The C.T. Bauer College of Business held a financial symposium aimed at financial literacy — targeting money management, credit reports, paying for college financial aspects in career choices and embedding financial education in classrooms K-12. It was held Saturday in conjunction with Houston Money Week.
“If you have better control over your life, if you can plan, if you can budget, if you weigh your options, that’s the single most important factor that reduces the amount of stress,” said Bauer Dean Latha Ramchand.
Statistics show that 23 percent of young students acknowledge spending more money than is available to them, said Donald Bowers II, assistant vice president of the Houston Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
“What they’re doing is they’re creating a situation for themselves that they will spend the majority of their young and middle-age life trying to get out of,” Bowers said.
“What we want to do with Houston Money Week is to make sure that there is attention brought to this topic.”
Jonathan Moreira, an incoming student, said the symposium was a good idea.
“It’s nice to know that UH and the community of Houston are working together to educate their students and community members not just during college but life-after-college with financial education,” Moreira said.
“It’s education that we can take beyond our college careers and put into practice in our lives and we can help others along the way.”
Houston Money Week also offered two scholarships and held a poster contest on financial literacy for students K-12 during the financial symposium, which was organized by Frank Kelley, associate dean for undergraduate business programs.
“If we can share the knowledge we have, we can learn how to budget, we can learn how to plan, we can learn to prepare, then we have the solution right in front of us and from that perspective. There is no substitute for education,” Ramchand said.
“If we can teach you to think in the right direction, if we can empower you through financial education, I think we would have done our part and you would be so much better off for that.”
Texas Council on Economic Education held the poster contest on financial literacy for K-12 students and winners were awarded savings bonds and certificates