Today’s college students are bombarded with ads, commercials, and mailings telling them they need to spend money to be happy. They may lack the skills necessary to manage their own personnel finances, and soon find themselves burdened with huge credit card debts. The Peer Financial Counseling Program was designed to address this problem. SIFE team members are trained as Peer Financial Counselors who then teach other college students financial management skills so they can meet life’s challenges and opportunities. This program was created by the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences and is jointly funded by the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs and the Georgia Student Finance Commission. In 2006, GSC SIFE has tripled the size of our Peer Financial Counseling program teaching 11 workshops reaching over 300 college students.

      The first step in becoming financially independent is being able to live within your means, so the first module in the Peer Financial Counseling Program involves budgeting. Students learn to evaluate their values, set goals; know the difference between a need and a want; track their income and expenses, make a spending plan, and stick to a spending plan. After the workshop students were:

1. More likely to make and stick to a spending plan;

2. More likely to track their income and expenses;

3. More likely to plan their personal budgets including finding ways to decrease their expenses