TIFFANY JACKSON: Hi, I am Tiffany Jackson.
And I am the Director of Student Financial Wellness
here at the University of Kentucky.
Here at the Student Financial Wellness Center,
we are excited to be a member of the wellness team on campus
as a resource offering for students.
We are part of what is a holistic approach
to a student's overall well-being.
And certainly a part of that is helping
to prevent financial anxieties of any kind.
Our goal is to help a student understand
how to successfully financially lead the life from A
to Z in a way that they feel equipped and empowered
to be successful not just as a UK student, but as an alum.
Certainly, we do that with a couple of different methods.
Things that we think would be a really great niche
of education in learning for our entire student body--
undergraduates to graduate students.
In doing so, what we have is a physical financial wellness
center where students can come and see us and have
confidential one-on-one conversations about anything
they might want to learn more about
or anything that they might have heard
us do outreach on campus about, want to know a little bit more
about those things, or if they've specifically
got agendas or things that they want to work on
and they want some help doing that.
We've helped students do everything
from understanding how to do really basic budgeting
techniques.
And we meet with students oftentimes
once a month to go over their monthly budget.
How did they do on that?
What are some tips or tricks that we can help them with,
identify things that they can change into the next month.
Really work with them on doing those things--
almost kind of like a financial wellness coach in that regard.
We've helped students write paper checks
or learn how to write a paper check, which certainly
helped me recognize how old I didn't want to admit that I am.
And you know, everything in between.
So we've helped students navigate
how to handle rent payments, utility budgeting if you'd
never done that before.
We've helped students understand if they're
going to have the method that we call the Super Saver, where you
work a lot over the summer saving a ton of money,
and expect yourself to just suddenly be able to live off
of that lump sum for 10 months-- but you've never
given yourself that kind of exercise in life before.
So we do the Summer Challenge.
If that's what you are planning to do so that you don't have
to work while you are a student, then
see how long you can make one of your biweekly paychecks
last over the summer.
And in theory, that challenge is use
one of your biweekly paychecks over the summer
and make it last for six to seven weeks.
Are you able to do that?
Because in theory, what you're doing
is taking 2 and 1/2 months worth of summer work
and saving that, and trying to make it last for 10 months.
So again, it's just little exercises
trying to help someone understand
what that might really look like and how to do it.
We offer professional staff that students can have
one-on-one appointments with.
We also offer a dozen peer coaches.
So if a student is more comfortable
talking to a peer about how they navigated a situation,
or how they handled a feeling, that financial anxiety
feeling, or that moment we're not quite sure if you're
anxious about it, but you're a little nervous about it,
we offer peer coaches for that very, very reason.
We do a lot of outreach on campus, outreach and education.
And also we partner with iGrad--
an online software that allows students to really completely
immerse themselves in the comforts of their own space,
navigating some of their financial questions.
So we always like to say to a student, or families,
or mentors, you know, please don't
Google something financial related if you
have questions about that.
Utilize, iGrad.
It's a free software that we provide
to students using their link blue log-in information.
A guest can also create an account right
from our web site.
It allows a student, or family, or friends
to navigate financial questions that maybe they
feel uncomfortable asking of someone directly,
but want to just kind of do some self research and self
exploration of those topics.
And iGrad is a great way to do that.
It has an online budgeting tool.
It has specific courses built into the platform
that you can take and get a really good temperature
of your own financial understanding.
So we're really excited to offer that to students and hope
that they take advantage of that.
Certainly when we meet with them,
we go over how to utilize the platform effectively
for the things that they're looking to do right now.
But also here at the student financial wellness center,
we take really great care and knowledge
of the landscape of where a student is at that very moment.
Understanding that we aren't going
to solve all of your financial problems
that you're going to experience as a student in one meeting,
but we see ourselves as an opportunity for you
to continue to use our resource as you mature and go
through different life experiences as a student.
So what you would need your freshman year
as a student is really going to be different from what you're
going to need from us your junior year
or as you start to job search with,
perhaps, a career center, doing internships, moving off campus
and paying rent, or navigating utility payments
for the first time.
So all of those things are things
that we are here to help a student understand and better
equip themselves to be great consumers and great investors,
great savers.
And so we are excited to be a part of a student's experience
and hope that students take advantage of the fact
that we're here as a resource.