Living on your own, buying a car and graduating college have a couple things in common: they’re all common goals for students and they all require good money management.
Fortunately, UMKC will open a Financial Wellness Center this fall that can help students reach all their financial goals. We sat down with Financial Wellness Coordinator Anna Zimmerman for the full breakdown on what you can expect from this new service.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. What brought you to become the financial wellness coordinator here at UMKC?
I'm originally from Topeka, Kansas, and personal finance has always been a big passion of mine. After working in New York for a couple of years, I knew that I wanted to come back to the Midwest. I love Kansas City, and so I jumped when I saw an opportunity to come to UMKC. They were looking to start a new Financial Wellness Center. I’ve been following a lot of the trends across the country, and more and more schools have been starting programs like these. I was just really excited by the opportunity to build something from the ground up and be there to support students as they're establishing their own financial habits. Answer any questions that they might have.
What is the Financial Wellness Center? What benefit do you hope it will give students here?
The Financial Wellness Center at UMKC has three primary services. Our first service is one-on-one financial coaching. We meet with students individually to support them and answer any questions that they might have, whether that's how to build a budget, understanding student loans, saving to purchase a car or move out on their own. We can help students navigate all of those decisions with individualized support.
The second service we offer is providing workshops and presentations. This fall, we have 13 different workshops on topics ranging from applying for scholarships and budgeting to credit cards and student loans. We also do presentations by request. Over this last summer I've worked with physicians’ assistants on Hospital Hill and the Summer Bridge Scholars, so a wide range of students.
We also provide digital resources on our website: templates for budgeting and short videos that help break down some of the common questions that we get from students around topics like credit and student loans.
How does this differ from similar programs at other universities?
I interviewed over 100 different individuals on the UMKC campus and reached out to 15 different universities with financial wellness programs to find out what worked and what didn’t work. That means we’re able to customize and focus our services to specifically support UMKC students.
I'm so excited that UMKC is choosing to invest in this resource. It’s so empowering for students. It's not a one-template-fits-all approach. We sit down with the student and figure out what their specific goals are and how can we support meeting them. It's stressful to be a student. You're managing your course load. You're managing your social relationships. Many students are managing work. Those are all the same skills you need to manage your finances. We just are adding that little bit of information so that students feel confident to do so.
And why is financial wellness important for college students, in a broad sense?
We know that financial wellness has an impact on every other facet of an individual's well-being. If students are stressed about finances, chances are their academic performance is going to dip. They're not going to be able to spend the time and energy focused on their social relationships, and that’s going to have a severe emotional toll. We want to provide a lot of the support up front in order to help students avoid that emotional stress and manage their finances well while they're in school. It’s really empowering for students. A lot of them are on their own for the first time or they're making these lifelong decisions about student loans, which is one of the biggest investments that they'll make. We’re supporting them through these decisions and helping set them up for success, not just while they're at UMKC, but for their life. These are skills that they're taking with them and they're going to be using every day.
What’s the number one financial wellness tip you want to give to students?
My first tip for students would be to sit down and make a budget: see how much money you have coming in and how much money you have going out. Make sure you're giving every dollar a job. You want your money to work for you, whether that's paying for your tuition and fees, time with friends, time for selfcare or hobbies. Make sure that every dollar has a job, and make sure that you're setting time and money aside for your savings as well, so you can support your future goals.