholas Bianco and Sydney Fairbanks / Jambar Contributors
Managing finances can be difficult, but Youngstown State University offers financial literacy courses to educate students on this issue.
For students who are struggling, these classes provide tips and strategies on how to better handle their finances.
According to Elton Bryson Stephens Company, personal finance is becoming a required course in many American high schools. However, 40% of college students are not equipped with adequate financial literacy knowledge and skills.
Sarah Jenyk, a senior lecturer of economics, teaches a course that navigates students through a financial journey.
“We cover everything from buying a car, financing a car, to buying a home [and] the mortgage process. Once you start your career, how you budget for a household, just either for yourself or if you have a family, the things you need to consider there, all the way through to retirement savings,” Jenyk said.
Connie Augustine, a lecturer with the Lariccia School of Accounting, said there are general education courses that teach students about finances.
“We cover just a little bit of everything. ‘What’s life insurance? What are credit cards, and how should you use them to your advantage?’ You shouldn’t completely ignore them,” Augustine said. “You have to think about your credit score and how you can use that to purposely build a solid credit rating. It’s a great course for life skills.”
Financial literacy professors implement projects and assignments in their courses to give students an example of how to handle finances.
Jenyk said she uses a stock market project in her course to give students the experience of investing. Students learn about the stock market, research a specific company and analyze stock prices.
“It’s fun for students to start [the project]. They get to choose whatever stocks they want to invest in,” Jenyk said. “Then we see where they end up a couple weeks later — which student ended up with the highest returns.”
Jenyk explained an investing technique that could benefit students financially.
“If you start saving when you are 25 and just put $200 away in a retirement account that’s tied to the stock market, annual stock returns maybe around 10% per year [on] average. By the time you retire at age 65, you will have $1 million,” Jenyk said.
Jenyk said consistently saving at a young age will likely increase the chances of financial stability at retirement.
“If you start young and do it consistently, your sacrifice is going to be much smaller than if you try to catch up later in life,” Jenyk said.
Jenyk encourages students to categorize their spending habits.
“Try to make a list of what are the things that I absolutely have to spend money on, things like rent, things like gasoline, like a car payment,” Jenyk said. “[You] have your other category of fun or unnecessary expenses, things like entertainment, clothing, and you can kind of see how much of your budget is spent in each category and make the necessary adjustments.”
