ABOVE PHOTO: Student Life volunteers at Chippewa Valley Technical College offer Money Matters and Scholar-sips events to help students learn financial literacy including budgeting and debt management.
Pang Garcia talks about what no one else will – money.
Garcia, a student involvement specialist at CVTC, is great at teaching others how to budget their money.
“Money is one of those things where nobody wants to talk about it,” she said. “It’s like a hush-hush thing, but it impacts every aspect of someone’s life, and it can either make or break somebody.
“People can make one decision without enough information, and that could change the trajectory of what happens and what follows them, financially, forever.”
CVTC began the Money Matters program in 2018 to give students a leg up on finances. Pang and her colleagues in the Student Life office held pop-ups for students in case they had questions or wanted to dig deeper about their budgets.
With students and staff at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the program changed a bit, but today it’s a more robust program with additional opportunities for students to grow. Now, students have the ability to sign up for Money Matters through a Student Leadership Academy. It’s an additional level of support for students.
Garcia said student feedback on the budgeting tips has been well-received.
“People are always going to struggle with their budget,” she said. “I tell students that a budget is fairly simple. It’s about how much money they have coming in and how much money they have going out. But somehow they have this idea in their head that there has to be funds left over. And I say, ‘Well, it depends on how you look at it.’”
There are many different budget strategies, she said. Garcia reiterates that a budget means the income matches the expenses. But the first thing she teaches is that the goal comes first.
“It’s similar to school,” she said. “You don’t just go in and take random classes in hopes that you’ll get a degree. There’s a methodology to it. Before you even think about creating your budget, what is the goal that you want to work towards?”
