Online CashCourse geared toward students’ financial fitness

Students and student clubs can improve their financial fitness with a noncommercial resource that Rice has made available to them online.

CashCourse offers a wide range of financial materials to educate students on everything from managing a personal budget and paying for college education to dealing with debit and credit cards and planning for retirement. The information was compiled by the nonprofit organization National Endowment for Financial Education and can be accessed at cashcourse.org/riceuniversity and also at “financial fitness” links on the undergraduate and graduate student gateways on rice.edu.

Hanszen sophomore Gabrien Clark, a Student Association senator who will become SA internal vice president this spring, said he plans to use CashCourse to help prepare students for the financial challenges of living off campus.

“Last spring I found out I had to move off campus for a year, and I have made it my personal project to help other students when they have to live off campus,” Clark said. “I want them to know what I wish I had known before I had to find a place of my own.”

CashCourse covers such practical matters as who is responsible for the apartment rent if one of the roommates moves out and how to eat healthy on a budget.

Clark is organizing a workshop this spring for students who have to live off campus in the fall and plans to include a session on how to use CashCourse. “It’s a great educational opportunity, and I think it can ease the burden of off-campus living,” he said.

Salomon Medina, a financial aid specialist in the admissions office at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, said CashCourse is “a great financial planning resource” because it provides qualitative and quantitative tools for students as they begin the borrowing process for their investment in graduate school.

“A primary focus for me when I advise students is to have the financial conversation that looks at borrowing as well as repayment in light of return on investment, personal debt burden and other factors,” Medina said. “It’s important to have students pause a moment and begin their business career by accurately planning their own investment in education.”

Because of the large amount of information offered on the CashCourse site, Medina plans to create a series of articles and emails to direct Jones School students to sections that will be particular helpful to them.

Kate Abad, director of student activities, expects CashCourse to prove useful to many of the 220 student clubs at Rice when they’re dealing with financial matters.

“We get a lot of requests from club treasurers for basic information on budgets and how to keep up with them,” Abad said. “We can reference CashCourse when we give presentations to student clubs about why they need a budget and how to create one.”

“CashCourse has become increasingly popular at a number of universities, and we wanted Rice students to have access to it too,” said Vice President for Finance Kathy Collins.

Anne Walker, director of student financial services, said one of the best aspects of CashCourse is that the resource is not sponsored by a commercial entity. “This is unbiased information,” she said. “The students who use this site don’t have to worry about being pressured to respond to a credit card offer or some other advertisement.”