The prospective, current, and former students your office works with on a daily basis may vary greatly in their financial literacy knowledge and skills, depending largely on their different life experiences and backgrounds. In helping them to access funds for higher education, you’re in a prime position to help lead students to resources that teach them about building and using credit, budgeting, saving, borrowing, managing money, and more.
History of Financial Literacy Month
Financial Literacy Month grew out of Financial Literacy Day, which originated as an activity of the National Endowment for Financial Education’s High School Financial Planning Program. Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy began promoting the month as Financial Literacy for Youth Month in 2000, and eventually it was shortened to Financial Literacy Month.
New Resources to Share
To kick off the month, consider sharing a post about Financial Literacy Month in your social media channels and linking to an article that summarizes why financial literacy is so important. We found this article while searching the Jump$tart Clearinghouse, which provides a free online library of financial education resources for teachers, parents, caregivers, and anyone interested in helping students gain financial knowledge.
Here are a few financial literacy resources we identified which you may find useful to share with college age students to help build their financial literacy skills:
- Credit Essentials for Everyone – A focused look at how to build and protect your credit, appropriate for college age and up.
- Money Minutes: Personal Finance 101 – A series of short videos such as Budgeting 101, Student Loans 101, and College Costs 101 created by 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy, a free program offered by the nation’s certified public accountants.
- Jump$tart’s Reality Check – An interactive calculator that takes hypothetical life choices students fill in to help them see if they can afford their dream life.
- How to Make College More Affordable – Four tips to help students and families make college life more affordable.
- Personal Finance for College Students – A curriculum series covering budgeting, living on your own, buying a home, credit, credit cards, cars and loans, consumer awareness, saving and investing, trouble (financial difficulties), and consumer privacy.
Federal Student Aid (FSA) also provides numerous resources for college students about financial literacy topics such as budgeting and avoiding student aid scams on their website – and they share helpful posts, infographics, and videos on their Facebook channel. FSA also offers a helpful guide, Federal Student Loans: Repaying Your Loans, which would make a great resource to share with students who are soon heading into repayment.
Your Plans for Financial Literacy Month
We hope you’ve found some of these ideas helpful. What does your office have planned for Financial Literacy Month? We’d love to hear, and so would your peers. Feel free to share your ideas with us on LinkedIn.