“I got the money and [my] mom opened up checking ac-counts, saving accounts and talked about interest rates,” he says. “She taught me how you should always have money put away for a rainy day because you never know what’s going to happen.” Dennis recalls his parents’ reinforced teaching of “anything you want, you can get as long as you budget it and save for it”. To enforce their teachings, Dennis’ parents didn’t hesitate to share real-world expenses with him and his younger brother. His parents would show them the electric bill and Dennis and his sibling “became conscious of how being waste-ful is hurting the light bill,” he says. Dennis says he realized he could reap financial benefits with a better sense of stretch-ing money in order to save. “Profits became equated with fun and goodies because we didn’t have to pay for much,” he says. Maintaining his finances were not as complicated for Dennis with his parents to pay for his things. Growing up and tak-ing on adult responsibilities called for him to manage his own funds. Thoughts of his parents’ attempts to teach him to save and budget flooded his mind but no solution to his current situation readily presented itself. “I actually had to call my uncle,” Dennis McCarthy, from Sarasota, says of the defying moment that reminded him of his early financial teachings he had forgotten. “He said he’d think about it and [he] let me sweat it out for 24 hours.” Dennis’ uncle eventually called back and agreed to send him the money under condition Dennis provide a detailed budget of where his money was going. Dennis did so and began to comply with the budget he gave his uncle regularly. Dennis says he was fortunate to have parents that instilled financial understanding in him. The hard part though was applying his lessons in finance once he was on his own and without direct parental guidance. Though some parents educate their chil-dren aboutfinances, students may not retain the information if lessons New-found financial freedom for college students becomes a problem when the don’t receive basic teachings in finance. Some studies propose courses in finance for high school or early college students to learn the basics of money management. A Business Network 2005 article, “The financial knowledge of college freshmen”, determined that many recent high school graduates are not knowledgeable about everyday financial matters. The study also proves that students are often unable to deal with their personal finances. The study fails to examine that if today’s youth are lacking general finance knowledge, the reason for their unpolished financial compre-hension may lie in their home life and parents’ values about work and money. Julie Marsh, a financial reporter for redding com, suggests that parents “lead by example and model good saving and spending habits to your children.” In many cases, when students travel to school, parents can only giveadvice from a distance. Students are challenged with keeping track of their own finances. Financial institu-tions offer assistance for students to stay on track. Sometimes a student’s first taste of financial freedom, coupled with cess to large sums of money, presents the task of differentiating between needs and wants. Getrichslowly.org advises students not to “buy on impulse,” but to ask if they need or want an item they intend to buy.

Bankers acrepeatedly witness the financial repercussions of un-budgeted spending. Dennis, even after receiving his parent’s teachings, had to face the chore of maintaining his own finances. Distrac-tions of the college experience soon overcame Dennis’ ability to control his spending habits. Dennis soon arrived at FAMU with the privilege of having a “full ride” through merit scholarships. Even with his “net check”, Dennis, like many students, be to feel the financial woes of independence. When my net check came and I had a couple grand in my account, I went nuts,” Dennis says. “I was over there at Governor’s Square spending my money on frivo-lous stuff.” .Expenses incurred in frequenting parties and clubs, along with buying items already provided in dorm living, says Dennis. Alexandria Cawthon says she has had experience with many students. She says that they are ofteninexperienced and unknowledgeable. “They come in, fresh out of high school, with really no banking experience,” says Cawthon, branch op-erations manager for Hancock Bank. “They are over drafting at much higher rates because they’re not use to balancing their money.” Cawthon says that more than half of the students she meets have no initial understanding of basic finances “I would say 85 percent of the students have no balancing [and] no loan knowledge,” says Cawthon. She admits that most parents come in and get their students set up, but once financial aid is disbursed, financial liability falls back on the students. “Most of the students I’ve ran across come in and spend as if they forget they have tuition to pay, books to buy and rent to pay up,” Cawthon says. “By the time they use their money up, they don’t want to call their parents, so they want to apply for loans that they really know nothing about.” Students have the option to approach bankers to resolve pay back methods when they rather not go to parents. They tend to not go to parents either because “they’re scared of what they might say,” says Cawthon. Cawthon says that, when dealing with over drafts, students are allotted 60 days before the fees are sent to a collection agency. Reaching a collection agency may hinder students from getting an account elsewhere once other banks are notified. Inevitably, it has a negative effect on one’s credit, according to Cawthon. With the financial crisis be-coming a part of everyday life, financial knowledge is power. A foundation of financial knowledge may get a student far enough until they can get further guidance. Students also have the re-sponsibility to maintain what they are taught or seek the help to remember. Dennis has begun to incorporate the lessons he learned in school and from his parents. Personal experiences, such as nobeing able to pay his rent, have also taught him to spend wisely. With working more, he has began to save his money and pay his bills on time without questioning where he will get the money. Dennis says only in the past couple of years has he got-ten budgeting and balancing “down to a science.” Dennis gives credit to his parents for teaching him basic financial knowledge. He also recognizes his accountability for his finances once he was older. “[Mom] taught me everything, but it doesn’t mean I did it at first,” Dennis says. Dennis says he has taken vital steps toward bettering his fi-nancial situation based on what his parents taught him. “I started to get more hours [at work] and make more money,” he says. “I cut up [my] credit cards, paid them back, and set up a savings where I balanced it and stuck to a budget.” Dennis says his most important step was beginning to live within his means.

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t was the beginning of another month. He had already been dreaming about the horror of it. As the fateful date approached, his mind pondered on how he could pay his rent owed -along with what was already due from previous months. He reluctantly went for the notice: “IF CUR-RENT AND BACK PAYMENT IS NOT RECEIVED BY THE END OF THE WEEK, YOU WILL BE EVICTED! ” Without a doubt, he didn’t have the money he needed to keep his current residence and it seemed he’d sponged all he could from his mom because she didn’t have the funds

either. Dennis was familiar with spending his money wisely and spar-ingly. His parents set a financial foundation for him throughout his youth. He also received lessons in school that educated him on keeping track of his money. Balancing practice checkbooks is only one of the early memo-ries Dennis has regarding his work with finances. “It goes all the way back to elementary school when they used to give us these little checkbooks,” Dennis, a third year public relations student at Florida A&M University, says. “As long as we balanced those checkbooks, we could buy stuff from the school store.” Dennis has also maintained different jobs since the age of 14. His mother carried on lessons in finance with his paychecks from local grocery stores and landscaping jobs.

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Written By: Terrika Mitchell

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